We did it simple and low-key, but I think everyone had fun (except for the friend who was homesick and went home before anyone was asleep, but he knew coming into the party that he would have a hard time staying away from home--and he had fun except for bed-time).
Personally, I think a lot of birthday parties have gotten out of control. It's great to celebrate and have fun, but we're not going to spend a few hundred dollars on a party. And we find that we don't need to in order for the boys to feel celebrated on their birthdays. They mainly want to hang out with friends anyway (okay, maybe open some presents, too).
So we did a grilled supper outside. The birthday "cake" was a frozen fruit bar.
It has become a tradition, I guess, that we make an obstacle course in the yard. Since this one is a summer birthday, we incorporate the swimming pool and water guns. By the end, it's just a water fight with very wet kids.
After drying off, they gave their gifts, played a few games on the Wii together, and then watched the old Disney Swiss Family Robinson movie while munching on popcorn.
They were pretty tired after that, so the got a fair amount of sleep. We told them the rule of the house was not to wake anyone else up--if you're the first one up and don't want to try and get back to sleep, you're welcome to go downstairs and have a bite to eat (fruit and cereal was on the table) and play. Once everyone was up, we did the real breakfast.
It also turned out that it was the Kid's Workshop day at Home Depot, so we headed there and did their building project.
Simple. Fun. Enjoyable. And the 9-year old had a good time.
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