Happy Birthday

This week my wife celebrated a milestone birthday. Typically we don't make a big deal about her birthday and mine. We'll usually have a cake and a present, but in a lot of ways its for the kids.

I decide that this time I would shake things up a bit. She had mentioned that she wanted a sports watch, and actually dropped the name of Tag Heuer. Normally I don't buy jewelry for Tim because she already has some very nice pieces, but since she mentioned it, I decided to go ahead. I knew that she was going to the U.S., so I ordered the watch on Amazon and had it delivered to our house there. After I ordered it, but before she left, she told me that maybe she didn't want the watch. "Too late", I thought.

My sister-in-law Heather was kind enough to wrap it, and Tim got the watch on Valentine's day. Of course Tim then thought it was too expensive and thought about returning it. Fortunately, Heather talked to her about it, and she decided to keep it. Tim later asked me if I would have been mad at her if she had returned it. If she had exchanged it for another watch of comparable value, then I would probably have been a bit disappointed, but probably okay with it. If she had just returned it, I would not have been happy.

She told me in direct terms that since the watch was so expensive, I shouldn't get her anything else for her birthday. The problem with that was that I had already arranged a surprise three day trip to the ancient ruins of Sukhothai, Thailand. Fortunately, I knew that the gift of travel was one that she would not get upset about, and since it was already paid for, couldn't return.

I planned the trip for February 22nd through the 24th. My one challenge with booking a surprise trip was that I couldn't control Tim's schedule. I wanted to wait to tell her until a day or so before the trip, but I was concerned that she might schedule something during the time of our trip. To deal with this, I solicited the help of her brother Top. At my request, Top told Tim that he needed her to keep her calendar clear for those three days because they had to meet to talk about the business.

My plan worked pretty well. I finally told Tim about the trip on Sunday evening, as we were leaving first thing Tuesday morning, and I wanted to give her some time to pack.

I'll blog about the actual trip in the next entry.