19 'Til 19: My 18th Birthday Party

So it's Day 2 of my "19 'Til 19" series. Today, I want to talk about kind of where it all started this past year--my 18th birthday party. It was a truly amazing night filled with lots of food, fun, and fellowship. I got to share it with a bunch of the friends I had made down through the years. It was also such a big party, we got to have it at our church building...which was pretty unique. :) 

One of my mom's friends decorated and she did an incredible job! I still have some of the things she made for me! She's literally the best. Also, I took two of my friends there along with me and they were so sweet. They set up the party with us and helped me get ready. :)

The party had to be rescheduled because my siblings had gotten sick the weekend it was supposed to be. Thus, a few more of my friends couldn't make it, which I was sad about. Thankfully, my mom was super sweet about it and let me have all the ones who could still make it come to my house a week early and hang out with me.

My penpal from Colorado happened to be in town that weekend for a writing conference so she decided to stay at my house and was able to make it back from a long day at the convention to come to the very end of the party. She gave me a cute card with 2 bracelets she'd made me and was able to meet some of my friends and take a few pictures with me. 

Another thing that happened that night that I really cherish the memory of was when one of the guys who used to be my best friend told me what his family had gotten for my birthday/graduation later that year. Right before this, I had been borrowing books from the "Kingdom Series" by Chuck Black from him and his family and so as we were sitting at a table eating, his mom walked by and said something like, "Why don't you tell her why her gift from us isn't here yet?" So he was like, "Oh yeah. Your gift is still being shipped, but we got you the entire Kingdom Series." I just looked at him in shock and screamed. I jumped out of my chair, ran around the table and gave him a huge hug. He was a bit surprised, but he gave me a hug back. 

For the party though, we played several games, ate dinner and cake/ice cream, I opened gifts, and then we took pictures in a photo booth behind a frame I painted. 

There were several games, but the two biggest were our version of Pictionary on a whiteboard and Balloon Volleyball. The Pictionary game was pretty easy. The crowd was divided into two teams. Each person from the two sides would take a turn drawing something and their team would guess. Whichever team guessed the most correctly won. It ended in a tie and so I tie-breaker was held. I can't remember who drew for that...but I feel like it was either me or my penpal. I also don't even remember who won lol. Balloon Volleyball was something my mom had researched and really liked. We had little nets set up made out of yarn and chairs. Everyone had to sit on the floor and play volleyball (like normal) but with a ball. There was a whole tournament and stuff too. While my team didn't win, it still was really fun.

So yeah, I included a couple pictures of the night below. If you want to see more. You can go to the blog site I made least year with just pictures from that night. Click here to see more photos.

Our penpal Shaina. (Left to right: Shaina, me, my friend Hosanna.)