Friday, December 5, 2008

What was I thinking?

Since Big Al was born on Thanksgiving day, it really cuts into the "friend pool" when we are planning birthday parties. It has become our tradition to celebrate the day with family, then have a party with friends later. This year was a difficult one because she is in a new middle school and has a bunch of new friends - not to mention the boy - still. So she agonized over asking a few friends to spend the night, or ask more friends for a couple of hours. She took the latter, but a couple of hours actually ended up being four.... what was I thinking?









While they waited for everyone to show up they hung out outside playing soccer, or raking up my leaves to jump into piles - or bury the boy. Thankfully a few were going to a soccer tournament so we were down to about 12 kids.


After awhile they came in and Brian started grilling hotdogs and hamburgers, and Big Al opened presents. They did a pretty nice job, but I'll be vaccuuming chips out of the carpet for a couple of weeks.




After dinner we went outside and ate smore's and they ran around in the dark. We managed to avoid severe burns, and no one's eye was poked out with a burning pitchfork, so I guess that was successful.





When they came back in they cranked up the music and the evening got louder - now keep in mind that 6th graders as a group don't have a "low volume" they only communicate in shrieks (I know, I've taught them). The radio was booming, and the girls were jumping and "singing" lyrics. So my living room looked
way to small for this many kids. At one point the Christmas tree and the tuner in the cabinet were shaking with all of the vibrations of jumping.


















Dancing looked like this:



Then they danced like this




Eventually half sat on the couch and judged a dance contest until parents mercifully picked up their progeny. Bless them.



Whoever made up that rule of inviting as many kids as their age is crazy. The number should ALWAYS be 5..... or 3..... or maybe 1 VERY quiet child - who likes to read books.

1 comment:

Holly said...

LOL at the dancing