May 17th, 2012 My oldest son Noah turned 6
This year, we decided to scale down our birthday parties. We had begun to spend a small fortune, which we could never afford but did anyway to suit guests. It made no sense really. The parties seemed to get bigger and bigger. Stuffing the pinata for 15-20 kids, making sure everyone had a goody bag, birthday hats, cupcakes, snacks, food and beverages for the parents. Decorations were another small fortune. With such a large family we calculated we were spending $2900 a year or so on just birthday parties- not including the gifts. After an incident last fall with my daughter, who, upon opening all her gifts shrugged and asked, "Is that it?" Talk about embarrassed- and scared! My children had become spoiled and it was evident in small comments such as that. Upon reflection we deemed it best to scale down the parties to immediate family only. This proved to be trickier then we thought and would later blow up in my face, the results of this decision we are still living with a month later. But I digress...
We spent the days leading up to Noah's party making decorations, many of which I admittedly found off Pinterest. Having entered his phase of robot obsession, we decided a Lost in Space theme would be awesome. And by we, I mean, my inner nerd. Haha! We decided to make a center piece out of Amazon.com boxes and cans, plenty of which we had lying around due to my preference for online shopping. It was a hit, and more importantly we spend family time together making it. We made a birthday banner out of construction paper and a couple sheets of scrapbooking paper and painted the letters HAPPY BIRTHDAY NOAH on them.
I had to go back and outside the letters after realizing they didn't show up as well. But still, it came out pretty darn cute.
The big day arrived, Noah's actual birthday. We'd spent the day making smaller robots our of various would-be trash. The kids had a ball. When it came time for the actual party, time flew by pretty quickly. The kids feet were dirty and faces too from playing outside. But for once, I didn't feel the pressure to "perform." There was no constant wiping of dirty faces and feet, no insistence upon finding matching socks and shoes- No- not this time. This time, the kids piled onto the front porch to see all their hard work making a party for their brother thrown together with love and a special goody tray they didn't know they'd be getting.
And we "partied." We sang to Noah, and each kid gave him the gift they'd picked out for him. Since we did not throw a big expensive party, we were able to buy a small gift from each sibling to give to their brother. Some of them even got to wrap it themselves. It felt so much special and so much less about trying to please everyone.
