Happy 16th Birthday Willie!

The most important thing I needed to accomplish this week before leaving for my trip was to organize the birthday weekend party for our beloved WILLIE PAAG! It seems like just yesterday that I was throwing him a 6 year old birthday; we were in Saipan, there was a pinata.

Who would have known that those early days together would have lead to this?

There was a lot of pre-party negotiating going on with Willie. For instance, he really wanted me to make lumpia. For those of you not familiar with these delicious Filipino treats, they are like a Filipino egg roll. They are filled with fabulous things and fried up and they are delicious. When you as a Filipino friend about making them they will often say, "So good! So much chopp chopp! You have to have a wrapping party!"

I put the ca -bash on that. We settled for pizza and sushi and he wanted pancit, but I said no to that as well, and when I thought we had worked everything out, he tells me that he wanted chili dogs and arn't they on the list? And the cake~he wanted a "Tokyo Mater" cake based on the short film that came before this summers animated 'Bolt'. Could he have picked a more obscure reference? I asked if an icecream cake wouldn't suffice and he said that it would...whew!

He also wanted boys and girls over for a party and did not really get the concept of a sleep over and that girls do not sleep over and you don't call their parents at like 11pm to come pick them up.

He also wanted a pinata.

Imagine: six 14 through 18 year old boys swinging at a pinata....inside my house!

This was also a concept that he was not fully able to let go of. His friends "aren't that crazy". I imagine that this is true because the parents of all the kids called me and interviewed me before sending their kids off to my house. I havn't had to be interviewed in a while and it gave me hope that indeed Willie has nice friends.

Irene told him that she would have a mid-year birthday party where there could be a pinata OUTSIDE. Seemed like a deal to me.

Suzanne and Valda and Mema were here. Vince got stuck in Anchorage and missed the cake festivities. Oh...all the food I made...no one was really eating because they all brought energy drinks to the party, so they weren't that hungry. As I sat around the table with the bunch of super hyped up young men I was so grateful that I did not spend hours chopping, rolling, and frying lumpia!

They spent the evening in the basement watching movies, playing Wii, farting on each other I'm sure...I know they were wrestling on each other and I was glad we hadn't finished the drywall down there. This post is virtually picture free because I wasn't going to intrude into the dude space with my paparatzi ways.

They were fun and funny and I thought I would be up all night listening to them, but I actually only woke up once when a very angry sounding DeeJay was yelling, "Jesse stop spraying my Axe! I spend a lot of money for Axe!" I was secretly praying that they were having Axe wars and that by the morning Axe would no longer be a part of my life, but...no such luck.

They all slept in and in the morning Wille came upstairs with happy eyes.

Happy birthday Willie, we love you.