We Have a Party

 

This year we became the parents of two teenagers!

I looked at my man one day back in the fall and I said, “Sixteen and thirteen. Our children are turning sixteen and thirteen. We need to have a party! These are both milestone ages and both in the same year and of course, they will never happen again.”

I thought about it off and on and around Christmastime I really began to look at our calendar and consider.

My surgery was past and I was recovering. We had the upcoming Haiti trip scheduled in. It’d been a while since my parents had been to Kansas to visit. I turned all this around in my mind.

I wanted very much to HAVE A PARTY!!

I also really did need to realize, that though I felt a lot better, I still couldn’t dig into things and I still could over-do rather too easy.

I checked a couple of other things we had scheduled and planned and found a date towards the end of February that seemed just right!!

I texted my mother and my sister and began to browse a few sites for invitations.

Thus, the beginnings of OUR PARTY were born!

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I found myself remembering and reminiscing about parties from my past as I planned and prepared.

My mother had several siblings and I had a whole slew of cousins on that side of the family. It wasn’t uncommon for us to gather at my Grandma’s or at our house or an aunt’s house for some kind of gathering or party. There were some birthday parties and New Year’s Eve parties and a fiftieth anniversary celebration for my grandparents.

There were chicken barbecues and leaf rakings and hot dog roasts.

One year we threw a Valentine’s Party. We had the best time preparing for it. We rented a helium tank on Friday evening and blew up red balloons and pink balloons and dotted the basement with them at my Grandma’s house.

We blew them up, AFTER we learned how to use the tank. Our first attempts resulted in balloons coming off of the tank’s spout and shooting across the room, resulting in loud and raucous laughter all around.

On Saturday morning, Grandma called with the disheartening news that the helium was disappearing from our balloons and our once lofty and lovely spheres had become saggy spectres of themselves!

We were dismayed, but we did have to laugh when we looked around at all the poor balloons. We simply headed back into town to the party store for a different helium tank so we could try again. Once refilled, our balloons hung in there, to soar and sway above our heads during our party!

And what memories we made because of the mishap! 🙂

It must be a party and balloon thing. I had ordered balloons for THE PARTY for my kiddos. I got them each a balloon bouquet, one proclaiming “thirteen” and one, “sixteen”.

We picked the balloons all up and got them loaded into my Suburban. We pulled out of the parking lot and around the corner and into the bank drive-thru. About that time we heard an ominous bang! Unfortunately the number one in the sixteen bouquet had decided to pop. Back we headed to the balloon store and they fixed us right up.

 After we got home, we realized a couple of small balloons in the bouquet were leaking and going down and causing the whole thing to lean.

So, the next morning my parents loaded the balloons back up and trekked back to the balloon store where the employees once again, very nicely, fixed them for us!

I’ve read and loved the quote by Julia Child that, “A party without cake is just a meeting.” My mother and I decided that this must surely be true about balloons as well. A party without balloons surely IS just a meeting.

A word of warning, however! You may have to put in some extra effort to have balloons fixed just right for your party! 🙂

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I knew my parents were planning to come for the party, but there are so many miles and I wasn’t expecting my sister and her family to make the trip. One morning my phone sounded its incoming text alert and when I read the text, it was from my sister with the news that they very much wanted to come for the party!! They’d checked into schedules and decided they could make a quick weekend trip. We were excited! Yet, I felt a bit bad for them to put in all the miles and time when they couldn’t stay very long.

BUT, thirteen and sixteen DO only happen once and WE WERE HAVING A PARTY!!

And cousins coming for your party, totally rocks!

I made sandwiches a few weeks ahead and tucked them into the freezer till time for THE PARTY! I flipped through recipes and looked on Pinterest for some ideas.

I ducked into the party store for cups and lids while we were in the city for my checkup at the doctor for my back.

We talked about cakes and tables and chairs and slowly OUR PARTY was taking shape.

This is what I posted on Instagram during our week of party prep~

We’re Having a Party!
I keep proclaiming this until I think that my daughter most likely is quite sure of the fact that her mother is daft.
But the thing is, it’s not every year that you become the mother of two teenagers! And when you realize that in the last two years you’ve learned more deeply about embracing life and moments and how much celebration and memories matter and what a blessing movement and agility are, and how thankful you are to be where you are and how thankful you are for the people you have and how each day is a day to embrace, then you MAY just find yourself enthusiastically and exuberantly exclaiming over and over “We’re Having a Party!” in perhaps, just a bit of an exaggerated, annoying way!!!

It truly was a fun and special evening.

We reminisced and laughed and ate and had cake and balloons, so it REALLY was a PARTY and not just a meeting. We played the Name Game and we had a door prize and we had a guessing game. We had a wooden R and a wooden T for our family and friends to sign as keepsakes for Renae and Tucker. We took pictures and we looked at old pictures on a slideshow and we watched some funny, old videos of the kiddos that my brother filmed when they were very young. We celebrated and we thanked God for these two children of ours. We drank cold drinks and hot drinks and ate ice cream, and ALL in ALL, WE HAD A PARTY!!

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