Vegas Baby

I am pretty impressed with my skills if I do say so myself. I wanted to take Andrew to Las Vegas for his birthday but wanted it to be a surprise. He already had it in his head that he wanted to go so I had to throw him off. I tried to get his friends to meet us out there but with jobs, money problems, time off work and babies no one really could go. The only person that was interested was his sister and brother in law. I called Andrews work and made sure it was ok for him to take the time off. I started devising all of the plans for the trip.

I was a little worried with my job but then I had the perfect opportunity come up. I had my doctor in a rock and hard spot. It was Wednesday and he was super tired and there were a couple of people that still needed to be seen at Lehigh. He asked if I would go. I figured that would be the perfect time to mention that I was going to Vegas for a couple of days. He said, “Absolutely no time off during season.” I said, “Fine…..from now on I leave every day at 6:00pm and I am not going to Lehigh tonight.” He begrudgingly said I could go. I even made him sign a document that said, “Marquis has my permission to take off 1/26-1/29. All my ducks were falling right in a row.

At the beginning of the year I broke the bad news to Andrew that we were unable to go away to Vegas for his birthday. He was disappointed but I alluded to the fact that his friend John got tickets to the Zac Brown Band concert that happened to be in town on Friday, January 27. He said, “I knew it…..I just knew John had something up his sleeve. Thanks for telling me. There is this trade show in Orlando that I am now going to try and go to that Wednesday. While I am up there I will kill two birds with one stone and meet with Maria to have her fill out her financial forms.” Ummm……not so fast there. I sent a text to Maria and told her to tell Andrew that she had to work. He was bummed that she “had to work” and decided it wouldn’t be worth to go to Orlando just for the show.

I am not going to lie……it was a full time job being on top of my game. In some ways it was easy because we didn’t see each other much. I worked a lot and it seemed every time I came home Andrew was sleeping. Less opportunity for me to slip up. There was a lot of pressure if you can recall the great slip up of 2011?  That would be the one where I slipped up and told him that we were going to Asheville, NC for our anniversary.  So as the weeks went on I was constantly trying to be one step ahead of him. Andrew should have been a private investigator. I am completely oblivious to my surrounding and he is always on guard. We were talking about the upcoming week and he started talking about that damn Orlando trip again. I thought I squashed that idea. He said, “I would like to go to Orlando on Wednesday night but I am being inducted into Kiwanis on Thursday morning.” Come again??? Geez louise. I didn’t miss a beat and said, “oh that’s cool………how did you get involved in Kiwanis again?” He took my bait and told me one of his old members got him interested. I jotted the name down so I wouldn’t forget and the next morning when he was in the showered I hijacked his phone and called Steve to let him know that Andrew would not be at the meeting this week. Phew…..another potential disaster diverted.

I didn’t know how I was going to surprise him. He is definitely not the type of person where I could pack his bags. I knew I had to tell him right before we left I just didn’t know how. I brainstormed lots of ideas and decided on having a box delivered to his work. He just happened to have a meeting where they were having cake at the end to celebrate the January birthdays. I met one of his coworkers in the parking lot and gave him the package. Inside the package I had three boxes with clues that represented Vegas. The first one was supposed to represent poker chips and it had a bag of potato chips with a notecard that said, “No dip for these chips.”

Second box was supposed to represent playing cards and I put in a bunch of greeting cards and said “Not your average cards.”



The third box was a crab you know to represent a crab table? So I thought this was the most brilliant clue.  I was in the store when the great idea came to me and I was grinning ear to ear. I may have even patted my own back. After I dropped off the box to his work I called my mom and was telling her about the clues. When I came to the crab I said, “You know a crab……for the crab table. Ummmm crab all of a sudden it didn’t sound right. It isn’t called crab is it?” She laughed and laughed and then at that moment I realized I was a true blonde. Well jokes on you……I heard there are lots of all you can eat crab buffet. Needless to say at this point he had no idea who this box was from or what it all meant.

The fourth package was a card that looked like a poker table. When you opened the card the inside said, “here is betting that you have the birthday of your life………..in Vegas…….Pack your bags we leave tomorrow.”

I wish I could have been there when he opened it. He said they brought in this big box and he thought that his officemates were pulling a prank on him. He began opening it in front of everyone and he said he had no idea what it all meant. I even had someone else write out all of the cards so he wouldn’t realize it was from me (she didn’t pick up on the crab either). He didn’t put it all together until he read the card. Go me!!! I kept a secret! Holy moly I did it. The surprise wasn’t completely over. I told him that I decided just because no one else could go didn’t mean that we shouldn’t. He called his sister Liz and she completely played into it. Andrew- “Yeah Marquis just surprised me at work with a package.” Liz- “what....... she is pregnant?” Andrew- “No no a trip to Vegas.” She told him to have a good birthday and the kids would call him over the weekend.

I had 24 more hours to keep a secret. I almost slipped up when he was packing his suit and caught myself saying, "oh you don't need that.........Ryan isn't bringing one." I even changed Liz’s name in my phone to one of the office girls and so we could text throughout the day without Andrew being suspicious. When we got to Vegas we were waiting for our bags and there they were. He was shocked! I felt like there were a lot of people that knew about the trip and not one person spilled the beans. Utterly AMAZING!!!!

And now I officially can cross off my bucket list - throw someone a surprise trip.