What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger!

Fell into bed at 9:00 last night completely exhausted. Happy and content, but exhausted. The party was a complete success. Two people didn’t make it, so there were only 26 people in my house. Enough to give a novice party-giver a nervous breakdown, but not me! It went great. We had a craft. We had TWO party games. Enough pizza and cake to feed an army. And one happy girl.

The night before the party, Chris and I stayed up till 11:30 trying to plan every detail. To let you know how freaked out we were about this, I’ll quote my husband, “I can see why people hire party planners.” (Yes, we both stopped, grasped some reality and laughed at that point!) I couldn’t fall asleep until after midnight, and then was awake at 4:00 head spinning. I finally got up at 4:45 and headed downstairs to start laundry, iron Ella’s outfit and mine and reorganize the toy room. You should have seen me – I was a cleaning, organizing dynamo. I removed over half the toys and unnecessary furniture into our storage room and then rearranged the rest. I even managed to put together a basket with toys just for the one year old guest. By the time the rest of my family woke up, I was starting to slow down. Chris asked me if I had had any coffee and I surprised both of us by saying, “No.” It was pure adrenaline.

The rest of the day was a blur of cleaning, shopping and setting-up. Chris was absolutely amazing. He did most of the cleaning and even drew a large Eeyore for “Pin the Tail on the Donkey”. The indoor scavenger hunt almost sent him through the roof, though. Hiding the clues, in the right order, was a harder task than either of us expected.

As 4:00 came, Ella and Harrison were right by the door to greet all the guests. They were a little overwhelmed by it all, but handled it fairly well. Neither got upset about sharing their toys, and that was my biggest concern. All the kids had a ball with our toys (more so than the games, I’m sure!) and loved helping Ella open her gifts.

I think the only thing I didn’t expect was that I would need adult help besides Chris. Thank God I had many experienced parents at my beck and call. Everyone was great. It never would have gone as smoothly without their help.

Harrison slept in the longest this morning. As we spent some quiet moments together as he adjusted from sleep to awake, I asked him how he liked having so many friends in our house. “It was too much, Mama.” I had to smile. Harrison is not my social child. It was at that moment in time that I decided that his party, next month, will be much smaller.