55 Shades of Ellzey

Today, or what's left of it, is my dad's birthday! Happy birthday daddy-O..fifty-five years young.

Don't let him tell you differently, I get my sass from him.

Let it be known that my family goes above and beyond the "norm" when it comes to birthdays. Always have, likely always will. And I intend to keep this tradition when I have a family.

Today was/is no exception.

We put the plan in motion last week. Right about the time we started panicking because we still didn't have dad (aka the hardest man to buy things for) anything for his big birthday. I mean, he's AARP eligible now yall!

My mom stumbled on "Straight No Chaser" tickets. For those of you who don't know, they are they best, most amaze balls a Capella group ever. More on this later.

So, naturally we couldn't just give dad the tickets. That would be WAY too easy. Instead, we had to elaborately surprise him in the most complicated way ever. Naturally.

The plan consisted of:

Carol and mom leaving school early.

Driving to get Stephanie.

Me leaving work early to meet the at my apartment.

Driving to downtown NOLA to hopefully run into dad before he left for the day and headed back home.

Giant balloons.

Jumbo scratch off card

Us Ellzey's are not good with two things: time constraints and surprises.

The entire plan hinged on the fact that dad would not leave early or really leave from his office at all. And we had no way of knowing if he was planning on leaving early. See the glitch. This is why we don't do surprises. So it comes to no shock to anyone that my mom called me in a panic thinking that dad was leaving work and everything was ruined. Her panicking induced my panicking. Snowball effect.

Yet, we pulled it off. Dad was bewildered, to say the least, to see us all standing in the lobby of his building--ahead of schedule I might add. 

The last time we visited dad's office--she looks the same.

The idea of a scratch off was great and I was able to get the formula JUST RIGHT, but he ended up picking a different restaurant. Diva. 

Straight No Chaser was probably the most fun I've had on a Tuesday night ever. And I went to a lot of T-shirt Tuesdays in college.

A little bit of comedy, a little bit of old school songs, a little bit of today's hits, and a whole lot of a cappella. We sang along the whole time, got to sit closer that what our tickets said AND got our ticket signed by all of the guys in the group. 

I will likely be raving about this for months. #sorrynotsorry

Do yourself a favor and look them up on YouTube, iTunes, whatever. Just do it. You will be pleasantly surprised!

Dad loved it. And that's all that matters. Hope you had a great day dad--because I said so!