Robbie's Birthday

So Last Saturday we hosted Robbie's 6 year birthday party at home.  We had 24 kids at our house which was everyone in Robbie's class plus a couple of extra friends.  Here's a FAQ format of the event:

"What would ever compel you to have that many kids at any 'drop off' birthday party?"
(The most common question)

So when we started to talk to Robbie about his birthday and ask him about who he wanted to invite, his untainted response was that he wanted to invite the whole class because not everyone gets invited to all the birthdays in the class and sometimes people's feelings get hurt when they are not invited.  Robbie did not want to hurt anyone's feelings so he wanted to invite the whole class.  In my eyes, that's pretty special and I was not about to deny him that

"Was it mayhem?"

Actually it was not that bad.  Liz and I talked about it afterwards and although we were tired aftwerwards it went pretty smooth.  We had an activity or demonstration right at the beginning where we played with dry ice and made some home made pop with the dry ice.  Then we had a magic show, followed by the cake and some snacks.  The kids were awesome.

The only part that was a little crazy was the end where we decided to have a candy scramble in the backyard in the snow.  Our secret plan was that all the kids would stay outside and play for 20 minutes until their parents came to pick them up.  All the kids had to put on their snow gear and although many kids were independent, they were mostly 6 and needed some help.  Thank goodness for our friend Yvonne who walked into our front door at the perfect time to help.

The scramble itself, went pretty well but the problem was that some of the kids were cold and wanted to come inside.  This created the mayhem because anyone that wanted to come in needed help with taking off their boots and snow gear which meant someone had to be inside to help.  But more than half the kids were outside which meant that someone had to be outside to stay with these kids.  In retrospect, we would have just had them play inside in the basement which would have eliminated the issue of putting on and taking off coats.

In the end, everyone was happy and especially Robbie.  Liz and I spent the rest of the weekend cleaning and I think a week later I was still recovering to a certain extent.  Let's just hope Robbie or any of my other kids do not have a dose of morality and consideration in the future and we don't have to invite the whole class again (just kidding)!