Celebrating Rebekah's 17th

This girl turned 17 yesterday. A big birthday bash with all her nearest and dearest besties was how she was hoping to celebrate. Because this weekend she is performing "Crazy For You" with her theatre group, we decided to have the party a few days early.

Rebekah, the technological saavy and social media guru that she is, created a facebook event to invite all her friends. Oh, nothing major...it's not like she invited the whole high school or anything. But she did make sure people knew it was fine to spread the message, that it was an open invite. Because after all, it was just a "hang out" in the basement kind of party....

It was kind of interesting to watch the numbers go up each day as to who was planning to come, who was a maybe and the messages from people expressing their regrets if they couldn't make it. It also gave me a better idea of how many people to plan for, food-wise.

And I did have plenty of food. Mostly because though I figured I'd have tons of leftovers, I wanted to have lots of variety. But wow, I was still surprised at the sheer numbers of people who showed up! I think even Rebekah was stunned. "I think that may be the biggest party I have ever been to....and it was at MY house!" was her comment. After everyone left around 11:30, Rebekah tried to remember and write down all the names of the people who had come...and if her memory hasn't failed her, we had a good 48 teenagers in our home.

They more or less took over the home, actually. Pockets of kids around the food in the kitchen, kids talking on the deck, playing soccer on the back lawn, jumping on the trampoline or climbing up the 20 foot rope, kids dance party-ing in the man cave, playing pool in the basement or board games in the family room. Kids congregated in the living room playing the piano, kids even talking out on the front driveway. At one point I think they all gathered out front to play a night game of some sort. But other than that, they all just kind of hung out and enjoyed each other's company. Rebekah looked ridiculously pleased with how the whole thing turned out. She was kind of floating a little bit when everyone left....from fatigue, I'm sure...but mostly because she'd had so much fun.