The 9 year old's Birthday Party!!!!

This year, my 9 year old has his smallest turn out in guest....but I believe the most fun since he was 5.  It was his first home party since he started school and had guests outside of family...and I must say, it was quite successful!!  My middle son has the largest circle of friends out of all my kids and the age range is pretty large (he shares friends with his older and younger brother).  He is active, dangerous and funny...and very likeable.  He also has a big heart...which has put in a couple of situations where his "friends" take advantage of him.  As we sat down to make his invite list...I assumed that we would be inviting his class (because we do every year and then invite a handful of kids he plays sports with that are not in class or in his school).  This year....he informed me that the friends in class have been judging him because we don't live in their nice neighborhood and ask him all the time why he doesn't have the expensive shoes and clothes that they have....basically making him feel inferior.  He knows that they don't know any better....but it still frustrates him to have remind them that you don't have to have $120 pair of shoes to have comfortable or name brand shoes...he wears the same brands as they do...but we don't buy hottest shoe...we wait until the prices drop.  Apparently...in the most recent of time frames...they were giving him a hard time about having an "at-home" party.  This was a choice that he made and had NOTHING to do with money. He got a lot of cool things for Christmas last month....and he wanted to play with his friends for his birthday.

After this emotional conversation.....I asked him which kids he thought would not care where his birthday party was at...and which kids he missed hanging out with the most....the list we came up with was a good size....but much much shorter than years past.  Planning for this birthday party gave us an opportunity to have that conversation about what truly makes a good friend and what we do to keep them around!  The friends that he chose just happen to be the children of parents who I am friends with...so it was super great to see some them (some of them we only see a few months out of the year because they go to different schools in our district and we only play one sport with them).

We tried to play flag football outside but that only last 20 minutes!  So we broke out the games we made last year....then turned my house into a war zone with the array of military guns my boys own (toy guns of course) and booted up the Xbox upstairs!  I made a ton of food...mini sandwiches, pizza rolls, mozzarella sticks, deviled eggs, chips and salsa, veggies and dip...and of course soda and cupcakes!  None of the kids were ready to go home...and that's when you know these were the right kids for my son to have over!  Several of his friends had already bought tickets to a dirt bike show that was on the same day....so for the record...we don't like the people who run that!   Two of his closest friends already had tickets before they got the invite to the party!

We had so much fun! Below are links to the things and projects we had leading up to this party!

Numbered Centerpiece
Field Goal Cupcakes
Homemade Penalty Flags
Birthday Banner
Table Top Goal Post
Cricut Cuts

Enjoy!!

~Brandie