End of the School Year--Party!

Taylor wanted to have an "end-of-elementary-school-and-on-my-way-to-junior-high" party.  No problem, we've done parties before.  But then, after seeing his list of invites and realizing that most of them were already teenagers and in jr. high, I kinda started to panic.  I've never hosted a teenager party, and things have changed so much since I was there, I hardly knew how or where to start.  And boys--how do you entertain lots and lots of big boys?  Especially 19 of them!  Go ahead and count.

It ended up being super fun--for the boys and for me.  We had lots of candy, lots of real food, and plenty of junk food.  Taylor helped plan some of the activities, one of which was to award the boy who guessed the closest number of jolly ranchers in the jar.  It provided a good welcoming activity as the boys started coming in.

  The "help yourself" candy table was a hit.  I'm pretty sure that we got rid of about 25 pounds of candy that night.  I liked how it provided an easy social setting, and something for the kids to gather around in between games and activities.  The skittles and gummy bear bowl was refilled several times throughout the night.

Hamburgers, hotdogs, watermelon, chips, and a veggie tray served as dinner. 

 Prior to the party, John and I brainstormed a few fun activities and games.  I laugh now--but all the ideas John mentioned, I thought were really dumb.  And he said the same about the ideas I mentioned.  He won out, mostly because I figured that if we did his ideas, then he'd be leading it out and taking charge.  I'm good with that. 

One of his ideas was to create an obstacle (in this case, the blanket hanging on a rope being held by ladders) and have the boys get into teams of 4, then time each team to see how fast they could figure out how to all get over without touching the blanket.  (This was the idea that I thought for sure was the dumbest ever).  The boys absolutely LOVED it, and it kept them entertained for quite a while. 

I have since apologized.  I should have realized that John has been a 13 year old boy before; I hadn't.  Of course he knows how to be entertained.  He's been there.

 This was my idea-I'll take credit.  One of the things that bothers me about the youth now is how much time and focus goes into electronics (and takes away time and focus on relationships and people).  So, knowing that a lot of boys have phones and ipods, we put this together.  (Taylor is pretty sure that he's the only boy on the planet that doesn't have any electronics).  I first asked Taylor if he was OK with it, and he thought it was a great idea.  In fact, I never had to mention it as boys walked in the door--Taylor took care of it.  But I had to laugh.  For a little while, Taylor stepped into the backyard and the doorbell rang.  EmmaClaire ran to the door, swung it open, and  yelled "do you have any electronics?"  The boy was totally confused at his greeting.  Totally cracked me up.

I had a great time.  In fact, being around those fun, loud, roudy, energetic young men for a few hours got me excited for my own boys to grow into teenagers.  Bring it on!