Another Party

My Daughter's Twelfth Birthday Party.

I continue to experience the many joys of having twins - another birthday party within the same week! If you didn't see the pix I posted of my son's baseball-themed party, click HERE to go to that post.

My daughter had her party Saturday night, complete with games, giggles, gifts, and great fun! She wanted a sleepover party, so I had to come up with lots of activities to keep them busy in order to avoid the almost-inevitable hurt feelings/tears/drama of 12 year olds. I'm happy to say it worked, and we had an awesome time! I don't think anyone felt left out at any time, and the only tears were those of my daughter when she thought her friend lost her shoe... I'm not going to go into any particulars about this part, but let's just say I'm glad we didn't get caught!

We did have a run-in with the police. We were playing truth-or-dare (more about that in a minute), and one of the girls had to shout, "I'm a nerd" at three passing cars. Wouldn't you know it? The third car that just happened to be going by was a police car. The girls ran back to the house, and I sheepishly explained what we were doing and assured him all was well. He was actually very nice about it.

Just a tip if you ever have a party where the kids will be doing games in teams... Change the teams every time you change the game and make them draw numbers for teams. This was a lifesaver. The girls didn't fall into cliques or gossip about each other or make anyone feel left out.

Here's what we did:

The girls signed a poster for my daughter as they arrived.

Two Truths and a Lie - We did this while we ate pizza.

A scavenger hunt in teams while it was still daylight.

The candy name game - they thought this was hard! We played a scaled down version of the one in the link.

The toothpick game - they were quiet for almost three minutes!

Song Charades - I had "regular" songs and baby songs to choose from. Team game.

Of course, we ate cake and ice cream! This is one of the cakes - the one we DIDN'T eat because they thought it was too cute, and NO, I didn't make this myself!

Pass the Gift game.

Foot Writing Game.

Drama in a bag (just for fun) in teams. They like to write skits. The bag had props they had to use in their performance.

Truth or Dare with pre-selected questions and activities.

Pajama Contest.



And they also made bath salts and cute flip-flops (see them in the picture above?) and talked and sang and laughed.

Throughout the night they could earn "money" which they spent at an "auction" for inexpensive prizes like candy, gum, nail polish, journals, and so on.

We ended with a movie, and they fell asleep.

I need to recuperate now! I'm getting too old for this!

(I got lots of ideas at the links above and at Birthday Party Ideas 4 Kids.)