Sur-prise! Having your cake and eating it too...

.... Or not, in this case. It certainly looked good enough to eat, but it was way better than a real cake in so many ways, and with far less calories. Isnt it just divine? It was put together by the most wonderful group of friends for my birthday a week ago, made with love by Jayne, and then each slice of cake was filled with all manner of SU goodies - buttons, felt flowers, brads, ribbons, clips, pretties pearls etc etc!!! How lucky am I? All these gifts were given to me by Jayne, Ness, Sharon, Cheryl and Georgina - who had all travelled (some with their entire families) to Wollongong (a long way) to be with me for my birthday - and I had no idea that they would be there.

It's originally all Ness's fault. It had been her birthday shortly beforehand, and so when we had planned a long weekend for myself and the kids in Wollongong, she had mentioned that they were going out for her birthday dinner on the Saturday night, and would we like to join them? Of course we would! Little did I know that she had been busily hatching a "cunning plan" behind my back!

As we were arriving on the Saturday night, and walking through the door of the restaurant, she said casually... you might recognize a couple of people. The first person I saw was Cheryl (who is in my downline team) and her husband... and then I saw Georgina (my upline) and that's when the penny dropped. Of course I did what any normal overwhelmed person would do... I burst into tears - and cried my eyes out on Ness' shoulder. It was a wonderful night.

Here's the thing. I cannot believe the kindness shown to me by so many people in recent weeks and months. I am more grateful than you will ever know. If you had told me when I first joined SU that the community between demonstrators would be like this, I would not have believed you. Papercrafters are amazingly kind and big-hearted people - that's one of the reasons we do what we do in the first place. And put us all together and something amazing happens. The kindness of customers and other demonstrators has amazed me over and over.

You guys will never know how much this has all meant to me, and will continue to mean over the coming months and I am guessing, years. I feel so lucky in so many ways. Thankyou so much!