Jeff's Surprise Party -- April 15, 2006

For Jeff's 35th birthday, I threw him a surprise party at Yankee Stadium one month before his real birthday. For a lifelong Yankee fan, it was something I just had to do. But the best surprise wasn't the party, it was that Jeff's best friend (and our best man) Alex flew in all the way from Geneva to be there. Alex is also a lifelong Yankee fan, so Jeff may not have been the only motivation for him...

In any event, we had 31 people of all ages (Ian being the youngest) show up at Yankee Stadium on April 15. It was a beautiful day -- it felt like summer and we were in short sleeves. Francis picked up Jeff in the morning using the excuse that he had a friend at the NYPD who used to work in the Bronx and could get them into the stadium. I purposely asked the parking attendant if I could park towards the back so Jeff wouldn't see my car. As luck would have it, the attendant also told Francis to park toward the back, basically next to my car. Jeff recognized the plates, so the jig was pretty much up. They were a little late and the tour of the stadium had to start on time so we went without them. Luckily, we only got as far as the first stop, Monument Park, when we were told that they were on their way. So we all hid behind the monuments to all of the Yankee greats and when Jeff got there, we jumped out and yelled, "Surprise!" Jeff wasn't too surprised by the fact that I was there, but he had no idea who else would be there and I'm pretty sure he didn't expect such a big crowd. Alex walked around and came up behind Jeff and tapped him on the shoulder. The look on Jeff's face was priceless! THAT was the real surprise. This was Ian's expression when he saw Alex for the first time in front of the stadium. He hadn't napped very well, so he was a bit grumpy.

Then we toured the rest of Yankee Stadium, which was pretty cool. Ian's favorite part was the press box. He sat on the tabletop and just pointed and babbled at the field, the birds, everything, and smiled. We got to walk around the edge of the field, sit in the dugout, go in the clubhouse and learn about the history of the stadium and the Yankees. Thomas and Alexander had fun pushing Ian in his stroller and just the empty stroller around the stadium for us. The timing was pretty good since the announced a few weeks ago that they will be tearing down the stadium and building a new one. Not much more time to see the old stadium!

At the end of the tour, we went to our own private suite, which was the Joe DiMaggio suite, where we had a great view of the field and we had pizza and a Yankee birthday cake. Our friends Sunhee and Laird flew in from Chicago (it was Laird's actual 40th birthday, so we thank him for sharing his day with us) with their kids, Julian and Claire. Julian was quite impressed by it all and declared a couple of times, "This is a GREAT party!" Laird told us not to give too much credit to Julian's rave review as the other highlight of his weekend was when his aunt let him put quarters in the parking meter. But hey, rave reviews from a four year-old are unadulterated and completely objective, so I will go out on a limb and say that the party was a success!
Ian had some pizza (more like pizza crust), swigged some water and ate birthday cake. The cake was pretty good (I say that because it had chocolate pudding as the filling). Ian is really into feeding himself with utensils these days. He managed to run his fork through his hair and get icing in it.

Ian was crawling around in between the seats, having a great time with the other kids. Hopefully, he will get to see a game at this stadium before it's torn down!

In case you were wondering, Ian has a Yankee cap, but he's outgrown all of his Yankee outfits and I couldn't find any toddler sized shirts at the store. It's hard for him to keep a baseball cap on his head with all that hair and he doesn't like wearing them. He pulled it off right away when I tried to put it on his head. Oh well. We'll have to find him a Yankee t-shirt.

I'm sure Jeff will want me to post more photos of the stadium, so I may add some more later, but enjoy these for now! Go Yankees!