It's a Big Year for Turning 30!

On November 17th, Joe turned 30! I was hoping to plan a surprise birthday party for him; however, he planned and did the exact thing I was hoping to do for him. So, things had to change, and I had to come up with something different and extraordinary, as his surprise for me was great. So I talked to a couple of people and got some ideas and decided to plan on getting Wild tickets. The venture looking into them, though, was a bit difficult, but in the end I was able to get great Club Level seats for the night of November 20th. I was able to get a good rate at the Hilten Garden Inn in St. Paul that we stayed at for the Rascal Flatts concert in Sept. and it being so close to the Xcel Energy Center, I thought it would be a great place to stay again, so we wouldn't have to worry about driving. I booked it without Joe knowning, and kept everything on the downlow. I told Joe he needed to take Nov. 20-22 off from both jobs so we could do something. He was sketchy about the taking the time off, but he did it anyways! Yeah, it was hard for me not to tell him though. I love but hate surprises and I knew he was going to love this adventure.

Anyways, about two weeks before the game, Joe got an email from the Hilton checking to see if he needed anything for his room on the 20th, the room he had no idea that was booked under his name!!! I almost died! I did so well keeping it from him, and this had to happened. So all I could tell him was "It's a surprise, you'll find out when we get there." Fortunately, he took that answer and ran with it, not asking anything more.

On Friday, the 20th, we left Superior and headed south. When we got to the hotel around 3:30 and got up and went to an early dinner. We talked about maybe going for a walk later in the evening then for drinks. Yeah, that's what we were going to do....we headed out around 6pm for our "walk". I got all bundled up, jacket, hat, gloves. Joe looked at me and asked, "why are you putting so much on for a walk?" My response was, "I get cold," and left it at that. As we were out walking, I was looking around at all the people wearing Wild Jerseys and outfits, I started getting worried Joe was going to pick up on what we were going to be doing, but for some reason he didn't say anything.
As we were walking, there was a little park downtown with a soon to be skating park once it was cold enough. Plus there were little Peanuts characters around, so we stopped to take a couple of pictures. During this time, I gave Joe a card that I didn't get give on his birthday. As he was opening it, his eyes kept getting bigger and a huge grin on his face. I asked, "What is it?" and all he could do was smile and say thank you. Here is his picture with his tickets!!

Here's me, playing around the Peanuts characters before the game!

I was so happy he was surprised and exicted!! I'm not the best person at keeping a surprise but this worked out great! Here's Joe at the arena, all smiles!

This was our 2nd professional hockey game we've been to together, and I don't remember all the fights the first time that happened, but within three minutes of starting the game, there was a huge brawl!!! Blood, punching, everything, it was great!! They actually fought for awhile, I was shocked! All Joe said was, "They do that in professional hockey," something that didn't happen the week before at the UMD hockey game. This was much better! Fast pace and exciting! We took a lot of pictures, but here is one picture of the fav player I was instructed to watch for, Clutterbuck. (I think that's how you spell his name, not sure.) We ended the evening with a drink and a walk back to our hotel. A great evening, all in all.

Anyways, on Saturday, we headed west to Alberville to experience the Outlet Malls. We really didn't need anything, but had a great time at the Under Armour, GAP, Eddie Bauer, and many other stores. We also stopped at Dicks in Bloomington to pick up suits to go swimming, then off to the Cheesecake factory for cheesecake dessert later. We also stopped at REI, and got our christmas present from Joe's parents: a bike trailer hitch for the car. Now we just have to have the hitch actually installed on the vehicle! It's a long story. All in all, it was a great, badly needed time away from everything, weekend. And the surprise turned out perfect. Happy Birthday, Joe!