Dork Diaries - A New Beginning Part 2

Brandon's Birthday

January 31st
Sunday

It's Brandon's birthday today!

I wake him up by turning on the "Happy Birthday" song on my phone.

Yes the party is a surprise, but I'm still allowed to wish him a happy birthday!

If I "forgot" (pretended to forget) that it was his birthday,  he would immediately know that I'm planning something.

Most of the time he knows if I'm pretending to forget stuff.

And that is how, six years ago, by having me to pretend to forget it was his birthday, he found out that we were throwing him a birthday party for his 20th birthday.

He knows me very well.

Therefore wishing him a happy birthday will hopefully create a lower chance of him figuring out that there is something special planned for his birthday.

We start the day normally, we eat breakfast, we go to church.

Soon after we come back from church Brandon starts to get ready for his "bro-reunion day" (or whatever it is) with Max.

When Max finally came to collect him I called everyone and told them that the coast was clear.

I put the girls to sleep and shortly afterwards everyone started arriving.

It was so much fun decorating and getting everything ready.

The cake looked so good that I actually started doing the "Squeee!" thing I used to do when I was excited.

Max did a great job.

He sure knows what Brandon likes.

When you looked at the cake it instantly reminded you of Brandon.

And no, not because of the "Happy Birthday Brandon!" sign in the middle of it.

It was something about the cake, it just looked so Brandon-ish (that's not even an English word). It could be a word in another language though.

I was really nervous to meet Paulina and Kacper but not as nervous as I was when I first heard that they would like to meet me.

I was just really upset then, you know, losing someone so special to you and then being around people who remind you of that person is hard.

Really, really hard.

When I saw Paulina enter the house I burst into tears, tears of joy and I ran straight to her and gave her a big hug.

Then Kacper also came in and I hugged him too.

I remember that I always referred to them as "Aunt Paulina" and "Uncle Kacper" when I was a child.

We didn't have much time to talk about what happened during those 15 years that we haven't seen eachother in as decorating etc. was waiting for us.

Then it was time, Max texted me that they were on their way.

"Hide!" I shouted as everyone found a hiding spot and Chloe turned off the lights.

Shortly after everyone found their hiding spots, Brandon and Max enteted.

"Surprise!" We all shouted, which was not a good idea since all of the kid a woke up.

"Happy Birthday!" I exclaimed as I ran upstairs with Zoey and Violet so we could calm our children down.

We decided that with so many people in the house, the children would not fall asleep so we ended up bringing them down stairs.

The cake was delicious!

It was chocolate and cherry flavoured and I heard a lot of people asking Max what he put in it to make it taste so great.

The party went on for a couple hours and then people started leaving.

When the last people went in was already past 8 p.m.

It was then that I gave Brandon his birthday present.

It was a picture album that I hand-made filled with pictures of him, Teddy,the girls and me.

The cover of the album was blue with a painting of house that looked similar to ours.
Above the little house I wrote "Family" in gold.

It wasn't a huge, expensive present.

But it was a one-of-a-kind present.

Just like Brandon.

He's also a one-of-a-kind.

Note: when I firststarted writing this book Nikki and Brandon were both 22.

I did end up changing that and now Nikki is 25 and Brandon is 26.

I never changed Brianna's age so I'm going to have to do that as it would make no sense I'd she was still 14 while Nikki was 25.

It just wouldn't make sense as in the actual Dork Diaries series, Nikki is about eight years older then Brianna, not eleven.

So Brianna is now a 17 year old in her senior year of high school and so is Oliver.

Thank you!

Stay dorky!😉👍💕