Jesse's Birthday and Hooping Skills

Well, Jesse's been in the world now for 27 years. What an old fart. His birthday passed pretty uneventfully--mostly because all my birthday surprises were discovered or fell through:

• I has called the Bishop of our ward to see if I could surprise Jesse with tickets to general conference. Bishop M told me they haven't been having luck getting tickets and to not get my hopes up.



• So then Neil and I went in on a really great suit that Jesse has had his eye on since September. Neil also bought a tie while we were at Burlington. The next day at church, Jesse leans over to me and asks if we went to Burlington yesterday--he used to stock that tie and he knew exactly where we had been. I caved a little too easily and ruined that surprise.



• The day of Jesse's birthday, I wrapped his gifts and left them on the table (he likes to have things to look forward to). I went to work after making Jesse swear he wouldn't touch them or try to guess what they were. I even put the books I got him in cereal boxes so he wouldn't suspect what they were. That night before we went to dinner and before the gift opening, Neil was saying that we had both chipped in for the suit (as he knew about that gift already), and I blurt out, "But I got you the books!"



• One last surprise to go. Can I pull it off? I stuffed the "27" candles in my purse and we headed to the restaurant. After we had ordered, I excused myself and hid by the restrooms, hoping to flag down our waitress to pass off the candles. Instead, Jesse comes around the corner and sees me pretending to text someone. He's like, "what are you doing?" and I said (oh-so-cooly) "What? oh fine! I have these candles and I was trying to surprise you and now you've ruined it and I'm not even gonna do it!" Sadly, he hadn't even seen the candles in my hands.
  

Oh well. We had a nice dinner and he like the suit. And the books. And the candles. And maybe we'll drive to conference anyway and sit on the grass and listen like we used to do.

And here are some awesome shots from Jesse's church b-ball playoffs last night~