Ben's birthday

On Ben's actual birthday, we went to a friend's birthday party. Charlie was born on January 5, 2007, so his mom planned his party for January 8 a long time ago. We wanted to go to that party so I didn't plan Ben's party on the 8th. Then, I had to work the weekend of January 9-10, so we had to delay Ben's party until January 16. Before the party, we were shopping for a present for Charlie and I thought I would have a hard time explaining to Ben that even though it was his birthday today, we had to buy a present for someone else. But he was super sweet about it. We went to the toy section of a store and he kept picking things up saying "Charlie like this?" I told him we would have a birthday lunch and asked him what he would like to eat. He said he wasn't hungry so I decided on a little bagel shop and I tried to make a big deal out of going out for lunch.

So then Ben's party was on the 16th. We hosted it at the farm in Lafayette, where we lived while we were selling our condo last fall. We thought the kids would enjoy petting the goats, feeding a bottle to the baby goat and lamb, looking at the ostrich, playing with the chickens, and Kim offered to do pony rides too.
We have a lot to learn about kids' parties!
- the first lesson we didn't really learn was how to politely invite only selected members of a kid's class. We invited all of Ben's class at Wee Creekers, and then all of his non-school friends too. If everyone had come, we would have had over 40 people there. As it was, with lots of no shows, there were still 15 kids, which was WAY TOO MANY.
- The day was pretty warm, but lots of people got cold and wanted to go back inside. I didn't bring any inside toys or plan any inside games, so the kids got a little too rambunctious out of boredom and sugar-loading and I was really afraid someone was going to get hurt. The second lesson we learned was: have activities planned!!
- The third lesson we learned is that a kid's party should have a definite end time, and 2 hours is plenty of time. I had set an end time, but I went with 3 hours and the last hour was chaos.
- The fourth lesson we learned was that you need a non-kid adult there to help out. We needed someone to help with food, to help with our kids, to help TAKE PHOTOS or VIDEO (we got a couple of photos but that's all. Boo hoo.) Poor Grammy Pat was heartbroken that her schedule ended up not allowing her to come. We were heartbroken too.
Tim worked really hard on Ben's cake and it was a resounding success. While Tim was doing the cake, I was busy making other food and making the "adult" cake and Ben sat pretty much by himself the whole day before his party, ignored by his parents who were desperately trying to plan a fun birthday party for him. I don't think he felt really good the day of his party because he was pretty whiny and did more sitting than socializing. He was really excited about the cake and everyone singing Happy Birthday and blowing out the candles. But then, after the party, we asked him if he had fun and he said no. How sad we felt. :-(