Surprise, Poppa!

Martha and I pulled off the mac-daddy (pun-intended) of surprises for my dad's 60th birthday. He was originally told he would spend part of the weekend in DC and the remainder in Raleigh. But instead of driving down to NC on Friday night, Martha and her boyfriend Drew kidnapped him and took him to the condo on Smith Mountain Lake. Here are the weary but excited travelers arriving around 2:30AM.....

We told my dad that was the extent of the surprise and that we would spend the rest of the time enjoying the lake. We went out on the Boston Whaler on Saturday and cruised around in the crisp almost-fall weather.
As you can see, Martha always enjoys being out on the boat. She is also sporting the ever-so-stylish Norfolk & Western Members-Only style jacket (see above for my dad's identical one and my version in white).

We even managed to squeeze in some kayaking and floating/tubing. Martha and Drew had kayak races and I made Martha tug me around anywhere I wanted to go. We formed a Martha-powered kayak train to get back to the dock.

Then we implemented Stage Two of the surprise weekend: a trip in to Roanoke for dinner. Of course, what trip to Roanoke would be complete without a stop at Miniature Graceland, a scale model of Graceland carefully constructed in someone's front yard. Complete with a golden statute of Elvis, seen below with my dad.

Here we are posing between Elvis' main house and the chapel. And I promise, it just keeps going! I'm sure you can understand now why trips to Miniature Graceland were a very formative part of my childhood.

Then we walked around downtown Roanoke with my dad, pretending to look in store windows and to try and decide which restaurant to eat at. We finally "decided" on a local sushi place (with other non-fish options for true carnivores like myself). Unbeknownst to my dad, we had gotten in touch with a lot of his closest, dearest friends and invited them all to a dinner in his honor. My dad was so blown away and we all spent the next few (four!) hours laughing, drinking, eating, looking at old pictures and telling funny stories about my dad. Here's a picture of everyone laughing once my dad realized what was going on....

This is my dad and his good friend Adam.

Martha was able to capture some of the stories on her new nifty video recorder and we are 100% sure they will serve as great blackmail material in the future. Martha and my dad are listening to Jay, my dad's college roommate and fraternity brother, as he tells some crazy story about the shenanigans they got into when they were younger.

It was so great that my cousin Richard and his wife Browning were able to join us for the dinner. They already had a social commitment that evening but were able to sneak away to be with us, which meant so much to my dad.

Here's a picture of me, Martha and Livy (Adam's wife). Livy was so thoughtful and took pictures for us as the evening unfolded. She's so sweet!

And here's another shot me, my dad, Jay, Martha and Bill at the end of a really wonderful evening. My dad insists if he knew how great turning 60 would be, he would have done it much earlier! :-)