Feb 27th is my sister in law Jessica's birthday. This year unbelieveably she is turning 40. She and my brother, her brother - who turned 50 on Feb 14th - and his fiance all went to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic to celebrate. It didn't dawn on me to throw a surprise party until Feb 19th! I was reminded that Jessica not only would be in town for her birthday but it fell during the weekend. I frantically started thinking of places to have the party and remembered my mother's new condo has a very nice club house (plus with her living there we would not have a cost to use it = bonus)...thus the scammin began...I had my mother send a email to jessica with our other friends email address attached and along with mine that said "my neighbor is having a jewelry party at the club house. I will receive credits along with the hostess will receive credit for people just showing. You don't need to buy anything just stay an hour or so..." Jessica was hooked. Thankfully because she was out of town, I was able to arrange everything (we work together and with her out of town it was easy to send out the evite and make calls and what not). Jessica and Brad got back into town on Wednesday Feb 24 - my brother took Feb 25th off - the party we had to have on Friday Feb 26th as mother was committed to another party on Feb 27th. I started calling my brother about 730 am - through out the day - he had turned off his phone so he would not receive any calls from his work. About 4pm that afternoon he was over at Jessica's parents house (they watch my niece Kayla everyday after school and live right next door) While talking to Phyllis he felt that Jessica had not told him the whole story about the jewelry party because Ms. Phyllis was acting weird when talking about the next evening. So what does he do...he calls JESSICA asking her if there is more tomorrow night then she has told him. (this was the fall of the surprise) I finally got a hold of my brother to tell him about the party but the cat was already out of the bag...although Jessica was a super good sport about it all! I had asked my brother to ask his daughter Kayla out for a date night and asked him not to mention anything to her about the party till they were on their way to my mom's. Kayla wanted for their date night to be them staying home playing play station. My brother - thankfully - is not a good liar -so he had to tell Kayla about mommy's surprise party but told her it was a surprise so we couldn't tell mommy. AS SOON as mommy got home from work Kayla says "daddy and I are going on a date night at IHOP and i wouldn't be smiling like this if i were lying" how cute is that??? So as far as a "surprise" this party was a 2. But the smile on Jessica's face all night long - to see all the friends that were able to gather at a very last minute was awesome! 
With my mad dash to get it all together - I forgot candles - never fear this it TEXAS - we just use d'em darn corn chips...it was kind of scary to know that corn chips are flamable - note to self...
With my mad dash to get it all together - I forgot candles - never fear this it TEXAS - we just use d'em darn corn chips...it was kind of scary to know that corn chips are flamable - note to self... 
