Boys End of Summer Party

We promised our boys that they could have a party with all of their friends after we got back from all of our trips. In fact the last couple of weeks we had to reiterate that promise many, many times. Of course, Ken and I wanted to drag out our vacation as long as possible so we came back just in time for Rose to go to Kinder Orientation (literally 1 hour before). While we were at the school with Rose the boys called up all of their friends and invited them over for a "Nerf Wars" party at our house the next evening.

Honestly, I was amazed at how many were able to come on such short notice. We ended up with 17 boys! I was super proud of Darin and Nathan too, when we came home I totally forgot to check and see if they had really invited everyone or just their closest friends. The next morning when it dawned on me, I asked them, and they had included everyone all on their own!

At our house it's kind of a rule that if you are having more then 2 friends per boy come over, then you invite EVERYONE. Mainly because if they invite say 3-4 friends from their church class or whatever that means only 1-2 boys weren't invited. And that can really sting if you are the 1-2 that is left out. When you get past a super small group then you might as well include everyone. That includes little brothers too, we never turn down a little brother (or sometimes sister) from tagging along with their older brother.

Since I'm at it I might as well go on...My parents would host my friends (boys and girls)almost every Friday night from the time I was 14+. We are talking 30-50 youth on any given night, and our house really wasn't that big. Before I was 14 it was mainly girls but they always let me have as many girls as I want come sleep over. I truly believe there is safety in numbers. Even though we did dumb stuff all the time, there is still safety in numbers. Especially in being semi-close, or having regular contact with a bunch of girls. So when a friends ditches you for her boyfriend, or when another starts hanging out with kids who do drugs, or when your bestie moves away for a year, etc. you have choices. It's hard to lose a best friend for whatever reason, but it's not as hard when you have other friends (even if they are ones you aren't so close too) that you can choose to be with.

Our boys are at the time in their life when it's more important then ever to have lots of friends to choose from, it's also the time in life when kids want to segregate and become more exclusive. I am glad they are still so open to many friendships and recognize that they have lots of things in common with many boys.

Anyway, the boys planned a Nerf Party this time and it was probably the funnest one yet! Here's a bunch of pics from the night... They ate 5 extra large pizzas from Sam's Club, it was actually less then I thought they would.



They built a couple of forts for protection.



This is the reason I love our two story house. The game room has railing and is open to the family room, the entry is also two story and is open to the upstairs hallway. It made it very nice for them to wage battle against each other.



The smart teams would use Rose and Ginger to fetch bullets that had missed so they could re-load. Our girls love these parties as much of the boys, in fact they think they are one of the boys:-) We ended up with bullets in all sorts of crazy places. Ken had to use his two story ladder to get a few of them down. A few weeks later I would still find them in flower arrangements or on top of furniture and would totally chuckle. It was a great party and all the boys seemed to have a ton of fun!

While they ran around crazy, me and Ken unpacked and did laundry, and kept the treats stocked. The only thing I didn't re-fill was the bowl of grapes, go figure:-)