Carlie's 13th Birthday!!!

Well...I am officially the mother of a teenager now!  SERIOUSLY?!  Feels like she should be 6 at the most.  Oh well...bring it on!  

So for her birthday what Carlie wanted more than anything was her OWN room.  So we decided to give up our guest room to make our home work for our changing family.  It's funny because my boys LOVE sharing a room and will probably always share a room.  But my girls....let's just say they were both EQUALLY excited about having their own rooms.  So after girl's camp, this was our first project:

Well, bright and early June 20th, we had these 2 hoodlums show up at our door:)  Kayleah and her brother Tyler showed up and "kidnapped" Carlie.  They took there roles very seriously!  Carlie however was the MOST boring girl to kidnap--NO screaming or anything, just a little surprised and mostly sleepy.  They took her to IHOP for a birthday breakfast then back to Kayleah's home to watch a movie and hang out.  They brought her back to us around noon.  

Cute poster left for Carlie on our door by Lois:)

From there, Carlie and Ethan had Sleeping Beauty rehearsals.  Carlie took doughnuts up for everyone in the cast for her birthday.  She was surprised with singing and lots of cute gifts/cards from the cast.  And to top the whole day off, we went to Sonic for dinner--Carlie's choice.  Here we are enjoying the birthday feast!  A PERFECT day for Carlie!

2 days later, the REAL party happened!  We had 10 teenagers at our home from 6-11 pm.  Wow!  That was exhausting.  The party started with a HUGE surprise when Kale walked into my kitchen looking like this:  (seriously only 5 minutes into the party!)

So come to find out, Kale was "dunking" a basketball into our hoop in our back yard.  We have one of those hoops that is NOT anchored into the ground--it's weighted with water and sand but NOT meant to be hung on:)  He easily dunked the ball but hung onto the rim to be extra cool:)  The whole thing came down and hit him on the head!  So doing my best to stay calm, I was walking him into my bathroom to clean him up when he shouts, "HEY!  COME TAKE MY PICTURE BEFORE WE CLEAN IT UP!!!"  It was at that moment that I knew he was fine.  So there I was in my small downstairs bathroom trying to help this boy with 4 other kids in the bathroom with their Ipods taking pictures and immediately posting them to Facebook and Instagram--fantastic right?!  Once it was cleaned up, we discovered that it was a long but very shallow scratch that bled like CRAZY!  So I called his mom, before she had a chance to see the pictures, and as a mom of other teenage boys she asked to speak to her son, "Did you bring this on yourself Kale???"  "Yes..." says Kale.  Then all was well and Kale really was fine and wanted to stay.  

So here are some pics of these fantastic teens:

LJ, Tayte, Adam, Kale, Mithchell, Kayleah, Thommy, Lois, Carlie, & Savvy

Lois, Carlie, & Kayleah

And this was the beginning of a whipped cream fight!  

Our pool was DISGUSTING after they cleaned up!

Movie on the big screen!

It's kinda become a tradition that we always go to the park right down the street from us.  Every time I have any of these kids over, they just HAVE to go to the "Spiderman" park.  Hard to get good pics at night:)

So these teens went strong for 5 hours!!!  I could NOT believe the amount of energy they all had.  I think they could have gone for another 5 hours!  I'm pretty sure I was asleep before my head hit the pillow this night.  Happy 13th Birthday Carlie Mae!!!  We are sooooooo looking forwards to the teenage years with you:)