Party In Da House

Dylan's birthday party was at our house on Saturday. Having a party at our house was never really an option at the old house, since it was so small, and the parking options were nonexistent. A few months ago, I was at a friend's house, and she said, "You're going to have Dylan's party at your house this year, aren't you?" "Ummm...I don't know...", I answered. Later, I asked Jim, "Should we have the party at our house this time?". His answer was yes, and that was that. (Note to self: Do not ask the person who will only do 5% of the work. Ask the person who will do 95% of the work what she wants).

Last Monday, on my way to work, I had a panic attack, thinking about 33 people in my house. The noise, the chaos, the 12 kids screaming, the mess - I was envisioning the worst. Tuesday on my way to work I was thinking about calling everyone on the party list and telling them we were moving the party to Chuck E Cheese. But, something happened on my way home from work on Tuesday. I had this thought... "No matter how bad it is, it will only be a few hours of my life, so I should probably just enjoy it".

And, you know what? I did enjoy it, and more importantly Dylan enjoyed it.

It ended up only being 24 people, due to all the illness going around. Dylan loves Sesame Street, so it was an Elmo theme. The kids played "Pin the Nose on Elmo", and we discovered that Dylan does NOT like to be blind folded. "NO! NO! I CAN'T SEE!!" His favorite part of the party was the Musical Chairs inspired game we played where instead of chairs I used pictures of Elmo on the floor. When the music stopped I would call out a color, and they would turn the pictures over to see if they had that color, and if they did, they would win a prize.

One of the funniest parts for me was Dylan and his buddy Caleb sitting at the table for about 15 minutes, patiently waiting for the ice cream cake, which was rock hard and needed to thaw. (If I ever need him to be still, I'll just need to pull out some cake).
** (If you ever get an ice cream cake, allow 15-20 minutes for it to thaw. Also, avoid blue icing if at all possible. It does NOT wash out easily). **

About 1/2 hour after the cake, the kids were running circles(literally) through the house, and the silliness factor increased exponentially, but even then, things were way better than I expected. As with all of our parties, we have WAY too much food left over, and the party went on WAY longer than I thought it would, but it's over and what do you know? I survived.







(I would show more party pictures, but I don't want to have to get permission from everyone involved. I would love to show you the video of the kids running circles through the rooms, or of my kid ripping through the presents like a maniac, but you remember my Halloween video I posted? In November? Um, yea.)