Party pictures

Andy at school wearing the crown they gave him. I gave out cupcakes to his class and everyone sang Happy Birthday with the phrase "Eat more chicken" from Chic-Fil-A at the end of every refrain. Why? Because they're five and six year olds. His teacher said it was totally organic so the marketers should be thrilled.

Mom got him a fireman outfit. Awesome! Excedpt the bullhorn actually makes awful noises. It may need to "break" her shortly.

Here is his party before I totally lost control of the group.

Well, that went...okay

We had Andy's birthday party yesterday and it wasn't quite a Bataan death march with eight screaming six year olds, but perhaps not that far off. I had this great idea that we'd have a half-sleepover, which we'd be to at another kids' house before where the kids come over for a few hours in their pajamas for pizza, cake, games and a movie. I scheduled three hours thinking all but the movie would take 1 1/2 hours, then they'd graciously and happily watch the movie for the remaining time. Their parents would show up and the children would graciously leave having had a wonderful time.

It mostly went according to plan, however, they had no interest in the movie. That meant I had another 1 1/2 hours to entertain kids while were getting increasingly tired and rowdy. Uh-oh.

So here's what worked:
1) Having a party at home was nice. I had all my stuff and didn't have to schlep it somewhere else.
2) There was a little more room for error. When a kid claimed he was allergic to tomatoes, I could substitute yogurt. Course, I had to do that for eight kids, but that was fine. I was home; I had it.
3) I invited the parents to stay for a glass of wine. That was nice to get to know them a little better.
4) Lots of outside help. With Bjorn, Mark, Margareta, Dad and Elizabeth, we almost had enough adults to go man to man on the children.

Here's what didn't work:
1) It was at least an hour too long. If it had been over at two hours, everyone would have been happy (mostly me). But that last hour was where the problems started.
2) I bought Costco pizza because it's good, but the kids had no interest in good pizza. They wanted plain cheese Domino's/Red Baron pizza that looks and tastes like cardboard.
3) Eight kids was probably too many (10 really if you factor in Meg and my niece Emma who are three). I had 100 percent acceptance which I wasn't counting on. Six (four?) probably would have been better and more manageable.
4) Make it a single sex party. I invited my nieces and our good friend whose daughter is also in kindergarten. They played nicely with each other mostly, but there were two little girls from Andy's class and one in particular seems to play Andy and his BFF Bart off each other. Andy was in tears at one point because they said he wasn't their best friend anymore. Course, Andy did refuse to play the game they wanted to on the Wii.
5) No Wii should have been allowed. Only two kids can play at once and there was competition for it (see no. 4).  
6) It actually rained yesterday so we couldn't send the kids out with a flashlight to look at the creek or anything and blow off some energy.

Meg's birthday is in 10 days. I am totally doing something more low key than this for her. And next year? I think I'm going to Chuck E Cheese.

Happy January birthday!

January is a great time of year because right after Christmas, we go into celebrating three birthdays within three weeks. I don't think you could plan that timing if you tried.

So we had three family parties and one gymnastics party. It was awesome, but I think we're all glad it's over with. Mark and Andy are cute and all, but they don't compare to Meg wearing her new tutu, Elmo shirt, tiara and waving her wand. That girl can celebrate.

Anybody smoke?

We had Andy's birthday party yesterday and it all went swimmingly except that I forgot the matches. And in this day and age, no one smokes so there were no candles lit to blow out. I think I was most disappointed.

We did it at the gymnastics place where he takes lessons. We invited the boys from his class and a few other boys he knows outside of school, making it an all sausage fest. There were 12 kids total. It's so hard trying to keep the numbers for these somewhat manageable. Between 20 kids in his class and all his (well, my friends' kids), I easily could have invited 50 kids. As it was, we kept it to just boys and then just boys aged four to six. If I'd gone any younger, they wouldn't have gotten to do all the fun stuff.

Overall it went well. They did gymnastics stuff for an hour on the trampoline, on an obstacle course and in the pit. They even let them do a little on the rings. Andy got to the the line leader for the whole party. I think that may have been just as thrilling. He actually loved it. He can get a little shy in these situations, but not this time. He was even pretty gracious, well, except where he lorded his line-leader status to the other kids. Otherwise, he was a great sport.

The whole thing lasted about and hour and a half. Pretty good. To remember for next year 1) parents always show up early to these things. Even though we got there about 10 minutes early (they had said no more than 15), two sets of parents were pulling up as we were unloading, 2) bring matches.

A cool side note, he got several sets of legos. I personally love legos. I played with them as a kid and I'm thrilled Andy's old enough for the real ones. The downside? Damnit if it doesn't take 45 minutes to put together a car what with 200 pieces, 100 of which are the size of an earring back.