Mom's 50th

I've been putting off blogging about my mom's 50th birthday because we gave her a surprise birthday party last night. Her birthday was last Saturday and we celebrated with a weekend at the beach, but my sister and I also planned a surprise party for her. Here's a little recap of both events...

Our weekend at the beach was wonderful. This is the 2nd year in a row we've been down to the beach for mom's birthday, thanks to my Aunt Kim and Uncle Chuck, who have a beach house in North Myrtle. Since mom's birthday is July 3rd, we get to spend the 4th of July at the beach as well. Matt & I did a shrimp boil (which I will have to share the recipe for later, it was sooo good!) for my family and the Nicholsons to celebrate. Mom thought this was her party, we did gifts and cake and had a lot of laughs like always. We did some family pictures as well, mom always wants new ones for her house.

Anna and I have been talking about surprising mom on her 50th for a while. Growing up she always did surprise parties for us. We invited people from different walks of life to celebrate with us. It was so wonderful to see so many great people, some I've known my whole life. Anna was in charge of getting mom to the party and she was very tough to get there. She through a good fight when Anna insisted she stopped by their church on the way to dinner. Then she was really upset when Anna wanted her to come inside to see some "wedding decorations" that were in the family life center. She finally got her to come inside and she was totally surprised.

Mom would have killed us if we would have done an "over the hill" theme, so we stuck with a luau theme. Mom's best friend Donna loves to decorate, so we let her do her thing and we took care of the other details. We kept things simple with the food. We did BBQ and, of course, cake from the Party House in Kannapolis. If you live in the Charlotte area and ever need a cake, they have the best! We've had Party House cake for every occasion since I was a little girl and yes, they did my wedding cake!

Matt and I are leaving tomorrow after church for the beach for a week. We haven't been on a vacation for a week since our honeymoon. We are looking forward to relaxing, soaking up the sun, seeing some friends at Caswell, and enjoying our favorite place...the beach! I may or not post while we're gone...if not, have a great week and I'll be back after a wonderful and relaxing vacation. :)