what we did last night

 

Happy Tuesday, friends! I thought I'd share about our family celebration last night. In years past, we have celebrated three out of my four sons' birthdays right around the early March birthdays. This year I finally got my head on straight and decided to make it a later date so that we could celebrate all four together. Poor Drew has gotten left out every year, as far as an actual "party", but all the grandparents and aunties are always great at getting him his card on time. Also, about him being left out with the party, this is the story of his life, I feel like. Poor Drew! His birthday is always close to Easter as well, which makes it even more complicated. 

If he were any other type man, he would care, but he's pretty chill and go with the flow.

So, most of the family came over! Plus some of their friends and my best friend. 

We always have hot dogs and chips and dip for this party. The hot dogs are cooked in my oven at a low temperature for about an hour. They come out tasting grilled and it's the easiest way to cook a bunch when you're feeding a crowd. My awesome stepdad made his famous buffalo chicken dip, and we had two types of cake—cheesecake and chocolate cake with chocolate icing. Costco cakes are THE BEST.

Todd cleaned off the deck over the weekend, so we put it to good use and encouraged folks to go outside. When I say "folks", I mean the younger crowd. This is an easy party and dinner to pull off for me. I always dust and vacuum before everyone gets here and make sure the bathroom is clean with a fresh towel downstairs, but that's all I do. Even with, or maybe because of our dogs, I am always running around with a duster and the vacuum. I never want our house to smell like we have four dogs living inside with us. I'm rolling my eyes as I wrote that sentence, because who in the world am I that we have this many dogs? I used to think one was too many, but my heart keeps growing in size by the amount of dogs we have. 

I completely failed to get any pictures with the boys with their grandparents, but I did take some pictures around as I was getting ready earlier.

I was sitting on that swing while the dogs were running around. We have a bench that stays on our deck that all of the pillows and cushions stay in unless I pull them out while people come over. And the bench is one additional place to sit. I still love our deck! It was built almost two years ago exactly, while the world was shut down from Covid and we were all stuck at home. All our sons, Todd and my stepdad Bill built this thing in about two days worth of time. The guys actually did most of the manual labor part and even measured and cut the wood that was laid for the flooring. I'm still so impressed with it! 

Bill was here almost everyday for about a week's worth of time, though as they planned, measured, marked off and put it all together. That was back when I was in the kitchen all the livelong day and made lunch and dinner for my people everyday.

I digress.

Welcome to Mama Jen's Doggy Daycare. Please excuse all the toys.

Just showing that all the surfaces were cleaned and some things were changed around, like the tulips on the stack of Jane Austen books. I always keep a basket out for extra toilet paper and room spray.

When Todd and Jonah came home, they immediately started doing something to Jonah's truck and our little neighbor came down with his tool box to help them!

Is that not the sweetest thing you have ever seen? He was telling all of us what each of those tools does.

It was a fun night! Everyone was gone and the house was put back together by eight o'clock. That's my kind of party! 

Thanks for reading my blog, friends! Love to all.