The details

The party was amazing. Zaven had invited 10 kids. 6 boys and 4 girls. None of the girls came, which was a good thing in a way. If it had been co-ed, I'd have had to supervise more. They are teens, after all. As it was, 5 of the boys he invited came and one of them brought a friend who'd been at his house when he was getting ready to come. He called to ask first and since there was plenty of food we said yes. The extra friend was someone Zaven knew from school, but didn't know well. Anyhow, a total of six teenaged boys came over. Zaven let Caly stay for the party if she promised not to talk the whole time. She promised and was actually able to keep her promise. It looked like it was going to kill her, but she did great.

So when they all had arrived we shooed them off and told them to go walk around the farm. Then Zoe left to go spend the night at grandma's. (She really, really wanted to stay for the party, but she wasn't about to agree to not talk much, LOL.) The boys (and Caly) were gone for an hour, then showed up hungry and thirsty and excited. They'd found some of the more interesting bits of junk on the place, including a laser cannon that Scott had bought at a salvage auction. It doen't work or anything, but they were very impressed. They'd also found the cars that Scott was getting ready to sell as scrap metal. Zaven and Caly told them they were allowed to break out the windows (they were, since the glass doesn't add to the scrap value) so they threw rocks at them. So we fed them pizza and Jones sodas (no caffiene) and then we brought out the cake.

And he got to cut it with a machete. A real one. They seemed very impressed with that. Then he opened his gifts. He got mostly cash, which pleased him to no end. He also got a new 4 Gig mp3 player which he was very, very happy with.

By that time it was dark out, so we gave them all flashlights and sent them back outside to explore some more. And while they were gone we filled up the glow-in-the-dark balloons and put them all over the yard. There was a light breeze and they moved around as they flashed on and off, so my pictures all look strange, but this is kind of what it looked like.

When they got back from exploring and saw the balloons they were so impressed. Then they took one of the red ones and one of the blue ones and went off in the fields to play capture the flag in the dark. They all had on black t-shirts and the moon was out so they didn't use the flashlights. Meanwhile Quinn was having so much fun walking around the dark yard and looking at the balloons. He was just in heaven.

When the bigger kids finally dragged themselves in at around 10:30, they were worn out. They just kind of collapsed. Most of them went inside to watch a movie (the terminator) but a couple of them had seen it several times so just hung out and talked on the porch. Slowly moms and dads started showing up to get them. The last one left just after midnight.

The whole time they were at the house they couldn't stop talking about how much fun they'd had. In fact, one of their mom's is my best friend and she told me that the minute her son got in the car when she picked him up he asked to borrow her phone. He was going to call all the kids who didn't come and tell them how they missed the best party ever. She also told me that he was so sore from playing all night that the next day that he could barely walk.

And just as importantly, Scott, Quinn and I had a great time while they were playing. My sister stayed for the party rather than just drop her son off, so we hung out on the porch and talked and relaxed and enjoyed the breeze and the balloons. The boys weren't in the house much so there wasn't even a lot of cleaning to be done the next day. All in all, it was the perfect party.