Stephen, Lily & Zoe: March 2010

I had this crazy idea of giving Lily a surprise party, filled the rooms with balloons, banners, streamers, etc to celebrate her birthday. I was procrastinating simply because we didn't have the space for such in our tiny apartment.

Now that we have a little more space to play around in our house, I told myself, this IS the year. If I don't do it now, I'll never do it.

Invitations were sent out early to our friends to join in the fun. I was expecting a number of couples to be not available as Lily's birthday fell within the CNY period. We were quite lucky that we still have enough headcount for the surprise.

That was back in January. From then till the second week of February, I was tossing with a number of ideas on things I can do on top of the surprise "party". I couldn't decide and ended up using most of it for the whole weekend (saving some for next year).

It didn't take me too long too arrange the plans leading up to the surprise "party", as I knew exactly what I need to do. It started off with sending her a bouquet of lilies & roses on Friday morning to her workplace. She was shocked when her receptionist passed it to her. She was pleasantly surprised through the phone and embarrassed from all the attentions from her colleagues. :D Plan accomplished!

We took it nice and easy the next day, enjoying ourselves our well deserved weekend after a hectic working week. She was expecting us to go our for dinner and that was it. What she wasn't expecting was that we were going for one of the well acclaimed restaurant in Australia - Cutler & Co. We had a really good time, one of the best dinners we had.

Sunday was THE day. The day that she needed to be pampered. From the very beginning, I was giving her the impression that I didn't have anything planned, mistaken her birthday to be on Saturday. We then went out for our usual Sunday brunch, not realizing I found another great cafe to dine. - Cafe Vue at Heide. Went there early, savored their menu and was very impressed with the quality of food. We then took a stroll along the park next to the cafe, enjoying the sunny, cool Sunday morning. She was happy!

On our way back home after our brunch, I dropped her off at the local beauty therapy for 3 hours of pampering. She was really shocked as I had already made the payment, there was no backing out. Left her there, while I took the next 3 hours to decorate our house with banners, balloons, streamers and gathering all our friends.

When I picked her up shortly after 3 hours, she was going on and on about how much she enjoyed her pampering and dying to show me her pedicure.

I was saying quietly to myself that the bigger surprise is yet to come. hehe :D We reached home, she opened the door and all our friends that were waiting quietly in the house shouted "SURPRISE" and started singing the birthday song. :D Plan accomplished!

She was speechless for the first 10 minutes, trying to digest what has happened! hehe... slowly, she warmed up and back to her usual self. Occasionally, she would give me the "you are so dead" stare, for once I didn't mind at all.