Tayler's Birthday Party: And Ideas For An Easy, Cheap Party

I think I have the party scene figured out.

I know, it's about time, since we hold six a year.

I'm not against parties that take effort.  I'm not against having a party budget and letting the kids pick an activity.  Heaven knows we've done it all when it comes to birthdays (here).  But this year Tayler's birthday fell smack dab in the middle of chaos.  I graduated, we went to Moab, she spent a couple weekends in a row with her dad, Mother's day...

So a month later I figured I'd better let her do it already.  Even though life still felt chaotic.

Here's some tips that I've found work for me in keeping a party fun for the kids, but low key and low budget for me as the parent.

Tip #1 keep that puppy at an hour and half.  I've found it gives the kids just enough time to feel they had fun, but it doesn't over extend my patients and ability to keep the entertained.

Tip #2 have some easy, simple group games on the agenda.  Games that the kids, given they're old enough, can conduct themselves.

We have a couple up our sleeves.  The first being the candybar wrap which I posted here.

Another easy game is the M&M suck.

Simply fill a bowl with a large bag of M&M's, pass out straws, and when they roll doubles (or any combination of your choice) they start sucking the M&M's out of the bowl with the straw.  The suction on the straw holds the candy on the end of the straw while they draw it out and let it fall into a pile in front of them.

Never underestimate silly string.  And most likely you can stock up on this stuff at the dollar store.  We just armed them with cans and sent them out into the yard.

The part the kids bragged about to their parents when they got home?

Silly sting.

The part they're still talking about a week later?

Silly string.

Another game that we have up our sleeve is the Skittles game.  Buy a large bag (or two) of Skittles and open it up.  Without looking you draw two skittles out of the bag.  If they're the same color, you eat them.  If they're not, you hold them in your mouth.  As the game progresses mouths begin to get full.  If you draw two of the same color you get to chew everything in your mouth UNTIL the next person draws two of the same color.  Then you have to stop chewing.  People can quit when they want.  Winner is the last one to quit.

Hopefully those games will help you when you're in a pinch.  They've been a huge success with our Circus.

In Which I Got Very Behind and Now Do a Catch Up Post

As it tends to go, I got a little overwhelmed with life.

It's been a harder semester with both math 1050 and Spanish, plus working full time, and also trying not to slack as a mother and a wife altogether.

Which didn't happen, but after a slap of reality I pulled it back together and realized where my priorities need to be, even while working and going to school.

No other success can make up for failure in the home.

I don't want to fail in my home.

As it is, the blog got set to the side for a few weeks.

And now I get to show all the incredibly random things that have kept us hopping.

Like Cali's birthday party at Hollywood Connections.

Where Grandma Julie gave Cali some ice cream cones for part of her birthday present, and we then used them to back the cupcakes in and top with ice cream on sundae toppings.  

Our local grocery store had a week where they invited schools to decorate check stands and come in and do...

Well...

This:





...all through the entire store.  Over and over.

The walking around behind the mascot, not the rapping.

Though the rapping was quite good.

A few months ago I saw a groupon for Harlem Globetrotters tickets, and as the Harlem Globetrotters have been on my bucket list since I was a kid, I jumped at the chance to go.

For "bring your parent to school day" we decided to just join the girls for lunch.  We showed up with Panda Express and Subway cookies and hung out with them at the Middle School for that part of their day.

It would have been helpful if they'd all have the same lunch, but what do you?  The Man helped me study Spanish flashcards in between lunches.

A random pic of the girls tromping into church on a windy day.

As it turns out, we have all six kids going to the orthodontist.

I'm not sure how this happened since none of their parents ever had the need for orthodontia, but *sigh* I guess that doesn't matter.

The orthodontist (who is awesome by the way, if you need one hit him up here and tell him we sent you) checked out these three, thought he was done, and then was shocked when he realized the rest of his chairs were also filled with our kids.

The orthodontist has become a family outing.

I think that brings me up to date on all the little goings on.

I have a really fun roadtrip post to do, and I still have the 10k run post to do, complete with a discount run.  It has inflatable jump houses in it!  The run, not the post.  We also need to plan our Very Merry Unbirthday Tea Party for our Disneyside Home Party ( a HUGE thanks to Disney for the fun swag for that one!).

But first, a Spanish test tonight.

Then we'll get on with the rest of it.

Jayme Has a Birthday Party. We Met Beyond 5. Christmas Eve Eve. A Catching Up Post.

On Friday (the 20th) Jayme had her birthday party.

She invited a few friends over to watch Harry Potter.  Along with her food requests (pizza, root beer, brownies, cake balls...) we threw in some jelly beans and called them Bertie Bott's every flavor beans.  The girls made up a chart with their own flavor names, which included earwax, vomit, and prune juice, among others.

Pictures to come, as soon as I can steal them off of The Man's phone.

On Saturday we got to go check out a new band called Beyond 5, which my girls instantly fell in love with.
We stopped and grabbed Panda Express via drive-thru and then hit the road for our 2 hour trip to the concert, which was up in Logan.  Yeah, you heard me, 2 hour trip, one way.

That right there makes me mother of the year.

Since they're a new band we hadn't yet heard much about them.  They've just released their first cd, and have just gotten back from touring Asia, so the girls didn't quite know what they were getting into (check out some videos on them on the post I did here).

But as soon as that first song started, my girls were smitten.  Completely, number one fans.

And that might even be an understatement.

I waited with the girls for an hour after the concert for a chance to meet the guys of Beyond 5 and get some autographs.  We bought a poster for each bedroom and while standing in line one of the crew from the band walked up and gave Tayler a cd.

We had both posters and the cd cover signed.

And the girls snuck some selfies with their favorites.

I was so impressed with these boys, watching them interact with everyone after the show.  They were polite and genuinely nice.  Their music was upbeat with a good vibe and none of their songs has anything that would make me uncomfortable having my daughters listen to it.

I'm behind this group of guys 100%.

We listened to Tayler's cd on the entire 2 hour drive home.

Obsessed.

On Monday we celebrated Christmas eve eve.

Since it wasn't our year for Christmas with The Circus and we needed to take them to their other parents the next morning.

I left work early and went home and made wassail, and put a ham, rolls, and funeral potatoes in the oven.

Papa Mike, Granny Suzann, Lindee, Sam, and Morgan came over and spent the evening with us.

Granny made fancy hot coca.  Papa gave the kids his two cents worth.

We talked and laughed, and chilled.  And opened a few presents.

We thought about joining Lindee and Sam to go see the lights at Thanksgiving Point, but we didn't make it that far.  We stopped at a gas station for slurpees or hot chocolate, and then went home to let the kids open presents.  We wanted them to have some time in the morning to fiddle with their new stuff and check it out before we had to take them to their other parents.

This year I put code names on the presents. (I wrote a guest post on that here).

Tayler had some suspicions on a couple of presents and was hoping that she was reindeer.

When we sat down to open presents I told the kids to grab one present and make sure that they each had a different name.

The kids grabbed presents they had guessed could be something that belonged to them.

Cali grabbed reindeer before Tayler could and Tayler was not a happy camper about that.

I told them to open them and then we would see if they were right.

Cali happened to grab a present that could have been for her so she guessed that she was right.  And we went around the circle, the kids saying who they thought the present they had opened was for.  It finally came to a point where we told Cali she was wrong and the reindeer present was not for her, but the candycane presents were.

Tayler, misunderstanding what was said exclaimed, "She gets to be both reindeer and candycane?"  She was completely frustrated.  But then we told Tayler that no, Cali wasn't reindeer and Tayler's Christmas became perfect as she realized she really did get to be reindeer like she'd been hoping.

This was such a fun way to do the presents, especially as they unwrapped them and tried to figure out who had whose.  I'll definitely be doing this every year.

The rest of the week has been pretty quiet for us.  The Circus doesn't come home until after the New Year and I miss them so much.

I'm not used to them being gone for so long.

We usually do pretty good in how we handle the holidays that we don't have kids for, but we haven't quite found our groove with Christmas yet.  We visited with family on Christmas Day, but we'd already opened our presents with the kids so we kicked back with all our Christmas treats and the pile of new movies that I'd given The Man and enjoyed the holiday the best we could.

Next kidless Christmas, we're taking a cruise.  I'm pretty sure I might feel better about it if I'm sitting on a warm beach somewhere.