On Monday, I took Victoria and a few of her friends to Lake Compounce as Victoria's birthday party. Lots of excitement and some drama happened before the big day. I picked the girls up and headed to the park. While in the car, the girls sang off key to songs on the radio, played games on an Ipod touch with the speaker loud, and phone calls all at the same time. They were so loud I completely missed an exit. I even had the GPS on.

One of the girls had never, ever been to an amusement park. I found it hard to believe. I kept checking to be sure she had not forgotten a trip made long ago. She insisted she had never been to an amusement park. After getting off one of the rides, the girls told us how there were kids on the ride screaming the F word and telling everyone to shut up. When I pressed a bit, it sounds like they were telling my child to shut up because she was screaming her head off. That sounded about right. I told the girls not to worry about the profanity and it sounded like some kids were just being obnoxious while not being supervised. Somehow this comment led to a debate on which one of them could be the most obnoxious. Somehow this led to a group hug of sorts, probably to prove none of us matched the level of obnoxiousness of those on the Wild Cat.

For the most part, the girls were respectful of their parents, particularly their mothers. One girl is very impressed her mother can do anything while driving: read a book, add numbers, eat lunch. It was nice to know we parents haven't yet been cast off to the Isle of Misfits.

All of the kids use AOL AIM's program to communicate. It's a social networking site with more parental controls than others. I check Victoria's regularly to be sure I know what is going on. Hopefully I do. I learned the kids all have at least two AIM names, one their parents know about and another which is secret. It's these other names, the ones the parents are unaware of, where the status messages are quite cruel. I've looked over Victoria's shoulder to spot some interesting status messages, including a few about Victoria. Some of the messages are something like, "So-n-So is a bitch and needs deodorant." So if your kid uses AIM, you might want to check how many AIM accounts they hold.

Another birthday survived!