We parents all know how draining a child’s birthday party can be. So many kids running around. But I was really surprised at how well my daughter’s 6th birthday party went yesterday.

We did things a little different this time. We didn’t have the party on a weekend day. We held it instead on Friday afternoon, after school. I think this is a part of why things went so well. The kids were already a little tired from their school day.

We got permission to take 3 of the kids home with us, since their parents weren’t available to do so. Our house is a short walk from the school, so herding that menagerie along wasn’t too bad. After all, they all wanted to get to that party, fast!

My daughter was told to think about who she wanted to invite, because we didn’t want to be doing that with half the class, of course. Only so many kids I’m willing to take that kind of responsibility for at one time. So that helped to keep the numbers down. We invited 7, and 6 were able to come. Not bad, considering that the only decline was because she had a brother with the same birthday.

The kindergarten has a short day on Fridays, so we told parents that it was right after class, or noon, whichever was easiest on them. Gave us some time to get a bit organized before the rest of the kids showed.

We served the kids a light lunch with taquitos, carrots and apple slices. They went off to play. No characters, nothing rented for them to jump on, just kids having fun.

We started opening presents at 1. Then cake, followed by snow cones. The snow cones were a bigger hit than the cake. Makes sense to me. Seems like I always see the kids eating the frosting and very little of the cake. Snow cones are rarely served, so they’re a bigger treat in some ways.

By 2 the kids were outside playing with water balloons. Some finished quickly and came inside to color. By the time parents were coming to pick up their kids, that’s pretty much what they saw. Very calm children mostly coloring and talking.

All in all, I think the kids had a blast. Got a few more interested in coming over to play.

The one catch was needing to keep a couple kids beyond the party hours, as their parents had to work. This was something we planned for, and told the parents flat out that we would do if it meant their kids could come to the party.

This was not a lot of extra work. After the party we allowed them to watch a movie, and they were tired enough that mostly they just did that, with a bit more playing.

It was fun figuring out how to handle all this, from allowing parents to drop presents off early to keeping the kids’ backpacks organized. But it went sufficiently well for us to want to do it again in the future. Despite some of the extra challenges, we like how things went better.