It Takes a Village... to put on a Party!

 Preparing To Glow ....
This 13th Birthday Party was so fun!

After much planning, errand running and help, my little Kaboom's party turned out to be awesome! We had a blast!

I had alot of help pulling this off. Thank god for my sister, BFF and her husband and son, husband mom and Daughter for helping make this party possible. It truly takes a village to raise a child and as much as I think I can do it all, it really took my little village to celebrate a child as well!
 Everyone helped out making invitations, cutting neon circles for decor, offering to tackle the cake, bringing equipment for music and dancing, sending money for party wares, BBQ-ing helping open Chili and Cheese cans and more.
It was definately a night to remember, full of smiles and laughs, friends & fun. My 13 year old was smiling ear to ear and enjoying herself!

 I'm pretty sure I put a dent in our household paper supply with all the notes and doodles, decorations (you'd be surprised how many items in our house glowed already) and planning diagrams, but everything turned out great. My poorly drawn contingency plan for bad weather turned out to be necessary since San Antonio had a massive storm the night before that knocked out the power and flooded most everyone's yards.

 Despite not having electicity that day until after 3pm, the hot dogs were perfectly grilled and ready, the chili and cheese and of course chips waters and some spirited drinks for the adults were ready by party time at 7pm.

There was dancing and not just any dancing, JUST DANCE on the Wii glow dancing, and glow sticks, tons and tons of glow sticks, a candy bar, a glowing drink fountain (thank you Mom for making me take it with me when we moved totally worth it) easy and fun party food a Teen Dream Come True black fondant cake with Neon frosting splatter (thanks sis) and disco lights (which may or may not have been more for us grown women to dance to in the kitchen once the party wound down) Gotta love Robin Thicke and instant margaritas!
Here is my Pinterest link if you are interested in some Pin-inspiration: http://pinterest.com/mrsfeliciac/kathy-bday/

Tweens/Teens and glow parties?

Good morning from the nook in my purple couch, more on that later. 
     The King is soundly resting before work, Kaboom and Storm-trooper off to school, java in hand and twins, Thing 1 and Thing 2,  happily busy watching Angry birds. 
          I know, I know ....Angry birds you say??? Violent maybe, selfishly exploiting the idea of animal cruelty? How dare I use television to drink my coffee when its still hot? 
      I say not cruel, unjust or irresponsible, no, well maybe just a little but a moms arsenal of household peace seldom contains crowd pleasers, and I really like hot coffee. So there. 

I am at the precipice of the week and bracing myself for what I'm sure will be just fine in retrospect, but none the less daunting to say the least. 
My daughter Kaboom turns thirteen in just 7 days!  Her first tween/teen birthday party in years is coming up in 5 days.  She has not wanted and scoffed at the idea of a party for the past 7 birthdays deeming herself not a party person and assuring King and I that she would rather go out to eat or pick an extravagant gift than have.a.party!
 Now, this is all good and fine except the last two birthdays have led us to believe that perhaps we have misread her expression while listening to her, because there was a sadness growing in her eyes that we hadn't noticed before. 

Now, I'm no tween/teen expert, as she is my first of four to reach that stage, but I do know when my baby is trying to please us. 

After digging in a lil deeper I discovered that my sweet little Kaboom has watched very carefully as we planned the Storm-trooper's birthdays and Thing1and Thing2's birthdays and that she has also listened very carefully to closed door discussions about budget, planning, schedule stresses and location woes. So after many questions and prodding my baby admitted that she did not want to burden her family by expecting a party like the little ones do. *melt*.
 So sweet, and considerate our girl is. We of course made certain to let her know that we are more than happy to throw a party to celebrate her birthday, each of our children as a matter of fact. I guaranteed that not only was it a pleasure to entertain, it really was our wish to honor her and see her smile. She did not scoff at a Neon Glow Dance Party!! Go Glow Girl!

With that, I am challenged to really make this one special. We don't have unlimited resources, but I do have an idea, unlimited imagination, Pinterest and a circle of supporters to get this party started. Six days, an armful of glow bracelets, and Neon poster boards, ...GO!!