M's birthday party

M's party was last night/this morning.  It went quite well.  I had been a bit concerned that there might be some 2 against 1 issues since we only ended up with 2 guests (out of 4 invited - one had a baseball game last night (we told him/his mom that he could come over afterwards, but he didn't) and one went out of town for the weekend).  No such issues though.  Good!

They were so excited about playing on the Wii, though, that they ate dinner in bursts.  When D came home with the pizza, they each ate 1-2 slices and then declared that they were full.  I looked at the 2 full pizzas remaining and thought we were going to have lots left over.  Not to worry - they came back up twice more for another slice each, and before I knew it, I had just over half a pizza left.  That was good, because I only had room in the fridge for one pizza box.

My mom came over 8ish to have cake with us, but having just finished another round of pizza, the kids weren't interested.  We finally ended up eating cake around 9:30 I think.

Finally the cake!

Unfortunately no re-lighting candles this time. They are really getting too short to use again. I need to buy some new ones. And one of M's friends stepped in front of the picture of M blowing out the candles, so instead we got M cutting his cake.  After the first ceremonial cut, he wanted me to do the rest.

Then after cake came presents.  It didn't take too long with only 2 gifts, but he was quite happy with his presents:
an iTunes gift card and cold hard cash (plus a cool holographic birthday card).  His presents from us will come on his actual birthday.

I told M and his friends that the pizza was fair game for midnight snacking as well as popcorn (regular microwave and flavored) and bananas, but that the cake was not - it was being saved for M's actual birthday.  One of his friends was surprised to hear that - "you mean he's having another birthday party?"  No, just family.  

I like separating the family and friends gifts, because when I've been to parties where they don't, it seems like the friends gifts get short shrift compared to parent/grandparent gifts.  It's hard for a kid to be excited about a $15 gift card when you're comparing it to a video game system or motorbike.

It seems I'm 0 for 2 on movies at the kids parties this year.  But its not because I'm picking them out - no, each time the kid has picked out his own movie and then not watched it during their party.  Last night M and his friends watched the Simpsons movie (I don't have a problem letting 3 12 year olds watch it, but I wouldn't let A and his 9 year old friends watch it during his party).  Amazingly enough, I think they even went to sleep once the movie was done around 12:45.  Or at least, we didn't hear anything more in the night.

Tonight we watched M's movie - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  M enjoyed it and says he wants to read the book now.  I think there was a fair amount there that he didn't get, but that's ok.  There's probably some stuff that I got now that I didn't when I read the book many moons ago.