Seth’s Surprise Party

I decided to throw Seth a surprise party.  Which is cool right?  Except for a few little problems:

• Seth is actually not that big on social gatherings so he’d either love it or want to leave!
• Hiding things from my husband for a couple of weeks is harder to do than I originally thought, which is a good thing I guess because lying to him doesn’t come easily.
• When the kids find out it’s basically IMPOSSIBLE to keep it a secret.

The plan was fairly simple.

Simon lured Seth away for an early “boys night” before our “date night”.  The plan was that as soon as they were done I would fetch him from the Patons house and we’d head to our dinner reservation.  The Paton’s opened up their home to us again which was awesome because having it at home would have been extra suspicious.  Everyone arrived at around 7.30pm and we got the fire going for supper.  Seth and Simon were running late and so I said that I moved the reservation a bit later.  It was all going to plan!

When the guys arrived at the house, the extra guests were hidden around the corner (with their cars parked way out of sight) and Claudette and I were chilling in the lounge having some drinks.  We chatted a bit about what they did but then I got up to grab my keys so that we could go.  “We were going to be super late for our reservation.”

However, Seth had noticed the braai and combined with Claudette looking fabulous and the fact that I can never not do something for a birthday, he knew something was up.  Well all of that and the fact that Riya had loudly asked, “Mom, didn’t you need to buy a cake too?”.  Ugh.

BUT despite all of that working against us, it didn’t stop him from reacting like this when we started walking out the door!  (Sorry it’s sideways – I know there’s probably a way to fix that but to be honest with you, I can’t be bothered ;))

SURPRISE! On Friday we had a surprise party for Seth and actually got his reaction on camera. Forgive me, but you’ll have to turn your phone, I can’t figure out how to turn it because I like writing words and not figuring out like, stuff and stuff.

A video posted by Cindy Alfino (@cindyalfino) on Feb 4, 2017 at 10:48am PST

So despite all the stress of the week leading up to the party and all the worrying that I was going to slip up in front of him, we managed to pull it off!  Hooray!

There was no theme, the only thing was that I included all his favourite things – steak, cheesecake and whiskey!  As those of you who have been following along on Twitter know, I had to search the whole of Cape Town for a baked cheese cake that did not cost the Earth (guys how can you even justify a cake at R500?! What the what?!)  Anyway, I found one at Constantia Woolies, it was small but it was perfect.  I topped it with Pomegranate seeds and Chuckles.

We had a fun night surrounded by our favourite people!