How to throw a party for your teenager (the easy way)

When it comes to birthday parties, I am usually known for going over the top with party prep and creativity. For years this blog has offered tips, ideas and how to's on how to create themed birthday parties that your kid will look forward to for months and reminisce about for years.

This is not one of those parties. Those days are gone - at least when it comes to my eldest son, anyway.
These days we are teenagers; we are not little kids any more. We want our birthday parties to be "chill" and "lit". (Oldie speak = "cool" and "legit" - I think???)

Last weekend I managed to pull off a pretty "lit" party quite successfully, without embarrassing my brand-new 14-year-old - and it was really easy. Here's what ya do...

What Kids Learn from Having a Dog

In just four short months our rescue puppy, Clyde, has turned us into a bunch of fully converted Dog People. Of course the kids had been begging for us to become a Dog Family for donkey's years, but I had taken some convincing, because I'd heard the rumours.
Dogs are lots of work. They stink, they shed hair, they chew everything, they pee and poop everywhere, they eat you out of house and home. Having a puppy is the same amount of work as having a newborn; having a dog is like having another kid.

Being your quintessential Lazy Mother, I was extremely reluctant to sign up for extra work. I mean, I already had my hands full with three human children.
Who needs the extra job of picking up poop and bathing a dog when it's all you can do to keep your boys regularly showering and your toilet floor a urine-free zone.
Am I right?
Having a dog sounded like sooooo much work.

But then we got Clyde. In some kind of weird fit of intuition, I had a gut feeling that a puppy was just what the kids needed to help them get through a tough time.
It seemed counter-intuitive, and plenty of people thought I really had finally gone crazy taking on extra work in the middle of a crisis, but I turned out to be right on the money with this one.