Party Central

It seems this is going to be the year of parties! With our first four children, we established a practice of having a party every other year and doing a fun family event on the "off" year. As our family has grown tremendously the last few years, we have had very few parties. While we are not necessarily following that guideline anymore, there are children who are long over-due for a celebration this year! Alei is one of those; I don't believe she has had any form of party since she turned 11 or 12, so this was the year! Throwing in the reality that Gabriel was rained out of his planned bon-fire birthday two years ago, we have delayed his 18th party in hopes of finishing the basement and that he and Alei have the same group of friends, it was time for a big teen bash in honor of both of them!

We still haven't finished the basement, but we moved and cleaned enough that pool, ping-pong and air-hockey were all accessible. We all set up a volley-ball court outside, although I never made it out to take a picture.


I have to say.......a good thing about teens is that they don't care if you have open insulation and paint spattered floors. As long as they have each other, some fun toys, music and food - they are happy campers! The girls really don't even need the toys and music, a ton of them just piled on Alei's bed and talked and talked!

Here's the birthday girl with her "baby" - Toby Mac.

In spite of Alei not wanting to, we lit up those cakes, gathered around and sang. We just crammed both their names into one song and dished up cake.

I never took a head count, but I think we had about 30-35 fun loving teens gathered.

It was a great time and I was so thankful that the weather cooperated. We opted out of the planned evening bon-fire due to the heat, but that sure beats thunder-storms!

On a side note, JD and I tromped into Costco on Sunday morning with the seven younger kids in tow to pick up the cakes I had ordered. As they were rolling through check-out and the lady read "Happy 16th Birthday" and then "Happy 18th Birthday" then looked at all the kids, she asked, "how many kids do you guys have?" We answered nine. She then said what I've heard so many times before..........."Do you want one more? She's 15 and has quite the attitude. She comes with all her clothes and everything." Now, I'm not going to analyze this at a deep level or anything because parenting is hard and I don't think for a moment that this lady is truly interested in not parenting her own daughter, but I do think it's interesting how often people say things to me along those lines. It's another experience that I never had before I had a big family!