When you have winter birthdays (like my kids) you have limited options for birthday parties especially since I’m not one for having 30 screaming children inside my house. At these times, my husband and I are very grateful for the Pump it Ups, Rocket Jumps, and Sports House’s of the world. And they are pretty genius. In our experience, you show up, run the kids ragged, eat some pizza and cake, and leave! It can be pretty expensive, but there is no clean up, and the chances of our kids taking a nap is pretty high, so all in all, it has been worth it.
This year, though, my daughter turned 6 years old, and I may have just thrown the greatest birthday party of all time. She’s been counting down her January birthday since about mid-June, and when she knew it was right around the corner, she started asking me what she could do for her party. I decided to flip the whole script, and I told her since she was turning 6, she could invite 6 friends to do something special. We came up with the 6 quickly, and then it was time for the “something special.”
My mom told me a story about when I turned 7 years old. My parents let me have a sleepover party….all I could think was, “Mom, you are crazy!” She agreed. Turns out at 7:30pm, I went to bed…no one else went to bed until about 10pm. With that story, I knew sleepovers were out. But with 6 girls, you can go to Build-a-Bear, you can get Mani-Pedi’s, you can paint pottery, or any other civilized activity.
My daughter chose to get her nails done. So I called my local joint, and at 3pm on a Sunday, 5 girls were dropped off at the nail salon with me. I did have one Mom Friend stay, mostly because when it was all done, we put the girls into two cars and drove them over to my house. There, we played dress up! I had a make-up kit from Target, and we made all the little girls look like sophisticated ladies…well more like clowns, but they loved it! Then at 5pm, we had families come pick the girls up, at the same time pizza was delivered. Siblings, moms and dads all stayed for some pizza, sang happy birthday, and were gone by 7pm. And just like her momma, my daughter was asleep by 7:30pm.
It feels good, that for my daughter, we have evolved past the pre-school parties. But still at the end of the month, my husband, my daughter and myself will be bouncing with the best of them as we celebrate my little guy’s 4th birthday with 30 of his closest classmates.
