Happy Birthday, Amelia!

We had a birthday party for Amelia on the Saturday before her birthday, and it was CRAZY MAD CHAOS.  She wanted to have a Frozen dinner and a movie-watching party, so we invited all the girls from her class and Natalie & Noah to come to our house from 4 - 7pm.  Amazingly, all the kids but one RSVPd and attended, which meant we had 11 kids at the party.  Thank goodness Becky and Brian came to help out!  The girls and I had a fun time decorating our house to look like winter:

Everyone who came inside thought the snowflakes were so much fun!  I didn't get a photo of the snowflakes the girls cut, but they each enjoyed cutting a few, too.  While everyone was arriving, the girls colored Frozen pictures while listening to the music from Frozen.  I think that was my favorite part of the whole party - 10 little kids sitting quietly and coloring, and then bursting into song - IN UNISON - to sing along with "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?"  Brian said it reminded him of teaching elementary school music, but I thought it was amazing!

Amelia's favorite part of the party was the treasure hunt where the kids had to fill in the missing words from Frozen song lyrics.  The prizes at the end were Elsa crowns that Ben printed.  We also played Pin the Nose on Olaf:

and Do You Want to Build a Snowman:

and Anna/Elsa (think Red Light/Green Light).  This was especially crazy since most of the kids cheated, and the few who didn't (Natalie, Noah and Kennedy) were starting to get upset about it.  So we switched places and Becky and I did the moving and freezing while the kids all yelled out either Anna or Elsa.  They thought that was hugely fun.

From left to right, that's Aubrey, Kennedy, Aashi, Noah, Emma, Braenna, Aubrey, Amelia, Gwen, Natalie and Megan.  Then we had dinner and tried to watch the movie, but most kids ended up watching for only 10 minutes before they decided they wanted to go play on the playset or climb on the bunkbeds.  So we gave up on the movie and played outside.  And then we had cake:

The girls were all amazed by the Elsa doll cake, and had to come around to the end of the table to see it.  I think it turned out really cute.

It was 6 layers tall, and they barely ate 1/3 of it.  I cut teeny, tiny pieces, the smallest I could possibly cut, and at least half the kids weren't interested in finishing their cake.  I will point out, though, that Amelia, Megan, Natalie and Noah did stay and finish all their cake.  Then Amelia opened presents:

Amelia got a few sets of Legos, which she was super excited about, a Frozen shirt (which she has worn twice already), a slip and slide (which it has not been warm enough to use yet) two Rainbow Looms (which we took back because she already has one), and a few other things.  She was very excited to get a gift card to Target, once she realized what it was, and along with the money from one Rainbow Loom return, she picked out a pink and sparkly silver stuffed animal kitty purse, another set of Legos, a little girl Barbie doll, and a Disney Princess notebook for herself and one for Megan.  She had a lot of fun shopping and taking her time deciding what to buy.

Lessons Learned:

• make sure Becky and Brian come to all kids parties.  In fact, see if Becky and Brian will just run the next party all by themselves.  I think being an experienced teacher must help when dealing with huge amounts of crazy kids.
• kids will not watch a movie during a birthday party, even when they would sit and watch the movie 19 times in a row normally
• do NOT schedule a party for longer than two hours for any reason at all
• do NOT start to frost the cake four hours before the party starts, just in case you have a not-done dome-shaped cake disaster and have to start baking cakes again 3 1/2 hours before the party starts, because that is very stressful
• have something low key for the kids to do as soon as they arrive, because one kid will show up ten minutes early (why?) and one kid will inevitably show up 50 minutes late (again, why?)
• do the treasure hunt as early as possible so the kids don't find the clues while they are rampaging through your house and move them
• do not do any small fiddly craft projects, even if your own kids can handle them perfectly well
• somehow, 11 kids didn't even finish an entire large cheese pizza, and every kid wanted no sauce, even though they all claimed to like sauce.
• I have amazingly nice, quiet, well-behaved children.  And so do Becky & Brian.  That is not normal.
• Kids are very excited to get gift cards; some of her guests even said "Oooo!  I wish I would get a gift card for my birthday!" so if you are stressing about getting a present at the last minute, just get a gift card.  Kids will love it.