surprise birthday bash.

(yes, i started this post in february, and yes i'm just barely finishing it and yes i'm still going to post it anyway).

well it happened again.
we had another year go by and another birthday to celebrate!
jae's on the 21st, mine on the 22nd.
but this year, jae turned the big 30!!!

he was less than thrilled about that number. but i have a feeling it'll be a good year for him :)
i decided it was a good year to do something a little extra special for him. i've never tried to surprise him for his birthday before, so i wanted to try it! i was so nervous it wouldn't work out - either he'd find out or no one would show up or something. but it actually turned out pretty perfect and i think he really enjoyed his night, which made me super happy too :)

basically, i had one of his besties help me out by spreading the surprise info to all the other friends. i told him specifically who i definitely wanted invited, and then told him to just invite anyone else who i'd forgotten or who he thought jae might enjoy seeing. we did this about a month in advance and then another reminder the week of. i was just so worried people would forget or not show!

after throwing around a few different ideas, we ended up just meeting everyone at the Garage in SLC. yes, it's a bar and we don't drink, but we've heard rave reviews on their food, so it's somewhere we've had on our list to try for a long time. plus it was a good central location for everyone that was coming so it worked out perfect.

all i told him was that we were going out on a special date. his mom came to babysit and we headed to SLC. he tried guessing a few different places of where we might go to dinner, but he failed. just as we were about to pull up to the Garage, he guessed it and i told him yes. he was surprised, but excited.

we walked in and i kind of pulled jae behind me to the back patio (neither of us had ever been so he was kind of confused where i was going, but i just acted like i was checking out the place). we got out back and i pushed him ahead of me to the patio area and everyone was there and said surprise! haha nothing was really actually planned for that part but it turned out great and he was super surprised! yay!! there ended up being around 20 people come and i was so happy. since being  married and then having a baby, jae doesn't get to see or hang out with his guy friends a whole lot, so i really wanted to make this something fun that was all about him and something he would really enjoy doing. it was so fun for me to just kind of hang back and watch him just hang out and talk and catch up with everyone. it was super laid back and casual, which was exactly what i was going for.

and yes, after all that planning and scheming and work behind the scenes, i only took one picture the whole night. i guess that just means it was too fun to worry about pulling out the camera :)

happy 30th my love! you're amazing and handsome as ever and i love you most.

PS...i have to add these in at the bottom since they are birthday-ish related.

these were taken at our Horrocks birthday lunch. gracie with her cousin jack (who's only 9 months older than her but a giant next to her!) and her super fun uncle jaron. aren't they cute? (i realize the picture quality is pretty terrible, dangit)

for our birthdays this year, we went on an IKEA trip and bought ourselves a couple of new dressers as well as a shelf and drawers/storage for gracie's accumulating toys, books, puzzles, etc. happy birthday to us! gracie was getting sick of IKEA (it can be a rough, long trip even for an adult) so this was the only way to help her stay pleasant for the rest of the trip.

my co-workers really went all out :)

and my cute message waiting for me on the bathroom mirror. love mirror messages.