Celebration Success

Once again, our house feels oddly quiet, the quiet that happens after a huge crowd has been there and now left.

We had Bug's home birthday party today.


In many ways, it was a total success. And in many ways, it was a fantastic learning opportunity for Hubster and me.

Bug's newest interest is magic. Each library trip yields a new magic book. So we did a magic theme. We had magic wands and top hats for the guests.


Hubster performed a few magic tricks. Then the kids took turns learning and performing some of their own.

I made Bug a magic 8 ball cake (my little play on the magic theme and him turning 8.)



We had lemon-lime soda with red ice cubes, which fascinated all the kids. We handed out Pop-Rocks, playing cards, and glow sticks.

It was a lot of fun.


It was also very loud and boisterous. We had a few issues with "crowd control." (I'm actually surprised how many times I had a tell a few of the kids to stop screaming at the top of their lungs or to stop stabbing each other with magic wands.) There were some difficulties getting some children to stop wrestling with each other and participate in games. It wasn't quite the smoothly organized, picturesque party I had created in my head.

But I had anticipated the craziness. And I surprised myself by not stressing out at all, which is very uncharacteristic of me. The kids were all laughing and playing nicely in the yard when they were picked up by their parents. Bug had a fantastic time, which is what matters.

Now tell me, doesn't that look like a kid having a great time?

On a side note, thank you all for all your support and encouragement as I attempted to host a "simple" home birthday party. We are trying to create reasonable expectations in our children and to avoid extravagance. But we love our kids and we want to celebrate with them.


I think we pulled off a successful home birthday. I bought wooden dowels from Walmart and painted them to look like magic wands. Hubster and I made top hats out of black poster board.
Between the decorations (streamers, balloons), favors (wands, top hats that doubles as favor bags, playing cards, Pop-Cards, glow bracelets, small puzzles), and food (watermelon, cheese, crackers, mini hot-dogs, cake, ice cream) we spent about $35 total for this party. (Not including gifts for Bug.) Making the hats involved more effort than I had anticipated (and after all the work, they were just slightly too small to fit on the kids' heads! Urg!) But I'm proud of us. And all your encouragement made me realize how great all of you are!

So yes, it was successful. But I think next year, we'll have a much smaller affair.