NATCHEZ — Early teenage years are a special time in a person’s life as they still have a lifetime ahead of them.

Such is the case for Emily Claire Carney who celebrated her 14th birthday Wednesday.

Just two years away from driving, Carney said she is ready to be done with high school and college and to start out on her own.

Not, however, before spending the weekend celebrating her birthday by holding a slumber party with five of her closest friends from Cathedral Middle School.

As the temperatures outside dipped into the lower 30s Friday afternoon, the six eighth-grade girls were sprinting through the cold where TheDart landed on Pecanway Drive.

Two of the girls, Madison Burgess and Samyria Gibson, were sipping on Icees they had just picked up from a nearby GoMart.

Carney was so hyped for her birthday weekend slumber party that she didn’t mind the weather, she said.

“It’s just because it was my birthday the other day,” Carney said, of the get-together.

Carney said she invited her five best friends over to her house for a special birthday treat.

None of the girls seemed ready to slow their lives down at the moment, saying they hadn’t slept at all the night before.

They were all too giggly and excited to sleep, except Samantha Ashley who passed out before the rest of the group, Ashley said.

Carney’s mother, Catherine Smith, said she had a fun evening planned for the girls, starting with watching the Cathedral boys basketball game, then dinner at La Fiesta and later a scavenger hunt on the Natchez bluff.

Most of the girls have known each other since first grade and younger, Smith said. Although Smith has raised only one daughter, Smith said she has always had the rest of the girls around the house.

“They’ve always been around,” Smith said. “I think this is the first time I’ve ever let them walk to the GoMart, but I figured with that big of a group — and since they’re getting a little older — I could let them run a little.”