A Surprise for 400+

Last Tuesday we threw a surprise party for way over 400 people! If you are a regular reader of my blog, you know I love surprises more than anything and the idea of surprising this many was such a thrill.

Chris Grabenstein wanted to come to Castleton on the book birthday of Mr. Lemoncello's Great Library Race.  Not only that, the movie was premiering the night before on Nickelodeon and Chris wanted to be here to watch it with some kids.

Hmmm...So Chris has been to Castleton a few times already.  How do we make this visit special and memorable? I know! We surprise EVERYONE! Not just the students, but the faculty, too! AND...we try and raise enough money from the community so that EVERY student could get a signed copy of the book. 

And that we did!

A shocked Connor!

How were we going to figure out the movie part? Well, we held a video contest that we opened up to the whole district, K-12. Contestants ended up being from grades 3-7.  Winners were chosen by Chris and invited to a special surprise dinner hosted by him at Dlish restaurant. If that isn't an awesome prize for a fan, I don't know what is!

Speaking of movie--Chris with "Mr. Lemoncello!"

All contestants were invited to a viewing party back at school. They thought they were just coming to watch the movie with friends.  They had no idea that Chris would show up!

Chris during a commercial break with his fans!

  

We all cheered when we saw this!

Chris snuck out right after the movie ended to "catch the next train back to NYC".  Little did anyone know that the last train to NYC had left a couple of hours before!  He went back to his hotel only to tiptoe into our gym, coffee in hand, at 7:25 the next morning.

Then we started the assembly.  Business went as usual. We announced the boxtops winners of the month. We watched the winning videos.  We sang "Happy Book Birthday" to the book on Chris's voice mail. Mr. Reischer's class put on a skit about Chris and the birthday, and still no one knew Chris would show up! And then he did...AND everyone got a book!

Check out Chris's Lemoncello shoes! 

Oops! We learned this red carpet should have been orange for Nickelodeon!

Thanks for everything, Chris, even the leaps!

ps-A few people were in on the secret (truly, not many).  None of this could have happened without the extraordinary, Brenda Kelliher, fifth grade math teacher.  Her creativity, dedication, seeing the big picture and attention to details are all amazing.  She rocks!

Photos compliments of Jason McCord, Mrs. Kosinski, Mrs. Yager and my daughter, Tari.

See more from Mr. McCord here.