Birthday Parties and Baked Bean Casserole

This last week has been crazy busy for me! Jimmy’s 40^th birthday was last Thursday, and I decided sometime this summer that I wanted to have a surprise birthday party for him, so I’ve spent the better part of the last two weeks sneaking around behind his back with party preparations. My husband is one of those rare individuals who always thinks of other peoples’ needs and wants first, putting others before him, and I wanted to take the opportunity to show him how much I and everyone else appreciates him and his selflessness and hard work. 

The very fact that he would never expect something like a surprise party made it somewhat easy to plan, but putting it all together was not so easy; Jimmy is extremely observant and extremely nosy, so it’s hard to slip anything up on him! In fact, I’ve never had any luck keeping any secrets from him—he has this way of prying things from you, whether you would or not, that even my kids can attest to!—but, praise God, I managed to do it this time!

At first I planned the party for at our house, but this raised a whole host of problems, like food storage, parking for guests, and last but not least--how to get him out of the house for the day so that I could decorate without him knowing what was going on. Finally, I decided to move the party to our church fellowship hall for better secrecy.

It helped that, after I decided to have the party at my church, I realized that the day after the party, Sunday the 8^th, our church would be participating in a joint Christmas program with other churches in our area. So, with the full cooperation of our pastor (my father-in-law 😉) and the rest of our church family, I simply announced in our church bulletin that we would be having a practice at our church the night of the party for our part in the program. Whew! One problem solved—how to get Jimmy to the party without suspecting anything! The beauty of this plan, of course, was that when he pulled up to the party, he wouldn’t even think twice about all the cars in the parking lot; he’d merely assume they were there for the practice.

The first of the month I went on my monthly grocery shopping trip (I write up monthly menus, make a shopping list from that, and buy everything I need for cooking for the month at one time) and also bought the food and other items I needed for the party. Since I also bought Christmas presents at the same time, I was able to pass the extra expense off as just “Christmas buying”.  Jimmy didn’t even question it. I made sure to invite everyone to the party either by phone or personally, so as not to leave a paper trail. The food included several things I could make ahead, which I prepared at home and then took to the church to store in the kitchen. 

This gave me a few hiccups, however, when I realized that Jimmy would most definitely wonder what happened to the 10 lb. bag of potatoes I had turned into potato salad—he notices stuff like that!—and I ended up having to run to the store just to get a replacement bag! Also I realized that I needed to make two birthday cakes, since his birthday was two days before the party, and he would certainly wonder if he didn’t get a cake on his actual birthday, but through it all, I managed to act like everything was absolutely normal, and he still didn’t have a clue. The biggest miracle was that my children, ages 3-7, knew what was going on, and didn’t breathe a word to their father! To my knowledge, that is the first time they, any of them, have ever kept a secret from anyone! Truly, the Lord was on my side!

Then, potential disaster! I had told Jimmy that I would be going to the church Saturday afternoon to finish decorating the sanctuary for Christmas (the truth, kind of), and that he could just bring the kids with him to “practice” that evening and meet me there. Friday night he raises the possibility of just staying home with the younger two—Monkey wanted to go with me to help me decorate—because “they don’t really need me, do they?” and “the younger kids will just be running around disrupting practice”. “Oh no, you don’t,” I thought, but outwardly, I acted very nonchalant and suggested checking with his sisters first since they were in charge of the Christmas program. Saturday morning I talked to his mother and sisters and asked them to please convince him of how much we needed him at “practice” that night, and his mom took care of it. Whew!!!😅Crisis averted! Now I could just focus on the final preparations for the party (and finish that last little bit of church decorating, too!).

(I feel I need to emphasize here how much I hate lying. I mean, I really hate lying. All of my life, in fact, I have been criticized for being too honest at times, and I really don’t consider myself good at any form of prevarication. Certainly, Jimmy has always been able to see right through me when I’ve been upset and wanted to hide it or other situations like that. And yet, for two whole weeks, I had to act like nothing out of the ordinary was going on for his birthday, nothing extra special, etc. I managed with a whole lot of half-truths and vague answers, but there were some lies in there, too. My only consolation in all of this was that, as my college Spanish professor once said, the Bible does not really say, “Thou shalt not lie”; it says “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor”, and I wasn’t. I was bearing false witness for my neighbor. Still, every time I did lie, I felt really weird about it and had to be careful that Jimmy didn’t see my face or I’m sure he would have figured it out. I just needed to make that clear.)

Finally, it was time for the party. Everyone arrived early, we stalked Jimmy with our iPhones’ Find My Friend app to check his progress, and when he walked in the back door of the church, I had the reward of seeing my husband truly surprised for probably the first time ever by me. He said he had started to suspect I was up to something (of course, he would say that!) because all that day, any time he called me, I couldn’t wait to hang up on him, which isn’t like me at all, and when Curlytop got up from her nap, the first thing she said to him was “Daddy, I have something I can’t tell you”! When pressed for more information, she just repeated, “I can’t tell you, Daddy!” (Hurray for the 3-year-old!🙌 I was so proud of her for that!) But he truly had no idea that when he walked into the church’s fellowship hall, it would be into his own birthday party with all his family and friends there to celebrate with him, and for me, that made it all worth it.

Needless to say, everyone had a great time eating and fellowshipping, and Jimmy, I think, really enjoyed the special attention. And you get something out of this whole series of events, too—a free recipe! Honestly, since the party on Saturday, I have had two different people ask for this one, so I think it’s worth sharing! The party menu, in case you were wondering, was BBQ chicken legs, rolls, potato salad, 7-layer salad, baked bean casserole and strawberry cake for dessert—all of Jimmy’s favorites. What I’m going to share with you today is the baked bean casserole, which is really just amped-up baked beans and absolutely delicious!😋

This is one of my mother-in-law’s recipes, something Jimmy grew up with and asked me to make early on in our marriage; it has since become a staple in our household and part of my monthly menu rotation. It is also possibly the easiest one-dish meal you could ever make, though it makes a good side dish for a party too!

Are you ready for this? Here goes! To make this casserole, you need one pound of ground beef, two cans of your preferred baked beans (Jimmy swears by Busch’s), a dollop of BBQ sauce and a sprinkling of brown sugar. Brown your beef, then stir everything together in a medium casserole dish and pop into the oven. About 20 minutes later, on 350 degrees, it will come out nice and bubbly and ready to eat. 

That’s it! Told you it was easy! Try it; I bet you’ll like it too! And even if you don't have any birthdays to celebrate this month, I hope you'll take time in the midst of all the Christmas craziness to show the people that you love how much you appreciate them. Everyone can use a little extra attention now and again, especially around the holidays!