16th Birthday

The boy turned 16 Monday!  I seems like I should feel older, but it's more like, the older he gets, the more I feel that he's just catching up with me.  I have not felt older in years, despite the cracking knees and achy joints I sometimes wake up with.  Mostly, I go back and forth between being happy at all the new stuff we can do as the kids get older and being morose about the loss of little kids.  Ben will be 13 next year, then I will have all teens and then they will be adults.  No more phases to go through.  They just...grew up.  I am an inch from being the shortest in the family already.  I can understand why some women go crazy and get a lot of cats.  I feel a little unsure about what's next for me. 

We celebrated his birthday with a big party with lots of friends, then 5 kids stayed overnight for a sleep-over.  They played D&D and airsoft and hide and seek and sardines and played on the Wii and who knows what all else.  They mowed through an astonishing amount of food, I moved my laptop into the kitchen because between cooking and cleaning up, I was hardly anywhere else.  At least I could listen to music. 

Britney and Evan stayed over a second night and that was fun.  I like having lots of friends over, but there's something to be said for one on one time, too.  They are both so easy-going, it was fun to just hang out.  We watched movies and the kid stayed up talking half the night.

On Wednesday, Emily came out to spend the day and I ran everyone back to meet their families late in the afternoon.  Not a bad 16th birthday at all!   I was allowed to date at 16, I never really thought much about when my kids could date.  I talked to Jake about it, asked him if he thought he would feel more pressured to have a girlfriend if he were in public school.  He said it wasn't lack of interest in girls, it was just that he's known all the girls in our group for years and they were more like sisters than real girls.  hahaha!  I wonder if Chan knows she's not real?

Evan, Britney, Jake, Kegan, Chandler
Zachary, Emily
Carson, Amanda, Griffin, Austin, Ben, Cody, Keilee, Kaitlin

Michelle, Suzette, Me, Karen, Gina, Cathy, Heather

 

 

Random shot that actually got all the kids that stayed overnight.

Last year, his cake was like a brick, this year, it was wonky and the icing was so sweet we had to wash down each bite.  Next year, I think I may just order one...