The Avengers (Surprise) Initiative

Hubs has known me for nearly one third of his life and been married to me for almost a quarter of his life.

Throughout our years together, I’ve always enjoyed making a big deal over his birthday… not necessarily with big crowds and fanfare, but at least something significant between the two of us.

I had left a few years pass by without planning anything out of the ordinary (of course still celebrate with a special dinner or outing together). But this year I decided I wanted to organise another memorable birthday surprise.

I was cracking my head for ideas when out of the blue, I picked up a remark that made me realise how much hubs was raring to go and see the new Avengers movie.

Our church was planning a big movie screening of the film as an outreach event. I was about to cross that event off our list since I didn’t think we'd want to bother finding a babysitter for Nathan and all. But hubby mentioned casually that maybe he could go watch it himself if I didn’t mind. So that got me thinking.

This was what I did…

I told hubs we could go watch the movie with the church together. Our good friends, Jamie and Edmund, had already offered to babysit so we had that department covered.

Our friends and collaborators: Jamie and Edmund and their little Sophie

Secretly, I had purchased a set of La Premiere luxury cinema tickets at the same screening time as the church’s event. I even enlisted the help of my friend Jamie to buy the tickets to avoid leaving a paper trail with our credit card (yes, I think of everything!)

On D-day, everything proceeded like any normal outing; we got Nathan ready, drove to Jamie and Edmund’s to drop Nathan off for his play date with Sophie and headed to the cinema. I asked hubs to park the car while I quickly rushed in to pick up the La Premiere tickets from the box office.

As we walked toward the cinema entrance, I subtly steered him toward the La Premiere section. At the entrance he stopped and look confusedly at me. I then whipped out the tickets and handed them to him with a big smile and declared “Happy Birthday, honey!”

A big grin appeared on his face as it started to dawn on him what was going on. We went on upstairs to the La Premiere lounge to enjoy our free flow popcorn and drinks.

We had a terrific time and it was really nice having a real one-on-one pak-tor session which we haven’t had since last August. I could tell he was really pleased although he kept remarking how sneaky I was planning this whole thing. Big credit to our friends Jamie and Edmund, couldn’t have done it without them!

Happy birth-month, hon! *muaks*