Par-tay

Two years ago, in a valiant effort to become the meanest mom in the whole wide world, I outlawed birthday parties at our house. Kid's birthday parties have just gotten out of control these days. Gone are the days of just having a few friends over for cake and ice cream. Birthday parties nowadays are events and, living in a pretty affluent area, my kids have been invited to them all. We've been invited to parties at the water park, the skate park, the bowling alley, the aquatic center, sleep-over parties, camping out parties, make-over parties, parties with pony rides, parties with inflatables, even parties where the head count hovers near 30 kids. The parties have all been amazing but I just got tired of trying to compete. Four major birthday events each year is too much for one mom to handle. So I instituted a new rule and told the kids that they would only be getting a birthday party every four years. At ages 4,8,12 and 16, they can have a party with friends, the other years we will just do family stuff.

This year both Brandon (8) and Natalie (12) got to have parties. Brandon had a Wiimbeldon Tournament for his party. (He had the boys from his Primary Class over to play Wii Tennis.) We all had a good time, but Brandon didn't really care too much about the details. Natalie, on the other hand, has become something I never would have expected--a party planner. She spent months getting every minute of her Warrior Cats party just purr-fect. All I had to do was supervise and talk her out of some of her more eccentric ideas. She designed her own invitations on the computer to look just like a mini version of the Warrior Cats books. They had a front and back cover as well as several interior pages detailing the party games in a story format. She had elaborate games, cute favors, and even t-shirts that we made to sort each girl into their warrior clans.

Every couple of weeks since her birthday, Natalie will spend a day or two planning a family party for us to enjoy. First we had the Hawaiian Luau. There was music, treats, costumes and tropical games like lawn-surfing. Then, last Saturday, there was the Frozen Party. It had a winter theme with paper snowflakes all over the back porch, hot chocolate to drink and, the highlight of the party, an outdoor showing of the movie "Snow Buddies". The only problem was that we only own this movie on itunes and so all four kids had to gather 'round the large 2.5 inch screen of my ipod to watch the movie. But they had a good time. This weekend Natalie has a real party to go. She was invited to our local Octoberfest celebrations. Who knows, maybe her experiences there will lead to a German Party at our house in the next few weeks?