Help me navigate this and please please please don't let this deteriorate into a debate about how overblown kids' birthday parties are, RSVP's, and whatnot.
K1 is turning 5 in a couple weeks. He's been talking about his birthday for about 10 months. He's asked to have a party in our basement where his friends make paper airplanes and engage in contests to see whose planes fly the highest, furthest, through hoops, etc. He's planned a menu of corn dogs and chips and asked me to bake a round yellow cake with a bat signal on it. All very reasonable requests that I'm happy to entertain. The problem is who to invite.
His birthday is near the winter holidays. It was very poorly attended last year. He goes to two schools and has small classes at both schools - 10 kids in the morning, 12 in the afternoon, he and another boy are in both classes so it's about 20 kids total. I don't like many of the parents in the AM class; I don't know most of the parents in the PM class but I do like those that I've met. Generally, I prefer to let my kids cherry pick and not force them to invite the whole class. When they do, I find that they invite a nicer group of people and entertaining their friends is a more sincere gesture on my kids' part. However, I'm concerned that if he cherry picks this time either (1) he'll invite too few kids and we won't have enough for a party given that the party would be about a week before Christmas, or (2) if he invites say 4 kids (and himself) out of a class of 10 then he'll have invited too many to exclude the rest of the class. What do you think? I'm leaning toward inviting all 20 kids and just letting the chips, er, paper airplanes, fall where they may.
There is very little in the way of cupcakes/celebrations at either school BTW. The first school keeps kosher and the second is "nut safer". In both instances, I'm limited to prepackaged goodies from a specific list so it will probably be a box of oreos or something like that.
K1 is turning 5 in a couple weeks. He's been talking about his birthday for about 10 months. He's asked to have a party in our basement where his friends make paper airplanes and engage in contests to see whose planes fly the highest, furthest, through hoops, etc. He's planned a menu of corn dogs and chips and asked me to bake a round yellow cake with a bat signal on it. All very reasonable requests that I'm happy to entertain. The problem is who to invite.
His birthday is near the winter holidays. It was very poorly attended last year. He goes to two schools and has small classes at both schools - 10 kids in the morning, 12 in the afternoon, he and another boy are in both classes so it's about 20 kids total. I don't like many of the parents in the AM class; I don't know most of the parents in the PM class but I do like those that I've met. Generally, I prefer to let my kids cherry pick and not force them to invite the whole class. When they do, I find that they invite a nicer group of people and entertaining their friends is a more sincere gesture on my kids' part. However, I'm concerned that if he cherry picks this time either (1) he'll invite too few kids and we won't have enough for a party given that the party would be about a week before Christmas, or (2) if he invites say 4 kids (and himself) out of a class of 10 then he'll have invited too many to exclude the rest of the class. What do you think? I'm leaning toward inviting all 20 kids and just letting the chips, er, paper airplanes, fall where they may.
There is very little in the way of cupcakes/celebrations at either school BTW. The first school keeps kosher and the second is "nut safer". In both instances, I'm limited to prepackaged goodies from a specific list so it will probably be a box of oreos or something like that.
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