{Read Part 1 here}
There was one other event on the same afternoon as Micah’s party — Zianne’s playoff basketball game at 12:00. The plan was for Micah to take Zianne to the game, and we would set up the volleyball net while he was gone. He would come home to find the cousins playing volleyball in the backyard and join in a game while our friends gathered by the front door to surprise him.
There was one problem I needed to avoid. I needed to ensure that Micah, the king of rogue errands, came home directly after the basketball game. He is notorious for going to random places such as Costco or Home Depot or Walmart if he’s left on his own or out with one of our kids, especially on a slow weekend day. He needed to come home directly from the game and start playing in the backyard so he wouldn’t notice our friends driving up for his party.
I devised a plan with his mom and sister. We would send his grandpa to the basketball game. Great-grandpa wanted to see Zianne play, and then Micah would feel obligated to bring him home right afterward. Done and done! But then his grandpa had some health issues before the trip to Arizona. He only had the energy to stay for half of Zianne’s game, so Micah’s mom, sisters, and uncle took him home, leaving Micah alone with Zianne to celebrate a basketball championship… my worst nightmare.
At 2:15, Micah still wasn’t home, much to my dismay, so his sister called him. “Where are you?” she asked.
“Why are you at Walmart?” she questioned, trying to remain indifferent. “We are all playing volleyball and want you to join us.”
Around 2:40 pm, Micah finally strolled into the house with Zianne, carrying TWO ice cream cakes. Little did he know, we had already picked up two ice cream cakes during the basketball game. He thought it would be fun to get a treat to share with the cousins to celebrate Z’s win. To make matters worse, he set the cakes right on the entry table by our front door (where people were supposed to start lining up in the next few minutes) and started adding extra icing that he had purchased. As we watched him paint an orange basketball onto the cake, I grew more and more agitated.
“Can you at least take that into the kitchen?” I asked, trying to get him away from the front door.
“Why does it matter?” he replied. “Can you go get me a knife?”
Kayla and I finally coaxed him into the kitchen by telling him he was making a mess, and that we didn’t want to keep fetching tools that were already in the kitchen.
At this point, I sent a quick text to all the guests, telling them to delay their arrival by ten minutes.
After Micah doled out two entire ice cream cakes to all the hungry cousins in the backyard, he finally joined in a volleyball game, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
Around 3:10, I snuck out to the front porch and greeted our 20 or 30 friends.
“Okay, we are a go.”
The exact plan was to pull Micah out of the volleyball game with his cousins, by telling him that one of our neighbors was at the front door complaining about the cars parked on the street. Since so many of Micah’s relatives had rented vehicles for the weekend, it was a believable tale, even though Micah didn’t know about the ten extra cars that had pulled up to our house for his party. At first, I was going to relay this news, but then I handed to job off to Micah’s cousin, Josh, because I feared I would laugh or mess it up. Instead, I sat in our front room chatting with Micah’s girl cousins and secretly filming from behind when he walked through briskly with Josh, worried about our agitated neighbor. I also had a friend filming on the other side of the door.
When Micah opened the door, there were about 30 people standing on our front walk who yelled “Surprise!” The briefest look of shock went across his face before he threw up his hands and said, “Come on in, guys!”
The rest of the day was a dream. We got started on the volleyball tournament right away, with teams of four playing round-robin style. Someone put on a chill Surfaces playlist and the whole evening had a beachy, surf feel, which is Micah’s favorite. The 40 or so kids at the party gravitated toward the bounce house, and we hardly saw them for the next four hours. I’m pretty sure some of them never even stopped bouncing to eat dinner. The best part is that Micah’s grandparents got to be there — sitting under blankets on our patio and watching all the youthful commotion with smiles and thankful eyes.
About an hour into playing, our catered bbq dinner arrived, featuring Micah’s favorite — brisket. We used Bobby-Q, a Phoenix favorite, and it was delicious. For dessert, we had yet another two ice cream cakes, and we all laughed that Micah delayed his own party with the first two ice cream cakes that afternoon.
The green team dominated the volleyball tournament, and with the sun setting in the sky, we gathered around the fire pit to chat and tell stories.
I was a little nervous to throw Micah a party because he doesn’t traditionally like surprises, but I knew I couldn’t let his 40th birthday pass by without an extra special celebration.
At the end of the night, he said with a big smile, “Today was exactly how I always pictured using our backyard.”
Surprise party mission… accomplished.
