1300 square feet divided by 17 equals...

CHAOS! Take a two bedroom, one bathroom home and add 15 girls and two (semi) adults and what do you get? Actually, a really fun slumber party to celebrate an amazing 14 year old daughter!

So against our better judgment (and truthfully to save money on a "destination" party) we agreed to let Sarah invite 15 girls to sleep over last Friday night. This, the day after the graduation hoopla.

Sarah and I started our day at Panera to have bagels and plan for the party. We went to Wal-Mart and Ralphs and bought a TON of snacks! Oreos, five different kinds candy, goldfish, three gallons of ice cream and a myriad of toppings, s'mores fixings and even salad - yes, salad and carrots to balance out this junk and the pizza we were planning to order. We went home, put everything away and went to work cleaning the house.

One by one they arrived and started filling our home with laughter and happy noise! We really couldn't have asked for a sweeter group of girls. But oh my word, they can definitely eat! We bought five pizzas and they were gone toot sweet (the leftovers were finished off sometime during the night.) The candy and snacks were a big hit.

The girls decided to create toilet paper wedding gowns. They actually made some pretty awesome creations! It was really hard to judge a winner, that's for sure!





When we first had our yard landscaped (back when we had money from my inheritance) the designer added a fire pit. We thought it would be fun but the night of Sarah's party it was a huge hit! The girls were roasting marshmallows (setting them on fire rather) and tried to come up with new and creative ideas for melting the chocolate. Suffice it to say, there were quite a few marshmallows in the funeral pyre known as our fire pit.



When we bought the house, the former owner left us his ping pong table. We actually used it several times for a table when we would host Thanksgiving. Well for the party we bought the accessories and set it up, again thinking it might not go over with the girls but it certainly did! The other things that went over were the ping pong balls - over the fence, that is. So what to do? Well a new sport was created that night - ping pong marshmallows! They had such fun and so did Chloe. She ate about four or so and then gave up. You could tell her stomach was protesting her eating any more!



The girls watched old reruns of "Get Smart" and then "The Princess Bride". That's when Ryan and I decided to go to bed. We had them all get into their pjs and told them that we didn't have any rules about what time to go to bed but just to keep the noise level down. When I got up at 3:30 a.m. most of them, including Sarah, were still up. By morning, there were bodies everywhere - two in Sarah's bed, two on the living room couch and the rest in the backroom. I snuck out to Einsteins Bagels to get breakfast for them. Thinking that we had 14 girls (one couldn't spend the night) I figured that a bakers dozen and six more would be enough. I even bought an extra cream cheese, just in case. I got home, set the bagels down and the girls DEVOURED all of them! Within minutes the boxes and tubs of cream cheese were empty. One of the girls said her mom just puts out boxes of cereal. Hmmm....I may do that next time!

Slowly their parents came to get them. At least two families returned for the things that were left behind. Even after that, we had a forgotten camera, clothes and one shoe. One thing that will not be forgotten is how much fun we had and how happy Sarah was!








Michelle's proud of her chalk artwork on the driveway & her hands!