Surprise! or The Bacon-a-tor!

Today has been great. This morning our super friends/volunteers came out to walk our dogs and while they were walking them and taking them swimming Eileen and Lisa came up to The Cabin to tell me that today the volunteers were giving Tony an early surprise birthday party, at Koyote ranch.

When Tony, Brandon and I walked inside Koyote, all of the volunteers were sitting at a long table, filled with gifts and cards and a gigantic cake, and they yelled, "Happy Birthday, Tony!" Talk about surprised, Tony was speechless, so I had to go order our lunch. "We'll have two Chef Salads, one with no onions and two medium teas, please."

When I sat down at our table, Tony started opening up his cool gifts and then he passed around the hilarious birthday cards, so everyone could laugh more than we usually do. "Tony," Ellen teased. "Pete told us that because of the burn ban is on, we could not light the many candles on your birthday cake." Here's a picture that Jim, "The Mineral Man" took and sent to me.

While we were eating lunch with our friends, Eileen or maybe it was Lisa showed June and Ellen a picture that they had snapped of Ellen's expression, when June, Pete and Art, the chef, played a trick on her. Then Ellen told us, "Since yesterday, I have been craving one of Art's delicious BLTs and when Art brought June's and my BLT's out, he handed June her basket and then he handed me my basket and said, "Sorry Ellen, we ran out of bacon."

"My BLT," June said. "Was stacked high with bacon and Ellen's sandwich only had one thin strip of bacon on it and when I showed mine to her, Eileen or Lisa took the picture of her sister's disappointed expression." 

"Then, thank goodness," Ellen said. "Art walked up and handed me a plate full of bacon for me. And it was good that he did, because I was about to lose it." Everyone burst out laughing and then we all started teasing Ellen relentlessly.

"Ellen is the Bacon-a-tor!" "Well, we all know what to give Ellen for her next birthday—packages of bacon!" "This year her Christmas stocking will be stuffed with bacon." "Bacon is a girl's best friend," etc. Then it was time to light the candles on Tony's gigantic birthday cake. Brandon snapped this picture of Tony's temporary fire hazard.

Before T. blew out the tall candles, on his tall, smoldering cake, we all sang Happy Birthday to him. Then we became very quiet, as we gobbled up his delicious chocolate birthday cake. We love our volunteer friends for doing this for Tony and we cannot thank them enough. And that is about it for tonight, because I need to go walk four miles with Leslie, so I can burn off the chocolate calories.

Y'all have a great evening!