Ul40a - The Party!

As many of you know (and experienced), on the 10th day of Michelle's 40th birthday celebrations we hosted a big party for her at our house. Magic Mike was on-hand to perform close-up magic, the fridge was stocked with domestic and international beers, mini quiches and shredded beef sliders and all manner of other goodies were available and I was finally able to unveil the special surprise movie that many, many people around the globe had contributed to over the past couple of months.

With family and friends from the Bay and the Local Area - FHS Redcats were representin'! - as well as Toronto and Tokyo, I was able to coax Michelle over to the couch in front of the TV with a friendly 'You love me, right?' (and her reply of 'What have you done?') for the premier showing of the 'My Favorite Thing About Michelle' video. I'm working on figuring out how to upload it somewhere for everybody to see, but at 22 minutes it's a little long even for YouTube. In the meantime, just trust me that it went down a storm at the party and featured not only friends and family from around the world, but our favourite local Magician and Bay Area Band - much to Meleena's delight - and representatives from Virgin Atlantic, Hertz and local law enforcement.

That wasn't all, however. The final surprise of the evening - and the moment that I could finally relax, knowing that all the secret planning and conniving of the past couple of months had come to a successful end - was the unveiling of the oil painting of Michelle that Will Cotterill (Nick's brother) had been working on back in Oxford, England. Big thanks to Will not only for doing a fabulous job on the art itself, but for locating the services of the packing company who were able to crate it up in such a way that we could ship it overnight from the UK to our house without upsetting the still-drying oil paint. It will be taking pride of place in our living room from this coming weekend and will be lovingly varnished and framed just as soon as it's ready.

With all that done, it was time to eat some cake, open some gifts, take some photos and drink some more drinks to round out what had been a fantastic evening.

As always, there's no way that I could have put any of this together without lots of help - big thank you's to everyone that contributed to the video (Anna - you're a star for taking care of the FHS crew and maintaining the secret) and to the party itself (Rita, Lizz, Janie, Kim and Ev get particular kudos for the cooking, the house prep and the spontaneous late-night clean-up and Rita gets an extra thank you for taking the photography duties into her own hands for me), Meleena for Simon-watching and moral support and anyone else that played a part, no matter how small.

And lastly, thank you Michelle. My love for you knows no bounds. One of my favourite things about you is that you're not mad at me for surprising you at the party. :-)

I hope everyone had a great time - I know I did.

OK, so what's next? Ah, that's right - the Luce gig on Friday... and then it's Xmas! :)