Golden Birthday

I didn't even realize what a golden birthday was until when we were planning Jared's party last year (we had 2 golden birthdays in one year). We were too busy to have a party in December, but we finally got to celebrate this month.  Owen didn't really want a party, but I insisted since it was his golden and 16th birthday.  We really had to celebrate.  His guest list was pretty big, so we used the church gym again.  We had a nice turn-out, with 13 guests.  I think it was the first time that one of our boys had just as many girls as guys at the party!  

We did a taco bar, which was really yummy (and not too hard for a big group).  We actually had a lot of leftovers, so we were eating tacos for a few days after the party.  Drinks were an apple juice and Sprite mixture, which made a nice gold colored drink, but looked like beer in the pitchers! 😄

All the decor was gold, which looks really pretty for a party.  I put together the table centerpieces for $7.50 total, using some sparkly gold paper and gold containers from the $1 store.  I already had gold stars. I ordered gold tablecloths and utensils. We had gold cupcakes, which were easy.  The downside of parties at the church is that no open flames are allowed, so we had to step outside to sing to Owen.  The gift favors were bags of a variety of gold-packaged chocolates.  

The games... I had some fun things planned, but it turns out that teenagers mostly just need food and chatting.  It was a bit like herding cats to get them to do anything.  We eventually did about half of the things I planned.  I brought out the candy nerf gun board that we had used in a couple of other parties, but they quickly lost interest in that one.  Instead of doing the candy game, they started volleying a bouncy ball around - probably could have done that for a while.  They did a memory game that I made using pictures of Owen.  They actually liked that one more than I thought they would, since it was fun to see the pictures of little Owen.  It was pretty challenging though, because I made enough matches for 2 different sets, which each had 36 matches (meaning there were 72 cards out on each table).  I had them divide into 2 teams and then race against the other team to see who could make all the matches first.  They were able to help each other, but it still took some time to make progress with that many cards. They also played Pictionary and Reverse Charades for about 30 minutes.  

The kids don't really know how much time I put into these parties, so they probably don't appreciate the efforts, but hopefully they end up with some good memories.  It was pretty exhausting, but I'm glad we were able to celebrate Owen.  He's a great "kid" and deserves for us to make a fuss over him every now and then. I'll share the photo pages I used to make the memory game.  Pretty cute kid!