I have a confession to make. It’s rather awkward to share, and I hope you will be understanding and won’t rush to judgement.

I have been lying to my husband. For weeks. I have also been keeping things from him. I’m not sorry. If I had it to do all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing.

You see, I felt very strongly about something, and I knew he wouldn’t necessarily agree, so I just went behind his back, did what I wanted to do. He never saw it coming.

We had a surprise 50th Birthday Party for The Big Guy.

I knew I was going to have to be deceitful when I heard TBG’s response to my question regarding his milestone birthday. When I asked him how he wanted to celebrate his birthday, he replied, “I don’t want a party, if that’s what you are asking. Let’s just go out for a nice meal with the boys.”

I new in my heart, when I smiled and nodded in agreement, that I would not, could not agree to this. I knew that I would go against my husband’s wishes.

Tough noogies I say.

Weeks of planning went into a week of setting the scene. Firstly, TBG’s birthday was celebrated the way HE wanted over the Christmas Holidays. A nice dinner with his little family. We even had the wait staff sing to him. We celebrated with presents on his ACTUAL birthday, which happened to fall on a Wednesday. Ironically, he was sick this year, and didn’t go to work. Anyone who knows him knows that it had to be fairly serious for him to miss a day of work. He actually ended up missing two days of work.

Then there was the advertisement we put in the local paper – eluding that this was the extent of the extravagance.

But it wasn’t until the following weekend that the ultimate deception took place. Although he still wasn’t at 100% per cent, he agreed that we would go to the movies; something we had hoped to do, but never got around to over the holidays. Just as we were about to head out the door, his brother, sister-in-law and niece showed up. SURPRISE! TBG is shocked, confused and thrilled. He thinks the surprise is that they have come for a visit, but they have brought quite a bit of food for just us….

They got to work at putting up the decorations I had stashed away. Within 20 minutes, we had another vehicle pull in – then another – and then it hit him, we were in the midst of PAR-TAY! The food I had told him was a pro-active food prep for the following week, WRONG – was actually for the people who came to the door every 20 minutes or so. Instead of having a typical surprise where the guest of honour is brought in to a fully amassed group of friends and family, I asked them to come whenever they could, which meant a steady stream of people from 3 p.m. onward.

It. Was. PERFECT!

The gifts, while appreciated were unnecessary. I say that because I don’t drink beer. Little Sister and her hubby, Thing 2, gave TBG 50 Beers for 50 Years. He was spoiled by many of his guests.

One of my favourite gifts was the large container of ornaments given by dear friends of ours, who also read this blog…they wanted to help TBG with next year’s Christmas tree after reading what happened to this year’s tree. Perfection!

It was a wonderful time. The pool table was well used. The food was snapped up and the cake was eaten.

While TBG was thrilled to see so many friendly faces who wanted to celebrate how awesome he is, he found himself unable to go to sleep once the last pair of tail lights left the driveway. He questioned every action that had taken place for the past few weeks. As much as he enjoyed himself, he couldn’t believe that so much had taken place right under his nose.

“So there’s no more surprises?” he asked, after piecing together the puzzle.

“Nope, that’s it,” I replied, relieved.

…other than my secret family and off-shore bank accounts….