Sweet Sixteen

I never thought of 16 as being one of those milestone birthdays but of course I was that age many, many years ago and I’m not a girl. Today it’s a big deal for young girls and I found out first-hand the other night as my daughter Alex and her best friend Sami Raymond celebrated the occasion with a “Sweet 16 Party” that left the host parents exhausted and thrilled.

The planning started three months ago although to be honest my part was limited to securing the disc jockey and taking care of the food both which turned out to be home runs. Kyle from Above and Beyond Entertainment was the perfect DJ and how can you miss with food for teen-agers when you have it catered by Surf Taco. Honestly outside of that I didn’t do too much with mothers and daughters handling all the other details but that changed on Saturday morning. We met at the Beachwood Fire House to begin setting-up and with many neat touches turned the room into a beach-like setting by the time guests arrived shortly before 7pm.

With over 90 exuberant teen-agers to serve food too and monitor we had plenty of help. Alex and Sami are not only best friends with birthdays two days apart but have older brothers who are the same age and with both home from college they were recruited as bouncers…just in case. Well truth is the kids were great and never once gave us cause for any concern. Most of them danced during the entire four hours and they were well-behaved and simply a lot of fun. By the time the last song was played our clean-up efforts were well under way and an hour or so later we were home…my wife had sore feet, my back was killing me but we had smiles a mile wide because the day was simply perfect.

We got together with Sami’s parents Jackie and Tom yesterday and looked at some pictures and talked about how smoothly the party went and how terrific all the kids were. That’s a great feeling but then I realized my Alex turns 16 tomorrow and will now be able to drive. All of a sudden I feel very old.