Malia's 11th Birthday

Malia's 11th Birthday - January 17, 2015

The year starts off with Malia's 11th Birthday party. We've always held Malia's party after Christmas for many years as long as I could remember. The rationale was that after Christmas, people are broke, so we hold Malia's party 2 pay periods after Christmas. This year the party was held on January 17th.

Malia being 11 years old is starting to turn the corner into teenage aloofness. She is in middle school. Her behavior has been much different than a year ago. She likes to be by herself, she doesn't want anyone bothering her, and she gives attitude if someone tells her what to do ~ all point to beginning stages of a teenage girl.

Anyway, she will respond to something that involves her, her only. We started planning her party. Michelle always wanted to get her something big and not have a party. Money wise, makes a lot of sense. But materialistic things only go so far in life and memories (if good) tend to stay in the mind a little longer.

How we get to this point is a long story. But Malia is a private person. She likes attention, but not more than she can handle. She invited about 10 of her closes friends to the party. Half were from Mililani and half from Kapolei. One thing interesting was that they all came, which means that she has a good connection with them.

Throwing a party is always difficult, Michelle does her work and more than her share to make it awesome. She made the cupcakes and cut the veggies. I picked up the main entrees. But we both seemed stressed out, not because of the party, but our jobs have been stressful lately. I'm not sure why.

The party was only 3 hours long and went exactly how we thought it would go. Girls, especially adolescent girls always seem to have fun and that is what they did. They would play in the pool, eat, play on the jungle gym, back to the pool. They were able to have fun for 3 hours, that's impressive! I think Malia was happy.

Malia is growing up so fast. I just went through pictures of when she was just born, Jesus!