I had two sets of kids, and neither set had birthday parties. At least not the kind that took over bowling allies or the local rec centre for skating or swimming or crazy 'for kids only' play restaurants with really bad food or rented bouncy castles complete with live clown and ponies or even MacD's for that matter. And their entire class would be invited, whether you liked half the kids or not. So anywhere from fifteen to thirty kids would descend on you. I noticed with the grandkids party that the loudest most uncontrolled kid's parents would drop them and run.
And the presents! Holy Hannah! This last party, for Fenton, he must have got five hundred bucks worth of gifts and worst of all? Half those kids didn't give actual wrapped presents, they gave him bought cards with money shoved into them. He ended up with eighty five dollars. Eighty five. Mind you Kevin did say that they had forgotten to put no presents on the invitation. But they did that with Elise's invitation and she still got a ton. Its funny how the public is so vocal about how commercial Christmas or Valentines etc...has become but you don't hear about the ridiculous over the top birthday parties thrown for little tykes.
Much to my poor deprived children's chagrin (actually they didn't care) their birthdays were a lot simpler. It involved a family dinner with them at the head of the table, their fave meal...no matter what they asked for they got it (Monte's friend always wanted chicken pot pie!) fun presents from all of us and their best friend or two were invited. That was it. And a promise that on their tenth birthday they could invite the world, pick any place they wanted (except Disney land) and we would have a bash. And they didn't do that. They just wanted the usual.
The other thing I did was limit severely the number of birthday parties they could attend. Basically at the beginning of the year they got to choose six kids and if those kids had a birthday party they could go. Six. That was it. Poor Elise attended three just this weekend. It was exhausting.
And Fenton's party was crazy...a good confirmation for me that I did the right thing...for me anyway. Holy Crap!! There were about twenty kids...mostly nine year old boys. They were freaking deafening! Kevin had put out chips, pretzels, juice boxes, water and cake. We did the cake first before the skating. Yes, we were at a rec centre and all the kids brought their skates and helmets etc. Tandy had brought an enormous container of lego so they played with that at first. And like I said, the wildest kids didn't have parental supervision, we did that part and boy! was it necessary. The place was a disaster after it was over. Cake, juice boxes (half empty) lego, cake plates, chips....everywhere. And ringing ears. I'm not sure if Fenton had fun or not...he was pretty frantic the whole time.
Anyway, thats just my opinion. Actually its Kevin's too. When I was a kid we sure didn't have parties like this and I tended to continue the home family dinner tradition with mine. There are so many very special ways to make your kid feel fantastic on his/her birthday without spending a fortune in money and energy and pony rides. My apologies to those that buy the moon for their kid's birthdays...my hats off to you doing all that work. I am just too lazy for that! TTYL
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| THE LEGO TABLE |
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| SETTING UP THE FOOD |
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| RUNNING AROUND WITH LEGO |
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| SOME OF THE CROWD WAS QUIET |
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| BIRTHDAY CAKE TIME |
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| NO GIRLFRIENDS |
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| THIS ONE HAD A BROKEN ARM AND COULDN'T SKATE |
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| PRESENTS PRESENTS PRESENTS...THE BEST PART OF THE PARTY HE SAID! |
Potato salad and creamed peas!!!!
ReplyDeletehahahahaha!!! You remember!!!!!
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