A Sporty Good Time

This year Zach had a shared birthday party with his best friend. It's something we had been talking about for a few months -- would both boys be able to handle sharing a birthday party? It really made the most sense to do. We live in the same neighborhood (just down the street!), the boys go to the same preschool (same classroom!), and their birthdays are 1 week apart. It was kind of a no-brainer on the parents' sides (one party, same group of kids invited), but we needed to be sure that Zach and Dylan would be okay with it. Dylan right away signed off that he was okay, but we wer a little nervous about Zach. He does like his parties and he does like being the guest of honor. But we talked about it with him for a while and he said he would like to do that. So we chose a date (the weekend after Zach's birthday) and started planning!

All the kids in their preschool class have their birthdays in June, July, or August (they're grouped by age, obviously), and Zach has been invited to a ton of parties recently. So we knew we'd invite their entire classroom of kids, all the neighborhood kids (we've become close family friends), and a few other of our own family friends. We made the guest list and....realized there were over 30 kids on the list! Big party, so now just where do we have it? The new grass in our backyard was not quite ready for 30 pairs of feet. And Dylan's family kind of felt the same way. Plus with 30 kids who are turning 4, that means that at least 1 parent will be with each of them, so that's going to up the total numbers. End result, we decided to have the party at "a place".

A party at "a place" turns out to be actually nearly zero work on the parents end. I don't have a lot of experience with this -- I'm usually the crazed parent the week before the party frantically trying to get themed party decorations, stuff goody bags, make food, make a (themed) cake, and clean my house. For this party, all I had to do was find a place for the party, then write the invitations. Boom, we're done.

We kind of thought that since it was July, maybe a lot of people would be on vacation. Uh, that didn't really work out that way. We still had about 25 kids show up, all with at least 1 parent (yes, they RSVP'd, so we weren't surprised, other than the fact that they all came!) The party was at a sports complex that does kids parties. Zach had gone to a party there in the spring so it was on my radar, and the timing and the price worked out perfectly (even more perfectly since we split it!) The kids played tag, parachute games, some ball games, then went into the party room where they had an arcade and a bounce house. We had pizza and cake, the boys got a TON of gifts, and we went home with a really tired 1 year old, and a really happy 4 year old.