Surprise

Last Sunday at roughly 3:00AM I turned 60 years old. It seems weird to me that I have been alive for six decades. My children are now about the age I feel myself to be in my head.

I had imagined my birthday was going to be a special meal enjoyed by Lisa and myself and then perhaps she would let me pick out a movie to watch. We watch a whole lot of Hallmark movies around here.

As it turned out, Lisa had other plans in the works. I guess somewhere back around November my lovely wife created a chat room for her and the kids titled something like “Dad turns 60” and they’ve been planning a special birthday for me for the last 8 months. I had no clue.

I was quite excited when “coincidentally” three of my kids were going to be in town on my birthday. There really was no reason to be suspicious though since they all had good reasons to be here.

It all started when Kira and Justin and their friends decided to have a “friends” vacation in San Diego. They were here with their friends and stayed with their friends in a hotel. Their kids were quite confused as to why they were in San Diego but weren’t staying at Grandma’s house. The friends left on Friday though and Kira and her family were planning on staying here for the weekend to celebrate my birthday. Cool, I was excited.

Next was Alycia, she had planned to spend a week in San Diego this summer with her kids. The date wasn’t nailed down but when she learned that Kira was going to be here she decided to be here the same week and they could also spend my birthday weekend with me. Now I was getting even more excited.

Ben and Sharley are only a five hour drive away so when they learned that Kira and Alycia were going to be here they figured they should come and join them.

Now I was truly excited. Three of my six kids were going to be here on my birthday.

And that is how it was… until Thursday.

So Thursday is my day at the temple, but when I walked in the door after my shift there was Sarah sitting in the living room. I was in shock, it hadn’t even entered my mind that they would be coming. They have a big move coming up that they needed to be getting ready for. But Sarah is the one who hates to miss out on the fun so I just said, “hello Miss FOMO” and gave her a big hug.

Friday was kind of a “do your own thing” day. I got half a day of work in, Lisa went shopping for our “family” dinner on Sunday, Ben & Sharley and Kira & Justin went to some museum and Alycia & Trevor went out for their anniversary dinner while Lisa and I and Sarah and Sam babysat and watched a movie.

Later on Justin, Trevor, Ben and myself got a game of Star Trek Catan going and played games until all hours of the night.

At somewhere around 2:00AM in walks Alex and his girlfriend Lisa. I was speechless. I should have expected Alex would come once Sarah was here, but it never dawned on me that he would. That meant that Brandon was the only kid not in town for my birthday. My 60^th birthday was shaping up to be the best one ever.

When I started looking around for Brandon to show up they assured me he wasn’t able to come. Serene is expecting a baby (#14) any day now so I guess he has a valid excuse.

So that was it. Saturday morning started out as a rather lazy day with plans to head out to the beach in the afternoon. Around 11:00 Lisa told me that there was a new “accessible” park that Kira wanted to check out for Evan, so we loaded up the kids and headed to Torrey Meadows Park over by Westview High School.

I pulled into the park and it looked like a cool park but I didn’t see our family anywhere. I was with Kira, Lisa, Piper and Evan. They all started walking to the other end of the park so I naturally followed along.

There was a large gazebo filled with people. I couldn’t see where our family was, but then all of the sudden about 50 people in the Gazebo turned around yelled “surprise” and started singing Happy Birthday to me.

I was in total shock. While I figured a family party was obvious for Sunday, (my actual birthday), the thought that fifty non-family people would come to a party for me was the furthest thing from my mind. I didn’t know what to say and I was sure hoping no one was expecting a speech. It was tremendous fun though and there were a few surprises for me as well.

The first person I saw was Tad Hove. I haven’t seen him in ten years. He is doing well and it was good to see him.

The next surprise was Greg, my oldest brother. He lives in Vernal, Utah and he came all the way to San Diego for my birthday. It was so good to see him. The other surprise was Dan Allen, a fellow I used to work with at Hi-Z about fifteen years ago. Dan and I still go sailing a few times a year so I do see him, but it was certainly a surprise to see him there.

Lisa had managed to get some pictures of me growing up and made a small display about me. She did a great job. She also bought me a cool Star Trek cake. You may have heard that I’m a bit fond of that show.

I hesitate to name everyone who was there because I’m bound to forget someone, but here goes in alphabetical order.

Dan Allen

Reaghan & Joanne Beecroft

Trevor & Alycia Crowley & family

Rick Daynes
Ben & Desiree Heaton & family

Dave & Diane Evans

Larry & Carrie Farnes
Greg & Pam Gosch
Mike Gray & Family

Brad & Pattie Hatch

Tad Hove
Lisa Jones
Rebecca Knaphus & Family
Alex Leavitt & Lisa Buasum
Ben & Sharley Leavitt & family
Greg Leavitt
Robert & Michelle Leavitt
Kathy Marx
Thomas & Vicky McCormack
Craig & Marilyn McPhie
Rick & April Muir
Peter & Mandy Oldenwalder & family
Kira & Justin Palmer & family
Anne Pascal
Linda Petersen
Roger & Wendy Platt
Mahonry & Molly Sanchez & family
David & Sarah Walton

If I forgot anyone please let me know. What a fun and very unusual experience. The only other time I have been the center of attention like that was at our wedding, and let’s face it, everyone was there for the bride, not me.

So I tried to say “hi” to everyone there but I’m sure I missed someone. I’m sorry if I did. We did eventually make it to the beach Saturday afternoon and that was also a fun time. The water this summer is apparently warmer than it has been since 1902. I don’t know if it was this warm in 1902 or if that was when they started keeping records.

Saturday night was also an interesting experience. I’ve always wondered what Dungeons and Dragons is all about, well, now I know. For some reason Alex really wanted to get a game of D&D going, so Frank Criger came down to be our dungeon master and we played well into the night.