I am Michelle D. Carter

Sorry for the lack of posts last week. It was a whirl wind of a week and Spring Break to boot. It started last Sunday with the boys’ birthday party with their friends. As they get older I often wonder how we should do their party – a party for the both of them or two separate ones. We’ve always held one party. They have a lot of the same friends. It just seems to work easier that way. Plus, if one of their friends makes it to one party but can’t come to the other, there won’t be hurt feelings. I can already hear, “Why did Jake come to Alex’s party but not mine?”

This year we kept with tradition and had one party. It was a swimming party at Legacy Park. I sat down with each of them and asked them who they wanted to invite. They both picked 12 kids from their class. We also decided to invite their soccer team. If everyone attended, we would have 34 kids, including Alex and Andy.

What was I thinking?!! We had 21 total kids at the party. While 21 doesn’t seem like a large number and is significantly lower than 34, 21 six-year-olds is crazy. It was chaos!! We had the kids come and swim for a couple hours before we had pizza. The pizza was late. Not good with 21 hungry screaming kids. They were all crammed around the table chanting, “pizza, pizza, pizza…” We ordered more pizza than what they recommended and we still ran out.

Let me back up a minute. We had the party room from 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm. The facility closes at 7:30. We wanted to make sure we had plenty of time to swim, so we had the kids come at 4:00 to swim. Swim from 4:00 to 6:00, have pizza at 6:00. Cupcakes after that and then open presents. It was the perfect plan… or so we thought.

After the late delivery of the pizza, the kids wolfed it down in about ten minutes – literally. We passed out the cupcakes and sang happy birthday. Two minutes later, the cupcakes were gone.

Present time! Rip, tear, shred, the presents are open. Yelling, screaming kids. My nerves are shot. This party is OVER! Wait, it’s only 6:50. There is still 40 minutes left.

Now ending the party early is certainly not a problem except for the parents who dropped off their kids and left. We can’t leave because there would be un-chaperoned kids. I’m ready to call it a day but have to hang out longer. Of course, the kids couldn’t just sit and wait either. There was running. There was yelling. There was crying. And don’t even get me started on the kids.

Finally, the last kid was picked up and we could leave. I have vowed not to have that big of a party again. Tim said next year we’ll do two parties. I’m not so sure about that, we’ll just have to wait and see.