I talked to my daughter and got her views on what type of party she wanted to have, and she decided on a roller skating and slumber birthday party. I immediately got on the phone and reserved tables at the local roller rink. I sent all of her girl friends special party invitations. It was a lot cheaper than I figured it would be. They had a great package deal for birthday parties, with pizza, hot dogs and refreshments. The party was to continue at our house after the skating, so I had to get everything ready. I put up decorations, fixed a table with a few goodies to snack on, along with the sweet 16 cookies I prepared earlier.

The cookie cutters wasn’t the only thing I ordered online. Since I saved money on the roller rink deal, I decided it would be nice to get the girls a few sweet sixteen favors. I found pink photo albums for the girls and gave each of them a disposable camera for party pictures. I gave them the cameras before we left for the roller rink, but they had no idea about the albums until later. They all took a few pictures at the rink and wanted to save some film for the slumber party they were having afterwards.

One of the favors was a cosmetic bag that had each girls initial on the front button. With the cosmetic bags I bought manicure sets and little purse mirrors to go with it. I bought festive little favor boxes and filled them with candies for each of the girls. As soon as we got home, we celebrated with a sweet sixteen idea with cake and ice cream and she opened all of her presents. We picked up movies on the way home for the girls and I made sure they had plenty of snacks and drinks, so they were all set for the night. They danced for a while, then they gave each other manicures with their new sets, and of course, they did the make up thing. They were having a lot of fun together.

When the noise starting dwindling down they got out the bowls of popcorn and started watching their movies. Even though I tried to stay out of the way, when they asked me to watch a movie with them, I jumped at the chance. It made me feel good that they wanted to include me. They actually made it through the first two movies before they started nodded off, one by one. Now it was down to just me and my daughter and she didn’t make it very long. But before she passed out, she thanked me for giving her such a great party.

They ate breakfast and cleaned up everything left from the birthday party before I even got out of bed. It was really sweet of the girls to do that. They hung around with my daughter for a couple of hours, then the kids started heading for home. They told me they had a super time and they thought the favors for sweet sixteen were really cool. I like that my daughter and her friends now consider me to be a cool mom.