A birthday surprise

Thursday of this past week (December 20th) was my birthday. My wife and our oldest son, Eric, conspired to surprise me with a voiceover surprise for my birthday and they succeeded wonderfully. We’d made plans to eat at a particular restaurant for dinner with Cinda and our 3 boys driving to meet me there and I would go straight there from work.

Then, during the day, I called Cinda to say that because of a change in plans, would she mind if we met at a different restaurant in a different part of the city? We worked out the details for all of that and I went along my merry way through the rest of my day. What I didn’t know is that my change in the restaurant set off a flurry of behind-the-scenes electronic communication as this change was communicated to the surprise guests.

Later, as I was driving to the second restaurant, I thought about another place we’ve enjoyed eating as a family, so I called Cinda to suggest we switch locations again. Thinking back on it, is can see now that she was just a little too quick to say that she really didn’t want to change restaurants again, but being the somewhat clueless individual that I am, I didn’t really pick up it.

So, we get a table that has a few more places that were needed by the family, which as it turned out was a really good thing because just moments after we were seated in through the door walked my friends Brian Haymond, Kara Edwards-Suchan and Kara’s husband, Chris Suchan. It was such a wonderful surprise that Eric and Cinda cooked up for me. We all had such a delightful time, we ended up spending 3 hours over dinner.

Then right after dinner, one of the restaurant staff was nice enough to take a photo of all of us, using Kara’s camera.

From left to right are Brian Haymond, Chris Suchan, Kara Edwards-Suchan, Eric Souer, David Souer, Bob Souer, Cinda Souer and (sporting his super hero glowing jacket stripes) Brian Souer.