The Weimer Chronicles: Keith's surprise birthday dinner

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Keith's surprise birthday dinner

Last Saturday night, a bunch of our friends and family got together to celebrate Keith's 40th birthday. It was a surprise dinner party that I had been planning for some time.

I wanted to do something special for his birthday this year since he turned the Big 4-0! We had talked back in the summer about what to do - have a party, go somewhere fun, or do whatever Keith wanted to do. Unfortunately, since I work in a football office, everything in the Fall revolves around football season. And the Cavaliers had a full home football schedule in October (home every Saturday except the last one). Since I have to work home football games, it seemed too complicated to try to plan a party or go away for the weekend. So....Keith thought that we weren't really doing anything fun for his big day (other than going to my parents house on Sunday and my mom making him the dinner of his choice!).

I decided about a month ago that I wanted to plan a surprise dinner party and invite a bunch of people from Keith's life, past and present. I decided to have it at Capital Alehouse in Richmond because that is one of his favorite restaurants, and I knew that they had a big back room that could fit a large dinner party.

I would say that it was a huge success! We had about 20 of Keith's friends (and my sister, brother-in-law, and niece also) to help celebrate his big milestone! He was super surprised when he walked in and saw all of the people who were there in his honor. I personally think he was a bit overwhelmed by the different groups that were represented (friends from his old job at Virginia Union University, friends from his old job at University of Richmond, and some friends from his current job at UVA).

I hope everyone in attendance had a great time because I know that Keith and I did. We had a wonderful dinner and topped it off with a cake (in the shape of a book) from Keith's favorite Richmond baker, Cakes by Graham. (I was highly disappointed to see that they spelled Keith's name wrong on the cake, as you can see in the picture below. But the cake did taste good and it looked cute too.)

Thank you to everyone who came to the party. Also, a big thank you to my sister, Karen and my parents, who helped get the cake from the bakery to the restaurant. Also, Karen took many of the photos that night so that was a huge help.