On Saturday Briton finally (finally mom!) got to have his birthday party. Yes, I know, two weeks late. What I told Briton was that we delayed it so that we could make sure everyone was home from their various vacations. Which, really, was a good reason if you think about it. However, the real reason was that we were just really busy the week of his birthday and the whole party thing was too much to add to the mix.
The thought of a dozen seven and eight years old's at a party is kind of intimidating as well. I mean, what on earth do you do to keep them busy, especially when you have boys and girls at the party?
Last year we (somewhat brilliantly I thought!) set up the tent trailer and invited just a few boys for a slumber party. They hung out playing playmobil all evening, barely tore themselves away to shovel down some cake and then spent the night giggling in the tent. But this year Briton had a much longer list of kids to invite. So something had to be done.
After some pondering (bowling? bouncy castles?) Will and I came up with the idea of a scavenger hunt downtown which turned out to be the perfect thing. They were kept on the move the whole 2 hours they were with us and having two competing teams kept them interested, because, of course, they all wanted to win. I took clues down on Friday to several business who had agreed to help (thank goodness we live in such a friendly town, everyone was so into it!) and pre-ordered cupcakes form our favorite bakery. Saturday morning we broke into teams, handed out bandanas and the first clue and off they went. The kids were hilarious trying to solve the clues, one came dressed as a detective and I overheard one of the kids say to another "the reason we could figure everything out was because everybody knew something and we all worked together to figure things out!"I have to say, other than the time that I took cupcakes and plastic buckets to a public fountain in Portland for Briton's 4th birthday when we were in the midst of moving, this was by far the easiest party we've ever done. Still, I have to say I'm glad that birthday season is over at our house. Whew, and just in time to start planning our Halloween Party. Honestly, I must be out of my mind. (But secretly I love it :))