The Biggest Party Ever!

Eddie wanted to invite his entire preschool class to his 5th birthday party. There are 16 kids in his class. When I told him he might want to maybe invite only a few of his friends from school so he could invite several neighborhood buddies, he declared that he wanted to really invite all his preschool and would eschew his neighborhood buddies.

Not wanting that to occur and banking that only half would accept, we ended up inviting 19 kids. This is about how many kids we invited last year, but only 11 kids (plus some siblings) showed up last year. This year, as the RSVPs trickled in, all but 1 kid we invited came!!! What are the chances of that happening? I have never thrown a party where every.single.invitee.came. I'm thrilled for Eddie that they came, but man, that was 19 kids (including Eddie and subtracting the one who couldn't come), plus younger siblings (including Josie) and we had 25 kids total in the house.

Eddie wanted a racecar theme, so Den crafted some cute invites and then we based most everything on racecar themes--as much as we could. It was difficult coming up with things for an indoor party.

We all but implored the parents to drop their kids so there would be room at the house. About half the parents stayed. My parents were in town, Josie's Godmother came, Cookie came and then we had several parents who jumped in to help. I ran out of games/activities in about 15 mintues and we forgot to do one of the games.

We had the kids all sign a scrapbook page so that when I get to doing a scrapbook, I'll have it all set, and then we gave each kid a 'Pit Pass' with their name that we loaded with stickers after each activity. After everyone arrived, we played hot potato and the kids got a kick out of that. When they got eliminated, they were supposed to go to the living room for a set of 3 activities, but somehow it ended only being the car fishing with magnets. The magnets on the poles kept getting hooked to each other, but it kept the kids busy a while. We were supposed to have a bean bag toss into the tires of a racecar Den made, but I didn't realize it wasn't occuring. Then we were going to have a tatoo stage with racecars, but I worried about parents showing up with tatooed kids, so we skipped that at the last minute.

When we did the craft last year it took nearly 20 min. whereas this year it was about 5. We had them decorate with beads a race car cut out and then color a printout of a racecar.
So in 15-20 flat I had worked through all the activities I had planned for the kids and it was only 45 minutes into the party. I should have come up with a couple extra games on the spot--simon says (which Eddie reminded me we didn't play), but instead just had them all play with toys until it was time for cake.

I think most kids had a good time and one kid didn't want to leave at all. Cookie I think brokered a couple playdates.

I'm not sure what to say were the lessons learned. I hated that I didn't have more games lined up, or didn't bother to do more games on the fly, but there were just so many kids, it was difficult to come up with the space to do them all. It was a bit to windy and the ground was soft enough to sink into.

The silver lining is that while it wasn't completely programmed this time I felt like I had time to talk to the other parents, spend time with the kids--except my own.

Eddie had stood at the door waiting for each child to arrive and then he sat on the steps with all the goody bags to hand out. He had a great time and remarked that his favorite part of the party was having all those people around to sing happy birthday and play. This combined with him telling me that he would be happy with whatever gifts people brought (some moms were asking what he'd like), made my heart melt. What a sweet kid and how fun it was to be able to give him something he enjoyed so much and if he is like me, will remember.