Surprise Kevin!!!!

Since we were going to be back home so close to Kevin's 30th birthday I thought it would great to surprise him with a few of his closest friends and oldest friends (that lived within a 100 mile radius of Des Moines that is).  I contacted everyone a couple weeks before we headed back to the States, but only got the final details figured out days before the event with the help of Ryan, Lindsay, Mike and Sally and our dear friends.

The first ones to show up were Weston and Lynn.  Weston was Kevin's very first friend from the age of just a few months old.  Kevin thought it was just really nice for Weston to show up since he heard we were in town.  So he really didn't have any idea yet what was going on.  

Weston gave Kevin a CD loaded with nothing but "Umm Bop" by Hanson on it.  Apparently it happened to be a song playing on the radio when Weston and Kevin were in a precarious situation with some of their other college buddies and he felt like reminiscing with Kevin.

About 20 minutes later, Todd and Laurie along with daughter Kylie, showed up.  Todd and Kevin  were in ag engineering together and worked on the mini pulling tractor.  I think Laurie and I ended up hanging out a lot together watching the boys work on that crazy machine. Once they showed up Kevin started to think that something weird was going on and started watching for other vehicles he would recognize.

About 10 minutes later my brother and his friend Stephanie showed up.  My brother is so classic.  He brought along a pineapple to contribute to the meal.  Someone made a comment that it takes a real man to bring a pineapple to a BBQ....he is so funny!  This was the first time we got to meet Stephanie and she was a real sweetheart and played with our kids all night.

Brad and Jaye, showed up soon after Casey and that's when Kevin finally started asking what was really going on.   They did such a great job the day before not letting on that this wouldn't be the only time we got to see them this trip home.  It was such a great surprise and I was so happy that everyone got to get together. After some good eats and cake and ice cream we headed down to the yard to play a friendly game of couples croquet until way past dark.  I blew our chance to win by feeling sorry for everyone being so far behind us...big mistake.  Kevin and I ended up taking 3rd place I think...sorry sweetie! 

We all had a blast and it was so good to see everyone.  Thank you again to everyone for helping pull off a great surprise for the hardest person in the world to surprise!!!!