R's 11th Birthday party for friends

Friday was the day we had R's birthday party for his friends. We spent the entire day cleaning and decorating the house, making the cake, copying a compilation CD he had put together to send each one of his guests home with, and generally getting ready for the excitement.

He chose a Spongebob pinata and a theme was born. I copied the design onto the cake, and we got streamers and loot bags all honoring the yellow sponge.

As the parents dropped their children off, some of them were surprised that I planned to supervise 12 kids alone for 3 1/2 hours. But I love this stuff. We had one guest who was 1/2 hour early, but that kept the boys busy while I finished up last minute whatever, and realized we were on our last roll of toilet paper. We had plenty of tissues though, and the kids thought it very funny when I announced this.

We played a couple of games to get to know eachother's names; the kids seemed to really enjoy them, and I was glad to be able to identify myself by my first name instead of my last, since we had school kids here who are used to Mrs.... for all female adults.

B called at the very last minute to say he would be about 30 minutes late picking up the pizza I had ordered that afternoon, so I called my dad and asked him to come and keep the kids busy while I ran to the bank, got money, and picked up the pizza. All went well, (a huge thank you to you, Nagy papa!) but that did put us a little behind schedule. We quickly ate our pizza and played another game which involved gum balls, and the winner went home with a jar of them.

Presents came next. R was thrilled to get several new Webkinz. He also got some Bionicles, some craft stuff, a cool bottle rocket that shoots with vinegar and baking soda, and I don't remember what else.

Then came the pinata. This year we did a pull-the-string one. When R picked out the Spongebob pinata we agreed that he could use a bat on it instead of using the strings which were attached, but later agreed that using the strings was a good idea. The kids are getting bigger now, and stronger, and one wrong swing could seriously damage something in our small house. The kids didn't seem to care though, they were just into fighting eachother for all the candy. E, who had been allowed to stay at the party despite protests from R, was disappointed that he only got a few pieces. The kids were all great about sharing with those who didn't get much though.

We sang Happy Birthday and the kids settled down to watch The Princess Bride while eating it. We had tried really hard to choose a movie which hopefully not a lot of people had seen, but to no avail. We had a few who hadn't, but not many. The kids seemed to enjoy it, but some got bored; it was long. R had been to a party where the guests all watched a movie, and that's why we did it, but I prefer to play games. We'll see how it works out next year.

During the movie the kids ate lots of cake and ice-cream, lots of candy from the pinata, Smarties, which I had bought for a game and didn't want left here after the kids all went home, and pretzels; same deal. When the movie ended the kids had about five minutes to bounce off the walls and burn off some of all the party food they had just eaten, so when the parents started showing up they all assumed that the whole evening had gone that way. Actually, it had been a very mellow and enjoyable evening.

Two boys stayed behind to sleep over. They had two hours to play before I had them turn off the lights at 11 pm. They kept themselves busy when they woke up at 6:30 till I did at 8. (I was happy to wake up and find one of the boys playing YuGiOh with E, who often worries that the bigger kids will leave him out.) They all enjoyed some of B's pancakes and played some more until they got picked up at 11 am. R had a wonderful birthday.

And it was fun for me too. And I'm glad that I'm managing to keep my social butterfly surrounded with kids his age...his circle keeps growing!