Yes! I Surprised Him!!

Woot Woot!! It's Hubby's 40th birthday and I managed to totally blow him away with his present.

This morning we all woke up and did the pressie-unwrapping thing in our bed - it's a family tradition, all birthday's start off in our bed for the unwrapping of the presents. The kids gave him a hoodie with his football team on it, I gave him a really nice watch as the 'something to remember your 40th by' present and then we gave him his main present. It didn't look all that big or special. But it was.

I gave him a gift bag, you know the kind that you'd put a bottle of wine in? And on the little tag I'd written, "So... pretend this is a bucket." He looked a little puzzled but nodded. I reached into the bag and pulled out a rolled up sheet of paper that was tied with a ribbon and handed that to him. It read... "Hubby's Bucket List" and then had a numbered list down the page that looked like this:

1. blah

2. blah

3. blah

all the way down to 25.

But at number 11 I'd written "BATHURST"

 (For the non-Aussies - 'Bathurst' is the Bathurst 1000, a 1000 kilometre (620 miles) race held annually at Mount Panorama Circuit in Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia. Bathurst the town is over 3000km's away from us. Or to put it another way, it's a four hour plane ride followed by a drive of about three or so hours. Bathurts the race is known among fans and broadcasters as "The Great Race", and is widely regarded as the pinnacle of Australian motorsport. Since 2000, the race has been run exclusively for V8 Supercars and is now a round of the V8 Supercar Championship Series. This year is the 50th Anniversary and it's kind of a big deal, if you're into that kind of thing - which I'm not but the boys in my family are.)

Again with the puzzled look but there was also a dawning comprehension, followed quickly by a 'nah, she wouldn't have done that' kind of look.

And I handed him the next piece of paper. This one had all the details for a trip I'd booked for him. Or more specifically for him and four of his mates. It told him that the flights were booked, the accommodation was sorted, the hire car was arranged and they were all off on the most awesome boys weekend. Sure, he has to wait till October for the race to be on but he's off to Bathurst. And it was at this point that his grin got bigger and bigger and bigger. And I may have been declared the best wife in the whole entire world. Ever.

And then we handed him some little toy cars, with his mates names written on them. And if I thought he'd looked pleased before, well I didn't know what pleased looked like!

So we celebrated his birthday by going out for breakfast with kids, picked up a few things at the grocery store, hung out at home and had the parents round for birthday dinner. I made Chilli Mussels for entree, Caramelised Chicken Cutlets with a garden salad for mains and finished it off with Mini Passionfruit Cheesecakes for dessert. And what's a birthday without a cake? I made this yummy chocolate cake and it fit the bill very nicely. Though, as you'll see a little further down, it was a decidedly wonky cake.

So a fab birthday present that was a complete surprise and shocked the heck out of him, a nice day with the family and a yummy birthday dinner. What more could a Hubby want? 

Here are some pics of the day.