Robyn's Birthday

We've been kind of busy lately, and blogging has unfortunately been on the back burner, which drives me crazy because there's so much I want to blog about! I seriously just need to quit my job so I'll have time for all the things I really want to be doing. Seriously. I really could fill up my day with gardening, crafting, photography, blogging, exercising and volunteering, in no particular order. Someday soon I hope my dream to be a full time bum will become a reality!

One of the things that kept us super busy the weekend before last and the week preceding it was planning and hosting our friend Robyn's surprise 30th birthday party. Robyn's husband Dan and our friend Faith had the idea to have a fancy cocktail party, and so Faith and our friend Jessica and I spent a couple of weeks planning the big event. We got together a couple of weeks before and decided on the layout of the basement, planned the menu, and schemed a way to get Robyn here for the surprise. The next week we did lots of grocery and supply shopping and primping and cleaning the house. On the day of the big event, Chad and I cleaned and moved furniture, Faith and Jess and I cooked, Dan sent over the drinks and a bartender, and then Faith and I decorated the basement with balloons and candles. We were so busy all day that by the time people started arriving at our house at 7, I was still wearing a t-shirt and shorts and had never even gotten around to blow drying my hair!

Getting Robyn to get dressed up and come to our house was a bit of a challenge. The ruse was that Chad and I and she and Dan were going to a really nice dinner, but Dan had been so adamant that they pick us up so that we could go to this restaurant she wasn't very excited about, she definitely started to suspect something by the end of the week. When she got to our house and saw cars belonging to her family and friends across the street, the jig was definitely up. Although she wasn't really very surprised about the party by the time she arrived, hopefully she was still surprised by how many friends and family members (about 30) were at our house and by all the food, drinks and decorations! I think the basement looked pretty awesome by the time we were done with it! In this picture you can kind of see how we had it arranged and had the balloons and candles everywhere.

Our friend Megan's husband Tom took pictures during the evening and did a really fantastic job. It was so nice to be able to enjoy myself without having to worry about capturing the memories, but that also meant that I was actually in entirely too many pictures--something I'm totally not used to! It also meant that my ridiculous dancing has now been shared with all of Facebook, which I'm actually not that upset about since the pictures are so flipping hysterical. Tom put a whole series of dancing pictures together to make a silly video, and if you're on Facebook you totally have to check this out!

Of course, since I love to dance any time I possibly can, I had a blast cutting a rug in my basement. I think everyone else had a pretty great time too, since there was so much terrific food (including gourmet cupcakes by my friend Leigh Ann), lots of fancy drinks, fun music, good friends and also a TV for the boys, who were clearly not interested in dancing.

There are tons more cool and fun pictures in a short slideshow I put together on Snapfish using Tom's pics, and then a bunch more pictures in Tom's full Snapfish album. Hopefully you can see them without having to log into the website. They are just too funny--great shots of a great evening!