Allie's Birthday Surprise!

I put a fun video together last January but I didn't have space on my computer to download it to YouTube. 

 (Does this ever happen to anyone else?) So after lots and lots of One on One lessons at the Apple store 

(I LOVE those guys! They always make me feel so good about asking the dumbest questions about my computer!) 

and after sorting through a gazillion photos, files and documents, I finally emptied my photo trash 

(with confidence that I wasn't losing any photo that I would someday regret)

 and got rid of tons of stuff that I didn't need on my computer and found that I have lots of space now. YAY!

 It felt SO good to get organized and I was so happy to finally get this downloaded for Allie. 

 I know. It's April... I had A LOT of duplicate photos and hitting that "delete" button was really hard!

 So finally, here it is... Allie's Birthday Surprise! 

 You know I LOVE surprises and so does Anise, Allie's best friend from high school, 

 and we both wanted to surprise Allie for her 25th birthday. 

 We wanted to do something she would never forget!

 So when I found out that Anise was going to be in New York City for Christmas, 

 I told her to extend her vacation to January 2nd, when we were arriving,

so that we could spend the day with Anise... and she did! 

 We started planning and scheming the big surprise, 

Shake Shack being the perfect location for this all to go down.

I don't know which was more fun, the planning and scheming part 

or watching Allie's reaction when Anise walked in!

 She was totally surprised and it was fun to have Anise join us on our family vacation!

 It wasn't the first time that Anise has been on a Holt family vacation. 

 One summer, she came with us on a roadtrip to Yellowstone, Jackson Hole, and Idaho Falls to visit Kimber. 

 Our favorite spot was "Bear World" outside of Rexburg, Idaho.  Ha! Ha!

 Lots of good times with that girl! We all love her and she has been like part of the family for a long time 

 and has spent many hours days in our home during high school... and we loved it!

 So as you can see in the video, we are all very happy to see Anise and Allie was very surprised!

Happy 25th Birthday, Allie!  And thanks, Anise for helping me pull this off!  We love you lots!