Our Understated Birthday Party

So, my hubby finally started feeling better and we were able to have my son's birthday party last weekend (I know, bad mom it was a week late).  We let him choose 6 of his friends to have over and then let his little sis have a friend over to keep her out of the boys' hair. The day was such a success.

The kids all showed up around 1:00pm and after a short "rules" meeting headed up by my hubby, they were off on their 4-wheelers.  The girls on the other hand, decided they wanted to do other things not with the boys.  Perfect, my plan actually worked for once!

The boys rode for the rest of the afternoon and since they were doing so well following the rules my hubby decided to take them to a different farm that he said they'd have even more fun at.  Little did I know the translation for "even more fun" meant a 10' x 15' mud hole.  As the girls and I made our way down there we quickly discovered just how much more fun the boys were having.  Most were already covered in mud from their helmets to their boots.  Good thing I told the parents to send a change of clothes.  The 5 other dads that wanted to supervise this party were having just as much fun as the boys I think.  They were laughing uncontrollably every time one of the boys would hit the mud hole.  Yeah thanks jerks, are you laughing because they are having fun or that I'll be the one cleaning this shit up?   The girls decided they wanted to get involved and off they went so now I have 9 kids covered in mud.  This will be interesting when we get back to our house.  All went well though.  We all made it back to our house and the other dads helped the hubby spray most of the mud off the kids before they were instructed to head into the house, one at a time to jump in the shower.  After everyone had made it back into clean clothes (thank goodness they actually brought some), it was time to start feeding these hungry boys.  We always take the easy way out and grill hamburgers and hot dogs.  It gets the boys fed quickly and clean up is a breeze.

This is not ours but looks very similar to what we saw!

Once everyone got done eating the boys disappeared to the basement to play some pool and darts while the girls decided to head upstairs to do their own thing again.  I couldn't believe how easy this was.  Why don't we always just have all of the boys over at once instead of having one over every other weekend?  Then I remembered why.  There was very little sleeping at our house that night.  Two of the boys decided they were going to stay up all night and most of the others didn't actually go to sleep until the early morning hours.  I got up at my normal time of 5:30am expecting to have a room full of hungry boys within the hour.  Yep, that didn't happen.  So I started up load #2 of muddy clothes so everything would be washed and dried by the time the boys left.  Around 8:00am I could hear them start moving around upstairs and knew that was my cue to start breakfast.  Yep, I took the easy way out again and made them bacon, pancakes and eggs. Quick and easy to fix and fills them up.  The assembly line of boys came down and within minutes were scarfing down everything I had made. Have you ever fed 7 growing boys?  Dear lord, I think every one of them has a hollow leg.  Crap, I've got the girls to feed still so off I go to make up some more.

We made it through breakfast and as I'm cleaning up I look in the living room only to see 5 of the 7 boys looking like they had just got done eating a Thanksgiving meal and about ready for their nap. Yep boys, that's what staying up all night (for the most part) does to you.  We let them boys hang out for a few hours in the morning and decided to start rounding them up to take them home around 11:00am. Of course, nobody wanted to leave but at this point, I'm exhausted, my son is about ready to fall asleep and the hubby looks like he took the red eye flight home last night.  Fortunately, one of the dads shows back up in the morning to help us get the 4-wheelers hosed off and loaded and volunteers to take a couple of the boys home for us.  Everyone is delivered home by 11:30am and as the boy walks back into the house, he doesn't miss a beat taking off his shoes, heading to the living room and crashing right there on the couch.

All of this fun and I didn't get any cutesy decorations, didn't need a 3 tier cake, didn't bother with gift bags for the boys to go home with, and didn't have catered food in the shape of any animal or character.  What I did do was just let them have fun and all for less than $150 for 9 kids - overnight.

So:

Drinks for the boys:   $30.00

Food for the boys:     $55.00
Gas for 4 wheelers:    $35.00
Laundry Detergent:    $10.00
Knowing that they couldn't stop talking about the party all day yesterday at school:  Priceless.