Party Party

We decided to go small for Eric's birthday party this year. Last year we invited his whole class and only two kids came. One of our neighbor friends also came, and only a couple of others even bothered to RSVP.

It all started when Eric mentioned that the movie Rio 2 was coming out on the weekend after his birthday. One of his classmates had a movie party a couple or so months ago, so I asked Eric if he wanted to do the same thing and invite his friends to see a movie. He liked the idea. Because Rio 2 didn't come out until yesterday and the show times weren't available until then, we couldn't plan the exact time, so we decided to have the kids meet at our house 1100 and we would take them to the movie. Although we could have taken two cars, it made sense to limit it to one carload of kids, since Eric's friends would want to ride with him and not in a second car.

Eric invited four of his classmates, and thankfully, all of them came. The first two arrived at the same time. Eric had the biggest smile on his face and he said, "This is the first time I've had friends over." I realized then that Eric has never had his school friends over to our house. He has had a couple of neighborhood friends over before. He also remarked that "all of the people I invited came to my party". I was so relieved, because last year was rather sad with only two classmates at his party.

The boys played for a bit upstairs in the game room. There was a lot of sword/lightsaber play as well as Nerf guns. There was also a lot of "pretend" this and that. Patrick went out and got some pizza, and the boys ate lunch. One of Eric's friends had a soccer game at 11am and didn't arrive until about noon. He ate when he got there then he also went upstairs to play. At 1pm, we left the house to go to the 1:30pm movie.

This first picture is a sort of bird's eye view of Eric with his snack pack at the movie theatre. It would have been cheaper to buy a large bucket of popcorn and then dole out the popcorn into smaller containers that they provide at the movie theatre. All the kids wanted drinks, however, so that wouldn't work. They all wanted blue Icees and it wouldn't have been right for them to have to share.

The boys were pretty loud in the theatre before the movie, but they did settle down for the most part. It was nice to hear them giggling and enjoying the movie. Of course they all had to drink their Icees until the very bottom and that slurping was a little loud.

After the movie I tried so hard to get a picture of all five of them holding hands as we left the theatre, but there was always one boy trailing behind everyone else. We went to Baskin-Robbins after the movie, and I tried to get a picture of them crowding around the ice cream case, but every time I was about to take a picture, one of them turned around to ask a question. Oh well. I did get a picture at home with swords, lightsabers, Nerf guns, and even a Thing fist. Most of the weapons are obstructing their faces, but it's pretty tough to get seven-year-old boys to stay still for very long. I'm only showing these photos because I didn't get this blog post okayed by all the parents first and these photos don't show any faces.

All the boys got The Amazing Spider-Man 2 ice cream except for Eric who opted for Daquiri Ice. They all remarked on The Amazing Spider-Man 2 poster advertising the ice cream and the movie coming out on May 2nd. They all said very loudly that they wanted to go see that movie. As soon as we got home at 4pm, the parents arrived to pick them up almost all at the same time. Eric had a lot of fun, and besides being loud, this party was tiring but doable again.

Some other observations are listed below:
--At this age, the kids still use booster seats (which we got from the parents when they were dropped off), and three booster seats side-by-side in the back row of the van is a tight fit.
--I never imagined that seven-year-old boys would be singing "Let It Go" from the movie Frozen, but they were, and it was very entertaining. They also sang the Olaf song from the same movie as well as a selection of other songs. Two of the boys were especially enjoying the singing.
--Eric is very compliant when I try to wipe stuff off his face, like ice cream. The other boys were not so cooperative, and since I'm not their mom, I didn't push the issue.
--Eric is noticeably shorter than the other boys. When we were in his class on Wednesday bringing doughnuts, he was noticeably shorter than most of the girls also.
--Five boys was enough--any more would have been hard to keep track of, especially at a movie theatre and in the parking lot.