Surprise!

I got a call from my step-dad on Thursday night. He was wanting to have a surprise birthday dinner for my mom today. He was calling all the kids to assign parts of the meal and to set up all the secret meeting places and whatnot. I was asked to make funeral potatoes, and I gotta say, I was thrilled. I've been craving them like crazy, so it seemed like it would be therapeutic for me to get to cook them. I made them yesterday and left them in a low oven while we were at church today. Oh boy did they look good! The best part of the whole experience was getting to talk to Jeff on the phone, and hearing him quiet his voice all low so that mom couldn't hear him setting up surprises. He's such a goof!

At 4:00, all of us kids met up in the parking lot of an abandoned gas station down the street from my mom's house. Yeah, real secretive stuff here! Our little caravan of cars slowly drove over, everyone piled up inside my mom's living room, shooshing each other so we wouldn't give away the secret, and then sang "happy birthday" as we walked down into my mom's office. Ryan keeps asking me if she was really surprised or if she had us figured out beforehand, but I'm pretty sure she was surprised. I'd been telling her all weekend that we were going to be up in Layton today, so she was bummed she wouldn't see us. So when I walked in with Lilly, she got super excited. 

I brought potatoes, my step-sister brought salad, mom, not knowing, made a pasta salad for her own surprise dinner, Jeff barbecued AMAZING steak and chicken, and of course, there was cake. Lilly ate enough funeral potatoes to stuff me 10 times over, topped off with some chocolate cake from grandma. Yeah, I'd say she was pretty happy. I always love getting to spend time with my mom and Jeff, and this was definitely a much-needed break from our real life.

On top of that, I got my stuff back from Color Me Mine. My plate didn't turn out exactly as I hoped it would. I was painting away, thinking my shading and usage of different tones would make a really pretty painting, but in reality, you can see all the stroke marks and the colors all just kind of blended together. I do like it though, because I made it with my mommy on her birthday. She also gave me the egg that she made for Lilly. It looks like a fabergé egg with all its ornate detailing. I'm going to put some pink ribbon on it and display it in Lilly's room. Thanks, mom!