On Thursday, September 25th, Sam turned 30. I got a plan going in my mind a few weeks ago to celebrate.
I took a personal day and didn’t go to work, but didn’t tell Sam I was taking the day off. I got up at 5:45am, like any other work day, showered, got dressed and left for work. I picked up a slew of pictures I had printed at CVS, drove to the Giant Eagle to pick up some ingredients for birthday cookies and cake, hit Target and Staples for some tri-fold board, a card and markers, and hit up a florist for some flowers.
After about two hours of driving around Sam had left for work and I returned home. I got right to work on cookie dough (using our awesome Kitchenaid Mixer). After putting the dough in the fridge, I started on the apples for the cake. I sautéed up some apples on the stove with sugar and butter, hand mixed some dough up (since the Kitchenaid bowl was in the refrigerator) and put the dough in the oven.
Next I got to work on her card. This idea didn’t hit me until I was actually at Target (hence the trip to Staples). I cleaned off the kitchen table and laid the tri-fold board out. I decorated it, threw some pictures on it and added a nice birthday message. Wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it, but thought it was a good idea.
After the cake was set aside to cool I put the cookies in and cleaned the apartment. By this time it was getting close to 11. My original plan was to surprise Sam as they were walking out of the office to head to lunch but that wasn’t going to happen. It was a 30 minute drive out to Sam’s work and cookies hadn’t finished yet and I still needed for finished the glaze of for the Toffee Apple Cake. So the new plan was to surprise Sam where they were for lunch. I finished up the cookies and took the flowers out of the water I had set them in and packed everything up to go surprise Sam.
I drove out to the east side of Cleveland, and I knew Sam was going out to lunch with her co-workers at Olive Garden, so I looked up the closest one to Sam’s work and headed out there. I parked right out in front of Olive Garden and gave Same a call. She didn’t answer, instead sending an auto-text back ‘Can’t talk right now.’ I wasn’t deterred. I sent her a picture of the front of Olive Garden and a text that said “You should at least come out and kiss me since I’m outside right now.”
About ten minutes later I got a “Wait… Are you here?” text back and she came out. I opened up the card and gave a her a big kiss. Ate lunch with her co-workers and hung out at work with her for a bit before coming back home.
It’s her 30th Birthday. She deserved something special. When she got back from work we went out to eat at a Mexican restaurant, came back and caught up on some Doctor Who while eating birthday cake and opening her last present (a gift subscription to LootCrate). That was in addition to some Daniel Closes books, a candy thermometer and one more thing that hasn’t arrived yet… although that might become a Christmas present depending on when it arrives.
Sam was amazingly surprised. The right amount of surprise she says. She not a big surprise person, which made me debate whether showing up with flowers, a giant card and White and Milk Chocolate cookies would be too much or not. But it wasn’t, and I scored boyfriend points with all her coworkers (woo boyfriend points).
