Surprise!

As I mentioned before, this past weekend I was in Albuquerque for my friend Edie's surprise 40th birthday party. My friend, Kelly, said it well when she described the weekend as "epic."

Our plan was entitled "Magical Mall Surprise." Seven of Edie's friends, five from Los Angeles, one from Michigan, and me, arrived in Albuquerque...and headed straight for the mall--not to shop, but to hide. We all split up and hid in various spots around the mall. An accomplice in Albuquerque lured Edie to the mall under the pretense of buying her a birthday gift. One by one, Edie stumbled upon each of us for a series of surprises. Oh, and another Albuquerque friend secretly followed Edie the entire time and videotaped the whole thing.

The plan worked perfectly. This is us ready to disperse, giddy with excitement.


And this is everyone afterward with the birthday girl!

After the Magical Mall Surprise™, we drove over to a nice restaurant where another surprise was waiting: a room full of her friends from Albuquerque! This is basically what Edie's face looked like all night:

Then, surprise again...two more LA friends showed up the next day.

So the weekend was an epic fun time.

And it was so good being reunited with these girls!

We planned our trip to make sure that we would be able to go to or old church while we were in town. When we told the pastor's wife how we planned around going to church, she said, "Oh, you are so spiritual." I said, "No, we're just social." Seriously though, it was so great seeing all of our friends at church and the pastor's sermon was amazing as usual. I love that church!

Our friends, the Davidsons, brought us lunch so that we could hang out and eat together after church.
The weekend was just too amazing to recount in all of its glorious details, but some of the other highlights were being able to visit the school where I used to teach, shopping at Trader Joe's for fun snacks without any kids (seriously, how lame is it that that's one of my highlights, but it was amazing), shopping at the cute new shopping center in Albuquerque called Uptown, and hanging out with so many wonderfully fun ladies.

Now we'll just have to wait until Edie turns 50 and do it again! ;-)