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Debbie celebrated her 40th Birthday yesterday. I had promised not to throw a party for her, so true to my word - I didn't.
Well, not exactly - instead I organised a "This is your life" style surprise presentation.
The celebrations began with her friend Amanda arriving from Penguin. It was great seeing the look on Debbie's face when Amanda knocked on the door late Tuesday afternoon. That was when we gave her the gift from Belle and Max, a pamper session at the Savoy Baths and Day Spa for Wednesday (her birthday).
Later that evening we had Hilary give her an even bigger shock. Hilary had phoned me on Tuesday to find out what we were doing for Deb's birthday, and on the spur of the moment decided to jump on a plane and fly over from Kuala Lumpor (Malaysia). I picked Hilary up from the airport just after midnight, while Amanda tried to keep Debbie up talking. You can imagine the look on Debbie's face when Hilary knocked on the door ;-)
Wednesday the 16th (Deb's Birthday) the three girls headed down to the Savoy for their pamper session.
When the girls got home, we told Deb that we were going to a "swank" restaurant, so she had to get dressed up. I headed off with the children to the venue where we met up with the guests for the evening.
Deb arrived a few minutes later to a room full of people singing "Happy birthday", and then we settled in for the "This is your life" presentation.
We began with a short video from her dad - David, which was a touching tribute, and then we surprised her again when he walked into the room (he had told Deb that due to his illness he wouldn't be seeing her for another few days).
The presentation went very well, again interspersed with more movies from friends and family.
I would sincerely like to thank everyone who participated in the evening, and especially those of you from England who went to the trouble and effort of recording and sending through video tributes for the night. Below is the presentation we gave (although the movies haven't been included due to the size of the whole thing). You can imagine the "cast of thousands" that worked behind the scenes to contribute, and I hope I haven't left anyone off the list...
The Cast:
David,
Paul,
"The Morbaine Crew",
Sue,
Mark, Jane and Ellie,
Kath and Henry,
Liz and Maria,
Ryan and Bec,
Anna and Lindsay,
Kim, Jacob and Nathaniel,
Mik and Pet,
Sarah and Raoul,
Aunty Robyn
And a special thanks to Glenn, Leslie, Loz, Maria, Liz, Adrian and Lisa, Jane and Mark for supplying so many of the great "early years" photo's that we didn't have access to.
It was hard towards the end to summarise Deb's 8 years in Australia, and with over 14,000 digital photo's to choose from the presentation initially ran over 100 pages long. It was hard to "cull" so much stuff from the presentation, but when I ran through it initially it would have taken over an hour just to look at the "special" photo's I had selected. There were so many great moments that weren't included in the final thing, and it was really difficult getting rid of many of the slides, but in the end I limited the "Australia" section to just a few high-lights.
Happy Birthday Deb - "This is Your Life"!
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