Rolland's 30th Birthday Surprise Party

Well, after a lot of planning and sneaking around, we pulled it off! It started pre-Christmas with the ordering of the invitations. The day they needed to go out, I had the addressed envelopes still wet with ink, the hot glue gun sitting on the kitchen counter from gluing corks, the invites stacked and cut up pieces of ribbon all over the office when Rolland caught me off-guard by coming home from work about three hours early. In a panic, I signaled to Jeanette (his visiting mom) by crossing my eyes and mouthing "help" while simultaneously saying cheerfully, "Rolland's home early! What a nice surprise!" Jeanette keep him occupied with chit-chat while I piled everything into a small box and walk/ran it into the guest room. When he asked me what in the world I was doing with a hot-glue gun, I quickly picked up a broken magnet from the drawer and with a smile said, "Just putting this back together dear." Now for those of you who know me well, telling even the smallest of white lies is not my forte. Rolland later said he thinks after this I'm a better liar than we previously knew.  Ha!  Here are the invites to the party, info was attached to the back with the ribbon: 

The day of his big 3-0, the birthday boy, Chuck, Jeanette and I headed down to El Paseo.  His mom had helped lure him there several days earlier by telling him she'd like to go back to "that little place" where we had taken them a couple years back (The Daily Grill, since out-of-business).  In truth, we wanted to get him to beautiful little Cafe Des Beaux-Arts on El Paseo which has a great patio perfect for surprising him.  So I waited until we were at the point of no return, then got on the iphone and made the phony call to the non-existant Daily Grill.  I broke the news that we'd have to go somewhere else to a now irritated Rolland, who answered under his breath, "Why did this not get planned better before we walked out the door?"  I laughed inside... if only he knew!  We enjoyed a lovely breakfast out on the patio at Cafe Des Beaux-Arts, which Rolland picked after we "happened upon it":

 Since the staff was in on the surprise, they did a great job of turning their usual impeccably quick service into a looooong leisurely meal.  As we were waiting on the check, the Grapeline shuttle bus (see picture below)

pulled up next to the patio on El Paseo, horns-a-blaring, and out ran 10 of our closest friends, hooting and hollering, "Surprise!" and clapping away. The whole restaurant stopped and joined in on a round of "Happy Birthday" to an absolutely stunned Rolland.  Mission accomplished!

Off we went on the bus to the Temecula wine country.  We started at Weins, followed by a nice private lunch at Wilson Creek where they even brought out a little birthday cake.  We ended the day at picturesque Falkner Winery followed by our last stop at laid-back Longshadow Ranch, known for their cool chocolate cowboy boots filled with port. 

I'm so grateful to Davis and Becca from Brightwood Photography for spending all day with our rollicking crowd of aficionados (slash winos). They did a great job of capturing the day.  You can check out all the images under our pictures, but here are some of our favorites from the day: