The Gang Buys a House: Dexter's Second Birthday Party

About a month ago, I talked about Dexter's first birthday party and plans for his second. I can hardly believe it has already been a month, let alone another year has gone by. Saturday was the big day and boy were we busy the last few days leading up to the party. In our typical fashion, we waited until the last minutes to take care of everything, but luckily, I'd say it all went off without a hitch. We did our shopping and cleaning over the long Memorial Day weekend, John called on Tuesday and got our food ordered from Rockland's, a few tables and some chairs reserved, and made an appointment for Dexter to get his birthday haircut. Then Saturday morning, we were up bright and early to do our last second cleaning, setting up and decorating. I had the crazy idea I might fit in a quick nap before 5:00, but no luck for me. Fortunately, we did manage to pull everything together and the weather miraculously cooperated without any of the sweltering heat of last year.

Now for the details and I'll start off with something random... the "Windex Outdoor All-in-One Glass Cleaning Tool" is amazing. After a ton of deliberation, we finally cracked and bought one. The biggest hold-up was its price at about $14.99 at Target. However, our windows were so nasty (mostly due to our MDF project back in January that resulted in mountains of dust on the ground and a disgusting layer all over the siding and windows), we had to do something. The kit comes with a Swiffer-like apparatus (a pole that you stick a cleaning pad on) that's easy to assemble. Then you just squirt down the pad with a hose, spray your window, scoot the pad around, and spray it clean. That's it. No wiping or anything. We worked together with John manning the hose and me scooting the pad and in no time we were done. Just like it promised, we were left with a streak-free shine on our windows... and I even did my back windshield. The kit only comes with one pad and the refills are a little pricey, too, but if we keep up with our window cleaning frequency of once every eight months, I think we can foot the $10 or so. :)

Look how happy you can be to wash your windows! yay!

OK, back on track, with the outside all clean, we were free to do our thing inside. I had grand plans in the beginning of DIYing some decorations and all that, but I had to take a step back and remind myself it's a dog birthday party and we can't afford to go nuts and don't want to end up as new subject matter for TLC to feature along with Hoarders, Extreme Couponers, and Crazy Eating Habits people. So, we made our first trip to Party Depot. It was kind of a weird store with a weird vibe, but lucky for us, we found some inexpensive decorations to spice up our place... just a few cute fan decorations (decorations shaped like fans, not decorations for fans like some may have thought...), a package of paper lanterns, and some streamers. I think it may have cost a whopping total of $10. Here's our set up. Once people arrived, our photo taking kind of fell off, so boo to that. Oh, and check out our awesomely painted kitchen. Yeah, we finally finished painting the rest of our main floor, but our place has been so much of a mess since then, it hasn't been appropriate for photos...

That's not a creepy stalker in the doorway, that's just our friend Paul.

And because every kid who goes to a party likes to take home a little goody bag, I prepared doggy bags for our canine guests. I baked two kinds of dog biscuits, a peanut butter based treat and a beef and cheddar (gotta have your sweet and savory), and threw in a squeaky Kong tennis ball. Maybe that was too much...

Here are our guests, human and canine, (hopefully) enjoying themselves. Our boys had a great time meeting and playing with other dogs. It was incredibly nice having the fence up to keep everyone safe. Chewie had an amazing time playing with our friend Keith's dog, Bailey. I guess he has a thing for older women. Apparently she did, too, as Keith said she was asleep in the car before they turned onto the first street from our house. We were thrilled to have our friends over and catch up. Now that we have our house and yard, I think we'll have to schedule more (smaller) parties here and there because it's just too much fun eating, drinking, and laughing all evening. We're so lucky to have such amazing sons and friends. :)