R's 10th Birthday Party with his friends

At 3:10 I stood alone in my house with ten 9- and 10-year-olds. We played a couple of party games before R opened his presents, then enjoyed the cake before playing even more party games. I always loved playing party games when I was a kid. I hope that my son and his friends do too. These days everyone seems to rent a bouncy house and send the kids off, but my hope is that R's parties will not blur into memory with all the others. Some of the kids had even remembered a couple of the games since they played them at R's last drop-off party two years ago. (Last year he saved his party for six months after his actual birthday so he could have an outdoor water party.) There certainly is a lot more laughter at R's parties than I've seen at some others. But on the other hand, at other parties the kids are off, so maybe they are doing just as much laughing, without my getting to enjoy it.

Okay there you have it. I throw R game parties so I can be in the middle of them having fun too. They bring me back to my own happy childhood parties as well.

It's interesting to see how the kids are all growing up. The girls are getting more lady-like and immediately jumped to help when I asked the crowd at-large to help with the wrapping paper. And some of the boys are getting quite aggressive, and free with the put-downs. At least no one was too mature or refined or cool to really work at smashing that pinata!

R is very pleased with the gifts he received. "I guess my friends really know me."

I feel blessed that R can have a party with nine other children his age. He is such a social person and I've worked hard to find him a large and diverse group of children for him to choose friends from. He'd be popular if he were in school; he makes friends so easily, so nine children his age who are all homeschoolers is a pat on the back for me :-) I only wish our house were bigger so we could have included all the siblings, who are actually all also his friends, and a few friends who we were not able to invite because of the space limitation!

E and B went out for pizza during the party, but returned home 30 minutes before it ended for the pinata. Now that we are doing the livingroom over, that useless hook in our ceiling is gone, so we needed to hold it up while the kids took swings. That thing was so jammed packed that it was like a rock; no give at all. All the kids had a second chance at three swings, and a few had three tries. It was nice that it ended up being E who finally smashed it open.

I'll post photos in the sidebar tomorrow. For now I'm off to watch Heroes.