Surprise! Happy Birthday Michael!

On Friday, September 9, Michael turned 29!  Michael loves a good surprise so this year I kept all plans a secret.  I found it incredibly stressful but I think that Michael found it incredibly fun, which makes it alllll worth it. 

Friday morning started with breakfast-in-bed.  This is a long-standing Harper tradition so it wasn't a total shock, but what I made was the surprise.  Swedish Pancakes!  Although this was Michael's favorite breakfast growing up, we have never made it at home so he was totally surprised.  They weren't the prettiest in the world, but they tasted good.

Swedish pancakes, fruit, coffee, juice

Later in the day we met up for lunch at San Francisco's "hottest" new restaurant (#1 on the Eater SF "heat map"), Cotogna.

 We had both been eager to check it out and it did not disappoint.  The pasta dishes were a-mazing.  Definitely want to go back.

After work I rushed home and decorated the house with streamers and balloons.  When Michael got home he had a gift on the coffee table and inside was a Giants t-shirt and 2 tickets to the game that night.  I said, "Surprise!  We're going to the Giants game!"  We're a 5 minute walk to the stadium so we headed over to the game.  As we were walking up to our seats I kept talking to Michael so that he was distracted.  Then, once we were closer, the whole group of friends who met us there jumped up and shouted "Happy Birthday!" as they threw confetti and blew party horns.  That was one of my favorite moments of the night. 

The next surprise of the night came right after the 5th inning.  The Harper family got Michael a "Happy Birthday" scoreboard message WITH a photo!  It was awesome!

Michael seeing the amazing surprise

We celebrated and sang to him over Julie's AMAZING brownies and as we sang the entire section joined in.  All in all, we had such a great time -- thank you to all the friends who came!  And BIG thank you to Dr. and Mrs. Harper who treated the crew to a round of food & drinks!

After the game a group of us headed over to 21st Amendment for some post-game beers.  (Funny enough, 21st Amendment was on the Bar-Crawl agenda for Michael's 28th birthday last year.) 

Cope, Moira, me & Christy at 21st Amendment

Next up was a little bit of a wildcard...we went to a club called "Harlet."  Harlet turned out to be pretty hilarious and really fun as we took over their VIP section and had an amazing dance party. (I'm still not sure why they didn't throw us out.)

Needless to say it was an incredible night celebrating the most incredible man on earth.  :)