Hi All,
Steve had a full day of celebration and surprises. Sarah and I want to thank everyone again for helping us by sending their pictures and stories and keeping this secret from Steve. He was sincerely and completely surprised.
The surprises started early when I caught Steve off guard by saying that since I hadn't been able to think of anything special to do for his birthday that I was going to stay home with him for the day. That got a big 2 thumbs up and a smile. This was shortly followed by Sue calling and singing him Happy Birthday. Michael and Kim also called a little later to sing as well. Steve also received a calendar of Joke's from Sue in the mail. They are from the Prairie Home Companion Pretty Good Jokes. This happens to be one of my son's favorites too so I know we'll get some good laughs sharing them.
Sarah texted him during the morning to wish him Happy Birthday and to say she was sorry she wasn't here (hee hee). In case you didn't know, part of the surprise Sarah and I worked out was her coming to Rochester for his birthday. She and Mike drove in yesterday and surprised Steve by meeting him with balloons as he came off the elevator to go to radiation. I'll let Sarah fill you in on that part and some others.
The radiation team had also helped us with the day of surprises. Steve received a card from the staff and they had put up a Happy Birthday banner over his radiation machine. After radiation we had a meeting with the speech expert to start planning out the next steps of what Steve needs to work on post treatment. I let Steve know that the surprises were going to continue after we got home, but not to expect anything to top having Sarah here.
The next present Steve got was from my son Matthew. He and Steve have a running joke going back and forth about chicken. A few years ago, Steve decided we needed a deep fryer - we never got much use out of it until Matthew discovered that you can make really good chicken fingers in it. Because of that Steve has had numerous opportunities to tease Matthew about the frequency of his deep frying, so Matthew and I decided that the birthday payback would be a gift of a rubber chicken. It's not just just a basic rubber chicken - it's a screaming rubber chicken! We all had a good laugh when Steve tested it out.
Steve had a few presents from me. His favorite is a new cycling jersey. It's a Lance Armstrong - Live Strong jersey. I let him know that I got a matching one for myself so that we can look really cool this summer biking on the canal together. Sarah and Mike are going to take a picture of us modeling them today to send in a future update. [Here is a picture of the jerseys on first outside ride in June of 2011.]
Sarah used the pictures that you sent for either a YouTube video or 2 collage picture frames. So rest assured if you don't see yours in the video, they are part of the traditional photo collection. Her first present was playing the video for him. He was blown away. This was followed by the unveiling of the 2 framed photo collections and reading of the 2 Steve stories. Sarah is going to upload the pictures we took to her Face Book page before she leaves so people can see them. I attached my favorite to the this mail.
-Zelma
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[From Sarah]
Hi everyone! Thanks so much for sending the pictures for my dad, he loved looking at them! I ended up making a slideshow of the pictures and putting them to some music, I included a couple birthday songs as well as a rap song that I used to play in high school, which my dad always got a kick out of and would "dance" to whenever he heard it. When he heard the song he did remember it and started doing the same dance I remember from 8 years ago- it was a pretty good laugh for everybody. We have included the link to YouTube below so everyone can see it. If anyone would like me to send them the file directly just e-mail me at [deleted].
Zelma and I were really proud of ourselves that we actually pulled off all the surprises without spilling the beans, we both admitted that we're really bad at keeping secrets. The look on his face when he came off the elevator was priceless and it took him what felt like 30 seconds to figure out what was going on, it's always weird to see people you know out of context- you almost don't even recognize them! Thanks again to everyone for doing such a good job keeping the secrets as well!
-Sarah
