Mom and Dad's 30th Anniversary Surprise Party!

This last weekend was an extremely fun.. blur. I hardly know how I lived through it, though I'm not quite sure yet that I have since I have been going non-stop still this week. I'll finally get a breather tonight (if cleaning a neglected house counts as a breather that is..) and I'll let you know if I didn't lose my sanity.

Quick recap of the weekend - we flew in Friday night and hung out with our family. Saturday morning, we headed to downtown Houston and spent the morning with Kanyon's family at our nieces' (Emry and Micah) birthday party. We got back early afternoon and watched the OSU-A&M game (Go Pokes!) with the family before heading out to a family pictures session with our photographer friend Megan Thurman. From there, we "kidnapped" Mom and Dad and took them to their surprise party where we were up until the early hours of the morning visiting with family and friends. Sunday morning, we went to church and Mom and I skipped lunch to get home because we hosted a wedding shower for one of my best friends Camille! That lasted until just before dinner when we just relaxed with Kalum and Ashley and then another of my best friends Rachel and her boyfriend Jeremy came to visit us. Bed, got up early, caught our flight Monday morning, flew into Midland and Kanyon dropped me off at work and I worked that afternoon.

I can't even see straight after thinking about all that.

Let me just focus on one thing that we did this weekend at a time. I'll start with what I alluded to in my last post (where I told you I'd be telling you about it the next day.. ha).

Back in May, my friend Ashley, who is the youth minister's wife at my parent's church and who, along with her husband Kalum, have become family to us, were talking about how fun it would be to throw a surprise party for my parents. Their 30th wedding anniversary was on August 14th and we wanted to do something big to celebrate. Another family friend, Jolene, told us she would help in any way she could, so knowing that I had their help, I decided to go for it!

I mentioned it to Cole and Kanyon and they both said that they'd love to do it for our parents. We knew Mom had been talking about flying Kanyon and I down to Houston in September for us all five to be together one last time before Cole leaves for Patagonia for his study abroad (I really need to do a post on that..) so we decided it would have to be that weekend since she would find it odd if we told her we wanted to fly down another weekend as well so close to that one.

So in the beginning of July when my parents and Kanyon and I visited Cole in Denver, Cole and I (Kanyon had already flown out a couple days before) brainstormed all our ideas for the party and got the ball rolling. That week, I booked the restaurant where the party would be and informed all of my parent's close friends to make sure they had that weekend open.

From then on, it was mostly delegating out jobs to several people. I couldn't have gotten it all done without my Aunt Jenny and Uncle Dean and cousins Emily, Sara, and Bethany, Ashley and Kalum Tuggle, LeeAnne Robbins, Jolene Curtis, Starla Jones, Cindy Rogers, and Megan Thurman.

My aunt, uncle, and cousins decided they would tell Mom they were coming for the weekend to see Cole before he left, too, so they could spend the whole weekend with us. Thankfully, Mom didn't suspect anything.

We got them to the party by telling them just before leaving for dinner on Saturday night that all the cousins had a surprise for all four of the parents. We wanted to throw them off entirely so we blindfolded Jenny and Dean, too. The car ride to the restaurant was pretty humorous since Mom is not a fan of surprises and was clearly agitated and nervous while Dad was giddy and totally relaxed about the whole thing because he loves surprises! So without further ado.. I'm going to let the pictures do the rest of the talking!

The party was a huge hit. It went perfect! There were 80 people there!! A whopping 20 of them were from out of town. Joseph even came from Chicago! 

After the food was served (bruschetta, meatballs, and gourmet pizza), we played a great slideshow of pictures that had everyone rolling and loving. And then we had toasts from Kanyon, Cole, and I. After that, we opened the floor for people to add to it and several people came up and said heartfelt sweet things to my parents. It was wonderful. 

After that, we cut the cakes! Kalum and Ashley had a cake made for Mom and Dad. It was gorgeous. It was champagne flavored with raspberry filling and white buttercream frosting. It had pearls on it for the 30th anniversary and a 30 on top.

We also had a couple of chocolate sheet cakes for Cole's birthday! Cole's birthday is on the same day as Mom and Dad's anniversary so I surprised him with a birthday cake. Then, at the party, it turned out it was Jerry's, Mom's cousin, birthday that day! So we sung Happy Birthday to the two of them.

It was a great night and I hope my parents will always remember it and remember how much they are loved.

Here's to 30 years of an inspiring and loving marriage!