surprise!, rally driving-best date ever, good times

note: the best part is at the bottom, so don't stop halfway through

This year Brandon turns 30. So to celebrate this monumental event I decided to throw a surprise birthday party for him...two months early.

Here is the invite if you want to view it.

It didn't end up being a surprise for Brandon, here is why...

1. He saw a work mate's e-mail and noticed an evite from me.
2. He read our internet history the one day I forgot to delete the evite url from the history. Saw the evite url and the game was up. At this time he didn't know the date.
3. Friday when he got home from work, Adele spilled the beans.

Before Brandon could say anything after getting home from work on Friday...
Adele: "No, won't say anything!"
Brandon: "huh?"
Adele: "It's a surprise"
Brandon: smiles and winks at me
Me: smirk at him
Jolene: "the only thing we can talk about is that we had a bath"

Right so he knew at this point.

On the way over we decided that Brandon should try to sneak in and come up behind everyone and surprise them. Someone needed to be surprised after all this work, right?

So I dropped him at the corner and then waited a few minutes before I drove up to the house. Brandon meanwhile sneaked through the laundry door and into the living room where everyone was quietly waiting. He walked up behind everyone and quietly asked "is he here yet?" I think everyone was very confused for a few seconds, Brandon and I enjoy being devious every now and again :-)

Party details -

Venue - Alastair and Marg McEwen's house. Our house was going to be way to small for the 36 people.

Food - Wine and cheese tasting, homemade meat pies, sushi, dim sims, and other finger food. Oh, and of course cake...see below.





What we did -

Ate food
All about Brandon quiz
Pass the Parcel
Speech from Josh
Speech from Brandon
Ate, ate, ate, ate, ate
Voting on the best wine and the best cheese

Music -

A great selection from our iTunes library, see below




I know, this post is getting long but keep reading the best is yet to come!

The game pass the parcel is something we do not do in the States. So I decided that since Brandon has missed out for 30 years that we would play it that night. A parcel is made by wrapping a bunch of "gifts" (some were gags) in different layers of paper. The last gift was for the birthday boy. The funny thing is, we had agreed not to get each other anything for our birthdays this year. Well, Brandon bought me an iPhone and I bought him the surprise inside the parcel.

The surprise was a voucher to go rally driving in Werribee. We did the rally driving yesterday (Sat). Brandon got to choose two cars (evo and STI) to drive 12 laps in. An instructor sat in the passenger seat (where the navigator sits during a rally race) and gave him tips on how to improve his time. After all that the instructor takes you on a hot lap around the entire course. Brandon paid an extra $30 so that I could go on a hot lap too. Let me just say it was awesome and I want to do more. Speed is addictive. Brandon and I both agree that this was the best date ever.

For the hot laps Brandon and I were both hoping, hoping that we got the guy who is Australia's drifting champion, Luke, and we did!

We were going 150ks on the straights. My stomach felt like it was on a roller coaster. I told the instructor, Luke, that it was an addictive feeling. He agreed. Luke was threading this car through boulders and around hairpin turns with an ease that is quite amazing. At times I couldn't tell if we had our nose pointing down the line. He knew what he was doing. I lost all sense of direction. I will have Brandon do a write up of his experience.

Here is an album of the party and Saturday's rally driving



Here is a video of Brandon's last few laps. I took the video from my iPhone, sorry about the wind noise. I forgot to cover the mic.