We had Katie’s party last night and boy, am I glad it’s Saturday now. Really, though, it was fun and there are only a few things I would have done differently had I known then what I know now. Hindsight 20/20 and all that.

The main thing I would have done? I would have left waivers at the door for parents to sign giving permission for their kids to consume as much cupcake/ice cream/juice box/pizza as their little tummies could hold. The waiver would remove any responsibility from me for either making decisions regarding how much each child could eat or dealing with the consequences from said over-consumption. Live and learn.

The next thing I would have done is shortened the time by 1 hour. On the invitations, I said the party was officially from 5-9, but that pizza would be served at 5:30 and a movie would start at 7:30; come when you can and leave when you must. I really thought we’d have several come later as well as several leave early because 9 is pretty late for this crowd. Almost everyone showed up by 5. See that key word by? That means several came a bit early, and everyone stayed until 9.

Also, I sort of “over-invited” thinking that we’d have about 2/3 actually be able to come. Again, I was surprised; out of 10 girls invited, all 10 came. Add these to my 4 and you have a pretty good idea of what I was up against last night. I intentionally planned this party on a night Craig had class so he wouldn’t need to be here for it. This was a good plan and one I will repeat should I someday think about doing this again.

One last lesson learned is that my kids are movie junkies, probably more so than the rest of the general population. They generally don’t have any problems with watching movies they’ve seen before; this was not the case for the majority of the rest of the girls. Everyone began the movie with us when we started it, but 20 minutes later 3 had escaped to the playroom upstairs. Twenty more minutes later, 3 more escaped. By the end of the movie we had more up than down and most of the ones down were in the dining room playing with Katie’s new toys.

This left my own Chloe and Millie left in front of the TV watching the movie. Incidentally, do you have any idea how hard it is to choose one movie you think no parents will have a problem with? I landed on Charlotte’s Web (the current version), which seemed like a brilliant plan (until I had 12 of the 14 girls abandon it at some point during the show).

One of my friends from the girls’ school asked if she could stay for the party, and I was glad for that. We needed to supervise a bit (like when 3 girls thought it would be fun to jump from one top bunk to another and I had to put on my “angry eyes” [just kidding]), but the girls sort of self-entertained for a good chunk of the night, so I had a lot of time to chat with my friend, so that was fun.

After everyone left, my own girls asked if they could continue on with the sleep-over idea, so they spread their sleeping bags back out, watched some more of a movie until Craig came home from class, and then went to sleep.

Today we’re in recovery mode, and we’re eating a lot of leftover pizza. I’m not preparing a Sabbath meal for tonight because the best way we can enter into a 24-hour rest this weekend is to do so in a clean(er) house than what we’ve currently got going. So that’s that. Birthday season has come to a close and it ended with a bang. Katie loved every bit of it and for that alone I would do it again.