Super Party!

So I tell myself every year I am going to scale down the joint Birthday Party I do for the kids. And to some extent every year I do scale down. But there's just no scaling down the amount of people to invite. And that's okay, my kids love having all their friends around. So this year I knew there would be no getting away with choosing a joint theme for the party. The kids are old enough to choose their own them. Mike likes to remind me of that as well. So I flat our asked them what they want. And I was surprised. Well, not surprised that Ty wanted a Superman Party...but surprised that Emery wanted a Supergirl party. Sweet, could you get any more perfect? I was so afraid I would have to find some clever way to mix cars with princesses.
So, scale down I did. First off, STORE BOUGHT INVITATIONS! Yes you heard that right folks. The invited snob actual bought invitations, filled them out with a ball point pen and hand delivered them! Ahhh, very freeing! My cake lady was out of commission due to surgery, so I did have to bang out 50 cupcakes my self, Thank you very much Betty Crocker. (my own frosting mind you). Mike rented the bouncy castle, and there you have it, a party fit for 26 little super heros! Everyone had a blast. Even miss Pip, who got a turn in the bouncy before all the big kids arrived, then crawled around the rest of the night stealing all the smarties out of everyone's goodie bags.
One thing we are trying to teach the kids is to not "expect" presents at a party. Right, hard for a 5 and 4 year old to understand. But each year I tell people they don't need presents. And I tell the kids that our party is our gift to our friends. Every year the kids still end up getting presents. (Im not complaining, they love them.) I just don't want people to think they Have to bring gifts for each kid. This year was special. I usually end up feeling a bit overwhelmed with the amount of toys the kids get. But not this year, they got wonderful things: home made cards, coloring books, great books to read, fruit snacks (great idea linds), chap stick and some clothes.
But most of all whether people got them gifts or not, our kids felt loved by their friends, and got to experience sharing our home and joy with others. Thanks all who came and blessed us with your company.