For months preceding her Dec. 1 birthday, Christel Khalil (Lily, THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS) had been talking of nothing but getting her driver's license. She even used her Y&R paychecks to buy herself a brand new Nissan Xterra, but now, she has to wait to go off-roading with her friends.

"I'm so mad," fumes Khalil, with a good-natured laugh. "My test was Dec. 3. After I'd been waiting in line (at the DMV) for over an hour, I get to the window and they say, 'Do you have the orange paper?' I was like, 'I have the yellow one.' They said, 'You can't go out there unless you have the orange one. It shows you completed driver's training.'"

She'd taken the class, but the supervisor at the DMV showed no sympathy for her plight. "I asked if they could call the school I went to and they said, 'Oh, no, we don't call,'" mimics Khalil, rolling her eyes. "The next appointment is Dec. 31, so now I have to wait! The holidays will make everything go faster, so I can wait. At least I can start off my new year getting my license."

And at least her big hotel b-day bash went better...sort of! Khalil had a blast partying with buddies like co-star Lyndsy Fonseca (Colleen), but it took a few tries to get things going.

"When we got there, we had so many problems with our room," sighs Khalil. "The first one, the beds weren't made and everything was stinky. We were sent to another room and it was so tiny. We'd ordered a bigger room, so we went back down and we got the executive suite, which is one big room. We go up and the toilet starts overflowing! I was in tears."

The hotel made good, giving the party the room next door for free, but then came the security scare. "Lyndsy opened the door and she screamed," laughs Khalil. "She was like, 'Oh, my God, there's security out there.' I was so scared! I went out and they said, 'Excuse me, but there are no parties allowed in the hotel. No noise complaints yet, so just keep it down and make sure no one's out here talking on their cell phones.'"

Having survived one final bump in the road, Khalil and her friends got down to the business of having fun. "We talked and I had music playing," she says. "It was a kick-back thing. Then everyone left at around 2 and I had five of my close friends sleep over, so it was just us girls. We had the cake and went to bed at around 3 in the morning. We were so tired."

Bet they were! Now, all Khalil's got to do is pass that test.