I can finally write about this publicly!
Last night we had a surprise 40th Anniversary Dinner for Dad and Sherri, at Dirty Dave's Pizza Parlor in Olympia.
Let's get this part out of the way—roll call!
1. Dad
2. Sherri
3. Angel
4. Gianni
5. Britni
6. Carlos (Britni's fiance)
7. Gina
8. Beth
9. Nikki
10. TJ
11. Cheyanna
12. Elijah
13. Matthew
It's tempting to say this number was disappointingly low—Shobhit had to work, so I dropped him off at Total Wine and then drove down early to hang out with Gina and Beth at their house out in Tumwater. It was while I was there that Gina and Beth told me most of the grandkids had canceled: Brandi had to work until 6:00, and her eldest, the oldest of my grandnieces and grandnephews, Jaycee, is fourteen now and has no interest in things like this. (Her little brother Gianni, who happened to be staying with Angel, his grandmother, came with Angel, and when he was asked, "Where's your sister?" he replied with a very direct, "She didn't want to come.") David didn't make it. I was no surprise that Alex didn't come. I already knew to assume Becca wouldn't come.
So here is the irony: Nikki and TJ live in Spokane. They live 320 miles away, orders of magnitude farther away than any of the grandkids living in Western Washington, and yet, not only did they come, but they
made a day trip of it—not a single one of the rest of us would have done that. I was only even able to extend the invitation to Christopher (in Wallace, Idaho) and Nikki (in Spokane) and Becca (in Lake Stevens) last weekend, and Nikki confirmed via text in less than an hour that they would come. I was kind of stunned. I had initially apologized for having to invite them on only a week's notice and said I totally understood if they couldn't make it (Christopher confirmed he had to work; Becca never responded), so I was surprised and thrilled when Nikki said they would be.
I didn't even learn until last night that they hadn't even bothered to look for a hotel. I really assumed they would stay the night somewhere. But, TJ said he had a football game to play in this morning so they had to get back. The dinner reservation ended at 6:30 and they just headed straight back home. They drove at least five hours both ways, for a two-hour event. Those people are cray-cray, but I sure appreciated it.
And damn, did Dad and Sherri too. It made
such a huge difference that Nikki and TJ came, particularly with the kids, who Dad and Sherri very rarely get to see. So, their presence was a key thing that made last night's dinner special in a number of ways. It was disappointing how many of my Western Washington nieces and nephews couldn't make it, but they all live close enough that Dad and Sherri see them all pretty regularly anyway. It wouldn't have been as big a surprise if they had made it anyway. (The one possible exception to this would have been David and Jackie with their two little kids, as they live down in Vancouver, WA.)
So, Nikki's family of four kind of made all the difference. Had they not made it, there would have been only 9 people who made it to the dinner, a pretty disappointingly small number. But, Nikki's family being there upped that number by a good 44%. And far more significantly, it was a huge, delightful surprise to Dad and Sherri, that wouldn't have been as big a delight without them even if the rest of the Western Washington family had actually made it.
I actually first texted Gina and Beth sometime last fall, suggesting we do something special for Dad and Sherri's anniversary, since it was going to be their 40th. Here's another bit of irony: apparently Dad and Sherri hadn't even been thinking about the number. They didn't even realize it was a milestone—even though, five years ago, we all had a celebration dinner for their 35th anniversary
at exactly the same place.
Here's something I did not realize last night: the dinner in 2019
was hardly that much bigger—14 people were at that one, only one more than we had last night. Nikki's family wasn't there that time, but Jennifer, Eric and Ian caeme (Jennifer and Eric were still together then). I did invite Jennifer and Matthew to last night's dinner. and I'm certain Dad and Sherri would have loved to have seen them there, but they were out of town this weekend. Ricky, Rachael and Raiden were there in 2019 but not this year; Aunt Raenae also came in 2019 but has since passed away. It looks like Brandi's family did not make it either time, although Angel did bring Gianni this time.
And I nearly forgot to mention: Britni came with her new-ish boyfriend, Carlos, who she has spent a fair amount of time
not bringing around to family functions, but she did last night, so I got to
meet him for the first time last night. I went to hang out at Dad and Sherri's house for about an hour after the dinner, and Sherri received a text from Britni while I was there, just of her hand with a ring on it. Evidently they're engaged. She posted the photos to Facebook this afternoon. So, I guess soon Britni will be on marriage #3. She is 32 years old. But I'm not judging!
Anyway, back to the planning for this year. I followed up with Gina and Beth a few weeks ago, and Beth found a way to find out whether Dad and Sherri would be in town on their anniversary—which is actually next weekend. Turns out, they were indeed going out of town, so we decided on this weekend to plan a surprise dinner. This worked very well for the surprise aspect, because a week early, they had no reason whatsoever to suspect. They thought they were just going out for dinner at Dirty Dave's with Gina and Beth.
It was a slight challenge getting confirmation from Gina and Beth that we were good to go with the plan. They asked me to text certain people about it, but it wasn't until last weekend that I finally got confirmation that we had a time and place, hence the one-week short notice I had to give people. Once it
was settled, though, Gina in particular got some shit done: she got a banner with Dad and Sherri's photo on it printed up, to hang on the wall in the room we had reserved at the restaurant. She also ordered a pretty spectacular photo collage, but unfortunately that one she was unable to order early enough and in the end its delivery date was . . . tomorrow. I also settled my share of a Best Western hotels gift certificate while I was at Gina and Beth's house before the dinner yesterday.
In the end, it all worked out very well, although Dad and Sherri kind of lamented that they both didn't even bother to bring their phones, preventing them from being able to take any photos. Nikki was the one who piped in that I would basically take care of that, and
she was right: I got a photo album of 37 shots out of it, 8 of them video clips.
It was great to get to see Nikki and her family, and Sherri extended an invitation for them to come back for Easter—which they said they would plan to do! (This again will be nice, as Gina and Beth are going to be out of town that weekend so not only will be unable to host the family Easter this year, but won't even be coming.) When we were all saying goodbye at 6:30, I suddenly realized I had another thing to get Nikki excited about coming for Easter: I tapped her shoulder and said, "Not only that Nikki, but Barbara will be there!" Barbara did a lot of stuff with us on weekends I had Nikki visit when she was a teenager, and Nikki loved her—Nikki was so genuinely excited by this news, it was really sweet.
Gina also got a cake from Costco, and at her suggestion, I bought to-go containers to bring cake home in, as she knew there would not be enough people to eat the whole thing. I brought four containers but the cake was too deep for two of them; I put pretty large slices I cut out into the other two, larger lidded containers I had.
I went to hang out at Dad and Sherri's to kill about an hour and then time my drive back so I'd get back into Seattle just in time to pick up Shobhit when he got off work. Dad and Sherri half-jokingly acted offended that I had only come over to kill time, so I said, "Hey I could have killed time anywhere, but I came here!"
I wound up chatting with Gabriel on the phone while I drove between Tacoma and Seattle, about
Dune Part Two, so that helped the second half of the drive go by faster. I got off the phone pretty abruptly when Shobhit got out of work, because I hadn't seen him all day and he'd want to hear about the dinner and I didn't want to be driving home with him while talking on the phone with someone else. Gabriel and I were basically able t finish our conversation, chatting for another haf hour, this afternoon anyway.
Gina and Beth gave me credit for last night being my idea, but although I did contribute to the gift certificate, it was Beth, and mostly Gina, who actually made it happen. They're the ones actually down there in Olympia, after all, and in the end I'd say it was a definitive success. Dad and Sherri seemed to be elated, especially to get to see family they only see once every couple of years at best.
[posted 9:03 pm]
