Forty and Fortunate.

So my Birthday was pretty fucking great.

The Wife and I headed down to Victoria on Saturday, and I was all ready for a great dinner out with the Twin and the Sidekick to celebrate, and then a day of visiting and just hanging out.

Only part of it worked out that way.

Once we got seated and started with dinner, (I even enjoyed the Sidekick's recommended beer choice that evening.) the waitress had a surprise for us. When she filled our water glasses, she dropped off a small envelope between my brother and I.

My first thought was that she was pretty brazen - trying to give me her number right in front of my wife - but I was soon proved wrong as we flipped over the envelope to see a big "#1" on it. We opened it, and out poured some letters that we unscrambled into the word "What".

(I only had one beer at that point, so unscrambling a 4-letter word was easy.)

When the waitress would check back on us, she would randomly drop of another envelope, each one containing a different word we had to unscramble.

Envelope 2: "Happens"
Envelope 3: "In"
Envelope 4: "Vegas..."

By the third envelope, you figure we would have had it. By the fouth it should have been a certinty.

Nope. We were fucking clueless.

These are the faces of two VERY confused individuals.

I had guessed that the Wives were taking us to a local casino after dinner. (Vegas, gambling, it all makes sense, right?) the Twin had guessed that it was some sort of trick question - if what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, then it must be some sort of secret code or something.

What can I say? We'd been drinking and aren't too bright.

After a moment, I looked at my Wife and said "....are we going to Vegas?" To which her and my Sister-in-Law said "Hell yes!"

The Twin and I had 2 questions:

• "How the hell can we afford this?"
• "When?"

To which the Wives replies were:

• "Don't worry about it."
• "We fly out in less than 10 hours."

They told us that they had someone watching our kids for four days, we were booked to fly out at 9am, and that it was already pre-planned. My SiL even had the Twin's work give him fake hours so that he didn't know he had the time off. My Wife had skillfully (and secretly) packed everything we needed, including extra clothes and my passport, right under my nose.

(In fact, I found out during the course of the weekend that everyone in my family, the Wife's family, the Sidekick,  everyone at work, and a few other select friends were in on keeping it a secret from me. Some of them had been hiding it from me for six months. Those lying bastards - I love every one of them.)

We were going to Vegas.

I was fucking stoked.

We finished dinner that night, and I commiserated with the Sidekick that it was too bad that he had to work, as he had always wanted to go to Vegas, and it would have been a blast to have him along. Unfortunately the demands of his job were keeping him home this weekend. I told him I'd text him in the morning before we got on the plane and let him know how the trip was going throughout.

I didn't sleep a wink that night.

The next morning we headed to the airport to catch a short flight to Vancouver and then onwards to Vegas. As I was standing in the terminal waiting to check in, I was texting the Sidekick, who was asking how busy the terminal was, if there were lots of people, etc.

I sent him a message saying it was surprisingly busy for that time of day, and 10 seconds later I hear a voice right behind me say "It doesn't look that way to me."

I turn around to see the Sidekick, luggage and all.

Turns out my Best Friend was coming along too.

I glanced at the Wife, who just looked at me and said "You didn't think there would be just one surprise, did you?"

I actually kinda did.

So we hopped on the plane, jumped to Vancouver, and 2 and a half hours later looked out onto this:

Paradise.

...and it was awesome.

How awesome?

This awesome.

There are boobs EVERYWHERE in Vegas.

Later.