14

When we realized that the girls' birthday party was on a Friday, we started planning an after-school bash. Now that they are teenagers, we have been asking the girls to take on more and more responsibility for their activities. We had them create a guest list and plan activities. We brought in Erin as she's their birthday triplet. The three girls share most friends, so it made sense to have one big party.
From the moment the girls came home from school, we were busy bringing the party to life. Luckily for the girls, Daddy did much of the prep work while they were in school. He put out the furniture and got out the games.
I was working in the house to set-up the food and beverage areas with the blond twin. Daddy was in the backyard setting up the volleyball net with the brunette twin. At least we though they were setting up the volleyball net. It turned out that the last time we set-up the volleyball we didn't do a good job putting away the net. We all tried to untangle the net for a while before we decided to just buy a new net. 
At 4:30 p.m. girls started arriving. By 5:00 p.m., we had girls everywhere. They were playing volleyball, croquet, bean bags and a washer game. It was loud and chaotic and fun. The girls devoured two extra large cheese pizzas about 5:15 p.m. They were still hungry, so we fired up the grill.
Erin's family brought the cake and it was simply gorgeous. Our girls have never had such a beautiful birthday cake. I doubt they will see another cake that beautiful again until they get married. Everyone devoured the cake, including a few boys who crashed the birthday bash.
We didn't even go into the living room when the three girls opened their gifts. Between the 20 girls and all the presents, there wasn't much space for others. We could have sat at the dining room table to watch, but truth be told the girls didn't really want us there. We stepped in and out just to see some of the fun.
By the time the party guests left, we were all tired. It wasn't that the girls were a lot of work.  At this age they are pretty self-sufficient. There was just so much going on that it was hard to keep up at times. After the party I realized that I didn't take a single photo. Luckily Erin's mom took photos.
The girls cleaned up with us, chatting happily about how much fun they had from start to finish. We had been talking about possibly having a Halloween party. The birthday bash's success made the potential Halloween party a definite event. The girls talked about it a lot, but I told them planning would have to wait. For tonight I just wanted to get some sleep.