Surprise #3

For quite some time, my friend Amy & I have been scheming to kidnap our friend Dee on her 40th birthday and treat her to “Dee Day!” It turned out that the day we planned for the kidnapping was the day Dee’s sweet hubby took a day off work to take her snowshoeing. Thankfully, I discussed our plans with her hubby, we discovered the conflict, and we discreetly made new plans.

We would continue to tell Dee we would scrapbook on Friday, but then after John surprised her with his day off and snowshoeing, he would tell her that we were all planning to scrapbook on Monday. But Monday was actually destined to be “Dee Day!”

I wish I had a picture of Dee when she realized that we were not, in fact, scrapbooking. I picked up Amy and we arrived at Dee’s a little earlier than our normal scrapbook time. She wasn’t home! We figured she must have run to the store for something. As we were backing out of her driveway, sure enough, here she came. Oh yeah, she said she was just getting bread at the store and I should just unload my stuff. She hadn’t yet seen Amy sitting in the passenger seat of my van! Amy & I got out of the van and started walking towards Dee as she got out of her car. When she saw us both, together, and a bit more dressed up than we usually are for scrapbooking, she just started to laugh, dropped her purse on the ground, and said, “We’re not scrapbooking today!” Oh, we laughed!

Dee went to change her clothes, we dressed Katie and helped Dee get stuff together, dropped Katie off at Aunt Sally’s (who so generously agreed to keep Katie for the day) and off we went!

First stop was breakfast at Homestead. We had never been there before, but it was great! Then we had Dee guess what might be next on the agenda and her only hint was, “I hope you shaved your legs!”

OOOOOOHHH! Dee looked horrified at that, but we assured her it would be A-OK. We arrived at 11:00 at a local salon for our pedicures. Now, I, for one, have never, in my life, had a pedicure, so this was a treat for me as well! We each had a comfy chair and a stylist working on our feet, and oh boy, were we pampered!

We got foot soaks, scrubs, massages, hot towel wraps, coffee, and cookies! The best part was the paraffin wax treatment, which I have had a few times (back in my days in MOPS in our previous town), but which Dee has never had! Hot, hot, wax, sticking to our now-soft feet, then wrapped in plastic and towels. Absolutely pleasurable.

Here’s Amy getting hers dipped:

Those are my happy feet after the paraffin wax dip.

Then we got to pick our polish colors!

Very flirty, don’t you think?

Those little foam flip flops are what they gave us to wear after our pedicures. We couldn’t put our socks and shoes on, oh no, not even because it was 20 degrees and blowing outside. We wouldn’t want to smush the polish.

So we wore the foam flip flops to browse around the Best Gift Shop in Western Washington.

And then one of mine broke. So I was sliding my foot around the store. Because if I lifted my foot up the bottom of my flip flop would flop down in a way that flip flops are not supposed to flop.

So, the kind store employee found me a stapler and I stapled the flip flops back together. That lasted until I got back to the van. And then the stapled part ripped.

I ended up wearing Dee’s slip on shoes without socks to our next event. Never mind that her feet are about 8 sizes smaller than mine, (seriously, who know she had such small feet?!?!)! I just stuck my feet in them and shuffled around to the next event, which was…

LUNCH at a local Mexican place with almost all of the gals from our small group at church! It was so fun to watch Dee watch everyone walk in and join us for lunch and we had a great time!

I got up to take a group picture and took about 7 of them. Not a single one turned out. At least, not well enough for me to post them here. Surely one of my friends would never speak to me again depending on which one I chose. Everyone had their eyes closed in at least one picture. There were other photogenic issues as well. You’d think we were all a bunch of tween girls. We could enter those pictures in a bad picture contest for sure. And we’d win.

So, then another Amy got up to take a picture with me in it and fortunately, one of those was sort of usable.

So, sorry other Amy, but there isn’t a picture with you in it that I dare to post!!

Thanks for turning 40, Dee!!