Big Budman Turned 70!

Last night we held a suprise birthday party for my father in honour of his 70th birthday. We made arrangements at Bifteque (the steak house not Biftek, the bar) and invited about 20 friends and family. Boy did we have him fooled. Turned out that I got a card in the mail a while back which entitled me to a free bottle of wine for my birthday (July 26th) which was valid any day during the month. Since I never used it, we used the excuse of it being the last day we can use to get my dad interested in going to the restaurant. My brother Mark and his wife Connie (on the left) even came in from Toronto using the excuse that they came in due to the long weekend that they have in Toronto this weekend. Without him knowing, the others were already there waiting in the basement where all the banquet rooms are located. Once we go there, we weren't sure how we can lure him to go downstairs so my mom told me to go "check on the reservation" in the front. I get there and I'm coming up with a plan to have th ereception call our name and direct us downstairs. Little did I know that while I was coming up with a nice plan, my mom, brother and sister in law decided to just bring him downstairs without even waiting for me to return. So I hear my dad was really suprised but I wasn't actually there to see the look on his face. We had a nice meal and then decided to open the gifts. My dad has a younger brother and two younger sisters. The brother lives here in Montreal with is girlfriend, one sister is in Toronto and the other one is in Conneticut.The sister from Conneticut came up for the weekend with her boyfriend but the one from Toronto couldn't make it. Instead she ended up writing a hilarious poem describing my dad perfectly and instructed me to it read to the others because everyone thinks I'm the comedian in the family. He got a lot of other nice gifts that included some clothes, a gift certificate to The Bay and even a bottle of Armerretto. I ended up buying my dad an 11 piece bar kit which included a stainless steel shaker, a drainer, an ice bucket, corkscrew, etc. By far, the coolest gift was what my Aunt Shirley from Conneticut made up. She went and bought a Scabble board game and glued on the letter to spell out words related to my father, like things he enjoys and people's names invovled in his life. She even threw in a coffee table to place it on. All in all it was a wonderful affair, we all had fun and I'm glad that my dad enjoyed it!