Joey is 2!

It’s crazy to think that we just celebrated Joey’s 2nd birthday last week.  It feels like yesterday I gave birth to him.  Time is going by so quickly!  Joey has turned into quite the toddler these past few months and I have a sneaking suspicion the terrible two’s are upon us.  Especially since his favorite word is “noooo”.

Joey loves playing with anything that has wheels and loves to do puzzles.  He also loves anything Juliana is currently playing with.  He is doing so great potty training and now wears big boy undies out when we run our errands.  His favorite foods are macaroni and chicken cutlets.   He also has a bad granola bar habit.  We are trying to cut back.  haha!

We had our friends over to the house to celebrate last weekend.  Luckily the weather was perfect!  It’s been sort of back and forth here, and it’s been raining a lot.  But we lucked out!  The weather was ideal for an outside BBQ.  Joey was so excited to wake up on the morning of his party and see that Grandma Nancy + Grandpa Pat came to surprise him and celebrate with us!  (Juliana was also so excited but she waited up until 10 pm the night before to see them arrive!)

We had such a fun afternoon with our friends hanging out, watching the kids bounce and eating some yummy bbq food!  After being indoors for so many months during the Winter, it was so enjoyable to just hang out on the deck and cook out.

I served my “cheater’s sangria” and it was a total hit!  All you need is a bottle of Sangria (I grabbed a couple at Costco) and a bottle of Sprite/7-up.  I filled mason jars with ice and some sliced fruit (lemon, lime, orange).  Then poured the glasses half full with sangria and topped them with sprite.  I decorated the mason jars with ribbon and finished the drink off with a colorful paper straw.  They were perfect!

Monday was Joey’s actual birthday and the celebrations continued.  He opened all of his presents from family and I cooked a huge dinner with all of his favorite foods!  The kids stayed up so late playing with all of his new gifts.  I would say his birthday celebrations were a total success!

The party details were super easy for me, and I’ll tell you why.  After each party we have I take all of the leftover, unused decorations and pack them away.  I pack away bowls, serving dishes and even banners I have made.  I knew I wanted to do a primary color theme for Joey’s party and when I looked in the boxes of what I had and saw all of Juliana’s Sesame Street party decor, I saw that Joey’s BBQ was already half done!  The “Happy Birthday” banner hanging on the drink table used to say “Happy 1st Birthday Juliana”.  The “Joey is two” huge banner that we hung on the deck used to say “Sunny Days” (Sesame themed, remember?).  I found yellow and red plastic bowls and a few unused table clothes.  So I really didn’t have that much to buy in order to decorate!  As I told Mike, this is when my hoarding tendencies come in handy.  🙂

For the party favors I used my silhouette cameo to personalize cups for all of our party guests!  I love the way these came out!  I just filled them with some colored paper filler that I grabbed at the dollar store.  They took no time to make and I just love giving little personalized gifts.

I did want to make a small balloon arch to hang over the front door.   Luckily for Grandpa, he was the only one in the kitchen when I pulled out the helium tank and got stuck helping me blow up, tie, and string 50 balloons onto a piece of fishing wire.  Ha!  He was such a trooper!  Unfortunately it was so windy that it was really hard to hang the way I wanted it, so I just tied it outside on the deck as one big balloon column.

Joey got a bounce house from Grandma + Grandpa for his birthday gift and the kids had a blast jumping in it!  It really was the greatest idea to just buy one to own instead of rent.  Obviously, it wouldn’t work for a ton of kids/and or/larger kids, but it worked just fine for our party.  It was just a bit more then renting one and now we will have it for future parties/playdates/rainy days (because you know I’ll plug that in right in the living room..haha!).  I linked the one we got here but I also loved this one, and this one!

Happy Birthday Mr. Baby Joey!  We hope you had as much fun as we did!  XO

 Hope you enjoyed partying with us!

XO Danielle

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