Birthday Party Weekend 5/11-5/13

Another busy weekend at the Trent household!! We had Nathan and Chloe’s birthday party on Saturday. There were only about 25 kids there, less than I was expecting, which turned out to be a very good thing because none of the mothers stayed this time! At Jillian’s party, I had four moms that stayed for the whole party. I guess from first grade to fourth grade there is a big shift, lol. We rented a large slip-and-slide with a pool. At first it was looking like it was going to be a bummer because the slide was too high. The kids couldn’t jump up high enough to actually slide all the way into the pool.. I was starting to panic but the kids improvised and made their own fun. They continued to run and slide half way down the length of the slide and then jump into the pool, or to start running already on the slide, or climb up on the side and jump around, or throw balls at each other while they were sliding, or to just play in the pool itself…. In the end, I had more than one child say, “This is the best party ever!!”. That was encouraging. J

Nathan had a lot more friends attend than Chloe which was a little bit of a bummer but most of the people who came from Nathan’s class were girls ironically enough, so Chloe had lots of people to play with. One of the girls from Nathan’s class who never played with Chloe was Keyani. She’s Nathan’s buddy. He likes her. And it seems like the feeling is mutual. J She did like playing with Wyatt though and I later learned that she has a little brother of her own.

One of the kids’ favorite parts of their birthday actually happened on Friday when we went to Walmart to get the favors. I hate spending money on those little bags of junk and I can’t afford to get nice presents for everyone so I decided to get those bouncy smallish-type beach balls for everyone. They could play with them on the slip-and-slide and then take one home too. Not knowing how many people to expect and wanting to be prepared, I bought all the balls they had – 38 of them. Chloe really enjoyed watching the faces of the people we passed in the store as they wondered what we were doing with two carts heaped full of balls. We played a game getting the balls into the house as well with me throwing one to Nathan, Nathan tossing it to Chloe and Chloe throwing to Jillian. Then we repeated the whole thing a second time, rolling the balls this time, to get them safely into my closet and away from the playful claws of the kittens.

We also worked hard as a family preparing for the party. We cleaned the inside of the house, did some yard work, baked two cakes, prepared the ice cream in the muffin tins, washed out the ice chests, and other various things needed to get ready... They were a great help and I know they had a great time. I was really impressed with the behavior of all the kids -- it was an enjoyable day for all of us. :)