Birthday Bash Extravaganza

So.. My daughter’s 13th birthday is next weekend. Labor day weekend.

13 is a big deal! She’s finally a teenager! I’ll be honest, I usually tend to go overboard on her birthday’s anyhow, but this year, especially since it’s her 13th birthday, I feel that I definitely must do something to show it’s a big deal that she’s 13.

A large part of my family lives in Southern California, so we often head that way for her birthday, with a friend or two of hers. For her 11th birthday we took her best friend with us to Cali and made a stop at Disneyland. Last year, we took 2 of her friends to Cali and went to Universal Studios. I keep making these really big deals out of her birthday and it’s going to be hard for me to stop and make her realize that it’s not always going to be a Rock Star party for her. Generally, we head to Cali so we can visit with family and it’s on a holiday weekend, so it just works out that way.

As I said in a previous post, this year, we’ll stay with my parents in Huntington Beach. It’s a 6 hour drive, so not too bad of a drive and much cheaper than flights for 5 people, so we will definitely be driving. They can relax and watch movies, play games, whatever they like. After school Friday, we’ll stop by our house so they can change into comfy clothes for driving and hit the road.

Luckily, my best friend works at Disneyland, so we’ll head to Disneyland with her and 2 of her friends for the day (Thanks again Dona!). We’ll start off the day at Goofy’s kitchen (which she loves). It’s a buffet style breakfast, with lots of fun kids stuff. Not that the average person won’t like it, but it’s definitely geared towards the kids. Next we head to California Disney and get our fastpass for the new Colors of the World attraction (this will be a first for us) and her It’s my birthday tag! I think I might even get the girls all a Mickey/Minnie hat with their names embroidered on it. That will take up all day Saturday.

Sunday we will maybe head to the Bella Terra mall in HB for a movie in the morning and then back to grandma’s for a BBQ in the early afternoon. Complete with cake and ice cream! Monday we’ll head back to California. Probably stopping at Ruby’s diner (that’s her favorite) for lunch and if we didn’t get to do the movie on Sunday, maybe we’ll hit a movie on Monday. She wants to see the Vampire spoof movie, so that’s probably what we’ll see. But not for sure.

Anyhow.. Back to the issue at hand. If I keep doing these outstanding parties, she’s always expect them. I think next year, we’ll have a sleepover with 3 girls and maybe Skateland. LOL.. We’ll see how that works. Especially since it falls on Labor Day weekend. She’ll just have to have her party the week before or after! Darn it!