Birthday Time

My oldest turned six yesterday. We had his party in the morning since my wife had to work in the afternoon. And that worked out pretty well.

One of our birthday party philosophies is that they can invite the same number of guests as their birthday age (we'll see how that plays out as he gets into his teens). So, theoretically, he should have had six friends coming. July (especially around the 4th) is a hard time to get people since many are away on vacation. So he invited more than six since we new a few were going to be gone. I think we ended up with seven because one brought a friend from their class with (thankfully we came prepared with extra "gift bags").

One of our other philosophies is to keep it simple. For some people that may mean renting a place that takes care of the party for you. We can't afford that right now, so we had the party in a park. A park with a splash pad. So between getting wet and using the large play center at the park, the kids were occupied. (Translation: I didn't have to come up with any games or activities.)

Our son picked a Lego theme for his party (his best friend had one a few months ago and he enviously desired one as well--especially since his friend received lots of Lego presents). Basically, my wife made a wonderful brick-shaped cake and we sent the kids home with a Lego set (that we had stockpiled from clearance sales).

We just served PB&J sandwiches, popcorn and juice pouches for lunch (knowing that if we tried to serve other things like veggies or additional healthy options, they probably wouldn't get eaten much).

Honestly, other than the cake decorating, we didn't have to put a lot of extra effort into things. We could just enjoy the day. Which I think is what birthday parties are about anyway.