The birthday party. I’ve written about it before and I’m sure, with three kids, that I’ll write about it again.
Our second daughter will be five in a week and because it’s so close to Christmas, we decided to have her birthday party this past weekend.
Her very desperate wish this year was to bring her friends somewhere to make their own teddy bears and stuffed animals. For many reasons including cost and truthfully, sending each child home with a stuffed animal (who really needs more of those), we managed to change her mind. We did promise her that we’d bring her and a friend to do it next weekend as an actual birthday present though.
What to do? What to do? She really wanted to do something we hadn’t done before (and when she said that, she meant something her older sister hadn’t done before either). Over the years we’ve had parties at home, we’ve brought in a magician, we’ve brought in a reptile zoo, we’ve rented out indoor playgrounds and we’ve been to Atlantic Cirque. Truthfully, we’ve avoided the swimming party (just feels like a whole lot of extra worry and responsibility) so I didn’t even bring that up in our brainstorming.
In the end, she decided she wanted to go to a local grocery store for a pizza and cake party. We’d dropped our oldest at a few of those in the past and she always seemed to have fun so I decided to look into it.
From the moment I got in touch it was easy. Picked a date. Easy. Paid a deposit. Easy. Chose the cake. Easy. For the first birthday party ever, it felt like I wasn’t even doing a thing. I did go out to get loot bag stuff and decided to follow a brilliant idea from a friend of mine which was to give each child a little gift instead of a bag filled with candy. I found mini “My Little Pony’s” on sale for $3.97, attached a candy cane to each one and we were done. Again, easy.
The day of the party we showed up with nothing but the little gifts for the kids and my camera. The cake was there. The two incredible hosts led the kids through colouring chef hats, kneading their dough, making their pizzas and decorating a cake each. They managed the gift opening and kept everyone busy and entertained for two hours.
I literally sat with my camera and a coffee and enjoyed every moment of my daughter celebrating her 5th birthday with her friends.
So I’m a convert. An easy birthday party convert. I do plan to drop a note to my contact at the grocery store to beg them for different variations of the birthday party for younger kids (only pizza and cake is currently available for the young ones).
We’ve got another party to plan in January so I throw it out to the community –what is the easiest no fuss/ no muss children’s birthday party you’ve ever had?
Deanna is a Mom of three, wife, marketer and blogger – lover of travel, morning coffee, family time, belly laughs, good friends and uninterrupted showers! Follow her on twitter @DeannaCMiller
