[jmdt]

My daughter just celebrated her 18th birthday (I can't believe it) last Monday. She had about 10-12 friends over. First they were inside just talking and playing pool I made a chocolate fondue and they loved that. Then they went in the backyard and sat around the firepit and roasted marshmallows and just hung out and talked. I made cupcakes, so when they came in they ate cupcakes, played more pool and just talked. For my little one's birthday, he's 10, we invited just the boys in his class to a bowling party. They had a great time and it wasn't too expensive. Then we had cake at home. It was a great time. I took lots of pictures. I took a picture of each kid with him and put that in the thank you card. It only turned out to be about 9-10 boys so it was great fun. For my 14 year old daughter we did a mall scavenger hunt. I split the groups up into 4 girls, we had 4 groups. I made a list of things they had to find and put in a bag. They all had my cell phone number, and one rule was that they must stay together, no splitting up. My husband and I walkied the mall and if any of them was breaking a rule they would be disqualified. They had to meet me and my husband in the food court at a certain time and we had subway heros and carvel ice cream in the food court it was great fun. On the list I made each team use the $5.00 I put in the bag to buy something, anything for my daughter. Since they all have cell phones I made alot of clues that they had to find about taking a picture in front of a certain store. They also had to take a picture of the stores thats first letter started with all the letters of my daughters name. For instance her name is Deanna so they had to find a store that started with a "d" then a "e" and so on. It was great. Also everytime they passed her in the mall they had to say "Happy Birthday" really loud.