First of all, how is it that I have a 16 year old. I could be getting really sappy and emotional about that, but I will wait until at least 17  for that blog post, 18 if we’re lucky. For now let’s just talk about the party. 16 is a big one. One of the biggest milestone birthdays of all actually and we knew he wasn’t get a car so I wanted to do something else significant. We decided that even though we had just thrown a launch party for my book and it was a huge undertaking we still needed to do something equally as big for Z, so we threw him a surprise party. It was…well, let’s just say there are two sides to every story. There is the glass half empty and the glass half full right?

I could talk about how it ended up being super hot even though September is usually nice Ohio. This heat made the cake melt into a giant glob

and the balloons popped throughout the entire party like bombs that would startle everyone.

I could mention that Z’s friends had one job and that was to stall until 12:30.

These are the kids that are always lingering around, hanging out, leaving places late and they are never prompt when it comes to being home on time, but on this day there was nothing that they could think of and needed to bring Z home early. In their defense I missed the warning text because I was frantically trying to get things setup. So Z showed up before we were ready and it was extremely anticlimactic, but he hadn’t seen everyone that was at the party, he just knew there was a party. So I blind folded him and made him sit in the front yard while everyone lined up for the “surprise”.

I originally wanted to offer refreshing bottled water to the guest, but the teens could bring their own soda if they chose. My husband scoffed at that idea informing me “Natalie I don’t care if you and Z don’t drink soda. You can’t throw a party for teenagers without soda.” He was right, so I conceded and bought plenty of canned sodas for which I offered a recycling bin. Were the cans recycled? No. Well, some of them were, but then melted cake was thrown on top of it so I gave up on that idea.

The party was packed with teenagers. over 20 of Z’s closest (ha ha) friends showed up and let me tell you– things got crazy.

Thankfully not in an immoral way, it wasn’t THAT kind of party, but I had to intervene to prevent multiple injuries from happening. For example our trampoline cannot handle a dozen people! I digress.

While I may have felt like I was failing as the hostess of the whole thing, the reality was the kids all had a blast. Z felt loved and said it was the best day of his life. He even told me that he was surprised. I’ve lived long enough to not let all the other stuff get to me. If Z was happy then I am definitely happy.

How many teenagers get to have an epic water balloon, squirt gun, zip line, knock down drag out, hose squirting everywhere water fight for their birthday? I am thankful for the way it all turned out and Z said it was the “best birthday ever” so I can’t argue with that!