Karen arrived a couple of days ago for the wedding, which allowed her to be here for Garrett’s birthday. Knowing that his favorite meal is her famous stuffed peppers, I had reached out to her prior to her visit to see if she’d be willing to make them, as well as his favorite dessert (and one of the very few he actually eats), a cheesecake. It was during this discussion that we decided to team up and plan a birthday surprise for him. Little did I know that, like my mom and I, Karen and I would definitely make a dangerous duo!

This morning we initiated Operation Distraction, in which phase one was to whisk Garrett away from the house while Karen snuck around baking the cheesecake and beginning prep work for the peppers. Thankfully I had managed to come up with the excuse of needing a deep baking dish for “the roasted chicken and vegetables” I was going to make for his “birthday dinner,” but the truth was that I actually needed this dish for the stuffed peppers, of course. Let the white lies begin! While Garrett and I were driving all over town looking for this specific dish, Karen was back at the house making the cheesecake.

Now, I should also mention that just yesterday, our brand new oven arrived. It is Wi-Fi enabled, so when the oven is preheating, I get a notification on my phone through an app. When it is turned off, I also get a notification. Originally Garrett had activated the app on his phone so we could test it, but when I installed and activated it on my phone, for some reason it kicked him off. While at the time we were confused as to why only one could be activated at a time, this would prove to be favorable later on…

I dragged Garrett from store to store, all while maintaining communication with home base (aka Karen) to keep apprised of the status of her operation assignment. The entire time we were wandering aisles, I kept getting notifications on my phone that the oven was preheating, done preheating, and canceled, then the cycle repeated. I was confused at why it was going through all of these stages multiple times as she was only making a cheesecake at the moment, but instead of questioning it I was just immensely thankful that my installing of the app had kicked Garrett off of his! Had it not kicked him off, he would have been getting these notifications the whole time and then I would have had to come up with some story to explain why his mom was playing with the oven! Sometimes technological failures end up being favors in annoying disguises.

Eventually we located the dish, conveniently the last one in stock in Walmart, and began our trip back and I quickly texted Karen to inform her that we needed to initiate phase two of Operation Distraction. At this point Garrett finally began to question why I was texting so much. I quickly explained “I keep getting text messages asking me about various plans and details for arrivals and the wedding.” It wasn’t exactly a lie, I had been getting those messages all day. It just wasn’t the truth about the message at that moment. He bought it though! Karen said that she was done with the cheesecake, but it needed to cool so she would store it in the microwave to hide it. When we got back, we told him to go relax in the living room since it was his day, and we’d get dinner started. He went upstairs briefly, so Karen and I grabbed the cheesecake and rushed it out to the garage to try and hide it in the other fridge, but with as many guests as we were hosting it was a challenge to find room for it. That’s when Garrett appeared at the doorway and Karen quickly ducked back behind the teardrop trailer! He started to come into the garage questioning our peculiar behavior, so I grabbed the first thing I could find and thrust it at him. “Here, can you see if you can find room for this in the inside fridge? We’re trying to make room out here.” He was confused but went with it, and we managed to get the cheesecake in secretly and safely. That was a close one! Deceiving is hard…

Karen got started on prepping the stuffed peppers in the corner while I was in the middle of the kitchen cutting up the vegetables for the roasted chicken we are actually going to have in two days when all of our guests arrive. Good cover, if I do say so myself! It looks like I’m preparing the meal we lied about while actually preparing everything for dinner in a couple of days! At one point he decided he wanted to heat up the leftover corned beef hash from breakfast. Karen had been so focused on the peppers that she forgot we had already moved the cheesecake from the microwave so she quickly blocked him from his snack. “No, you can’t eat that! I have something I want to make with that in the morning!” They went back and forth about it for a couple of seconds before she remembered the cake was actually in the fridge and told him she was joking and he could eat it. He was so confused! We shooed him back to the living room and finally got the peppers into the oven. Phase two complete, on to phase three.

Eventually we heard the question that we had been waiting for: “Why does it smell like sauce?” “Oh, it’s probably just the mix of dinner and that candle.” I can’t believe he bought that excuse. I guess he’s just not used to his mom and me conspiring together! Shortly after my family arrived, which definitely took him by surprise. I’m really not sure how we managed to pull this one off, but we did! Dinner was absolutely delicious, as usual, and we had a great time recounting our adventures of deceit to him, realization finally spreading across his face as our behavior finally began to make sense to him. With our plates empty the topic of dessert was breached. “Do we have cheesecake?” Garrett inquired. “DId you see me make a cheesecake, Garrett? I think you would have noticed if I had made a cheesecake.” I think Karen was enjoying this game even more than me, and that’s saying a lot! “If you didn’t notice a cheesecake being made from scratch, we’d be a bit concerned and have questions…” Score, my mom joined in on Operation Distraction, the victory was ours! As he was accepting the un-truth that there was no cheesecake for him on this day, I rounded the corner holding one in my hands and we all shared a great laugh. I tell you what though, I’ve never had such a delicious gluten free cheesecake! Definitely going to have to snag a copy of that recipe…

With the success of Operation Distraction under our belts and our tummies nice and full from our savory meal, my parents parted ways and Karen and I enjoyed teasing the gullible Garrett for a couple more hours. What a wonderful way to end a wonderful night!