Post #895. Sweet Sixteen Planning

Sarah's Sweet 16 Birthday has been on my mind for the past several months.

I stressed for a long time over how she wanted me to handle the Birthday since it falls on a Saturday and she has a blended family.

She made it simply clear from the beginning - she wanted to be here.

       With us.
             Preferably on a trip.

Her first choice was Hawaii, but her second choice was New York City.

She made that request, matter-of-fact, with a perfectly serious face.

Seriously, over the years, Jim has made too many fairy-tale dreams come true, I think. We've made traditions of going on trips and bringing her friends with us. 

She said that she didn't want a traditional party because in her words, she doesn't have enough friends to make it big. She's loved by so many, but true enough, she has a few close friends and a lot of acquaintances.

So, instead, she wanted to travel.

Smart girl.

But with a Birthday exactly two weeks before Christmas, and in the midst of all of the other family Birthdays/Anniversaries, Christmas spending, and paying off expensive High School Class rings, and Band Spring Break trips which all just happened to be due this Fall, travel seemed like an impossibility.

Yet nothing is impossible forever... 

All of this planning got me to thinking back about my own "Sweet 16" Birthday.

I couldn't even remember anything special about that day. I talked to my sister about it and we both agreed that it was just a normal birthday with our family celebration. Neither one of us could even remember more than one sleepover with a group of friends. It just wasn't something that happened at our house. It was a sleepover enough with 4 girls in the house (5 including our other "sister", Linda B.)  ☺

Nice as they were, the birthdays from childhood are all just kind of one big birthday memory, all lumped together.

So, I was curious...

I went into my stash of personal memorabilia to the source of source.

Yes, my teenage diaries,

which I must have wrote in a rush because it wasn't like me to misspell or scribble in doctor-like script!!

I wrote the entries as if I was writing to a friend. The friend changed. Sometimes it was a girl, other times a guy of my imagination. In the case below, I was writing to my German friend, Kerstin, who actually really existed and visited our family a couple of times over the years.

I paged through the entries to Wednesday, November 19, 1980.

My 16th Birthday.

... Where I wrote about the cute guy from church (that's what I was doing at church during those teen years - checking out the cute guys), who smiled at me during lunch. Wow. He smiled.  I was a geek.

My gifts consisted of a blue velour sweater from Grandma. Grandma wasn't really our Grandma since none of our Grandparents were living. Grandma was our Aunt Mary's Mother-in-Law, who in her sweet goodness, felt bad that we didn't have Grandparents, and became our "adopted Grandma". She always sent us cards and gifts for our Birthdays and Christmas.  Grandma McMillen.  God bless her soul.

I also received a mittens and hat set from Aunt Mary, our Mom's sister.

From my family, I received a purple sweater, cowboy hat (hee haw. It was red and there's a photo of me in that hat somewhere), flannel shirt, socks/footies, makeup, nail polish, perfume and stationary. 

That's it.

A whol-l-l-e lot less than what Sarah has always received, let me tell you.

               But there were 4 of us girls in the same house. 5 with Linda B.

Things were a lot different.  ☺


So, this is what I've been working on for months - Sarah's Sweet Sixteen - that I carry around with me on organized notes, that has been keenly established from the smallest details, with a whole lot of help.

The plans will definitely not be devulged here and I'll only report back after it's all done.

Countdown. 
     9 days until the surprises begin.