Surprise!

Tonight, I decided to take a brief study break to go to Kaydi's birthday party. But this just wasn't any birthday party. Beyond celebrating the birthday of an all-around awesome, sincere person, this was a surprise party.


When I got to Kaydi's building, Ashley and the other Albertan redheaded journalism Jessica (who I should probably just start referring to as "Jess R," but I haven't had to resort to last initials since elementary school) had been busy decorating. Kaydi's boyfriend Geoff had organized the party, recruiting Kaydi's parents and Ashley to help him out, and providing a huge spread of sushi and other fishy kabob type foods. (What a sweet boyfriend! Hmmm. . .some people should probably be taking notes. Well, on everything except for the fishy related food products.)

Chloe and Ashley eagerly anticipated the birthday girl's entrance.

I was a little skeptical that Kaydi would be surprised. In my experience, surprise parties never work.

When I was turning 15, Elana tried to throw me a surprise birthday BBQ in her backyard. However, for reasons that are currently escaping me, (I think I wanted to make other plans that weekend or may have been going out of town for something--can someone refresh my memory here?) Elana had to eventually reveal to me the surprise birthday plan.

The second time was when I was set to leave for Europe. I had just moved all my things from Edmonton back to storage in Cold Lake, and I was spending one last weekend at home before I set off to journey the world. My mom decided to throw me a surprise going-away party and asked Naomi to make all the invites for her. Somehow I found out about it (again, I can't remember how, exactly) and most of the people who showed up were people I invited personally. (Which is kind of depressing.) And then when everyone showed up, I had to act surprised because my mom didn't know that I knew about it. I thought it was really nice that she had tried to put something together for me, so I didn't want to ruin it.

I'm of the strong convinction that surprise parties are never a surprise.

But Kaydi was genuinely surprised! She walked into the room with her coat on, ready to go out to dinner with Geoff. (I asked Chloe, "What if she really wanted to go out to dinner? Won't she be dissapointed?" Chloe assured me this wouldn't be the case, and if so, the consolation prize was pretty damn good. I just know that personally, I might be a little bit dissapointed. A mean, a room full of my friends and food is awesome, but I really like going out to eat.)

Kaydi giving her mommy a surprised thank you hug.

I hope you had an awesome birthday Kaydi and the festivities are still in full swing while I'm at home typing this. (And, I really hope that you weren't dissapointed that you didn't get to go out for dinner.)