gee golly i hate the politics of kidss birthday parties

so i was looking intohaving the boys party at a place... all the invites i want for only $90 with 2 hours of play. do paint your own t shirts as the goodie, so i tell some friends of mine and they start in on taking spare clothes so their kids done mess up their party clothes

i just dont dress up my kids, i always assume they are playing and will make a mess

then i get to thinking do i really wanna invite these snobs,

so now i am thinking 2 home parties, 1 short tea party for the snobs and then one knock down fun party for the cool people

I can get my house cleaned for $100 which isnt too bad. Then I start to think, these people's kids dont even play with mine regularly but they are part of my life

so how to decide what to do and then who to invite and how to not invite people and not hurt feelings?

Then this same group of snobs, I start talking about birthday gifts. Neither of my boys need anything small. No clothes no toys, no crayons but we would really love to put some money aside to buy a really nice swing set and have an area made for playing in the backyard so perhaps we could do a penny bank and tell people if they want to contibute great and if not dont bring a gift because we do not need anymore plastic crap in my house and when people give those gifts they never get returned because who has the time. Then I am told that people want to be able to hand something to the birthday boy gah tehse boys want for nothing but we can never manage the big stuff which would have such wonderful long term enjoyment.

so what do you guys do?
julie

here is an idea that might help.

my kids get to invite as many kids as years old they are.

so...this year savannah gets to invite 3 kids...she's turning 3, jackson is inviting 1 kid (well he didn't really tell me who he wanted...hahaha)

then we have 2 cousins so they are invited.

would that help make it less of a 'todo' and more fun.

it's about the boys and not the adults anyways.

Parties alway bring me stress I hate them. So for me I would go for the least amount of stress idea. Have it somewhere else, who cares if they bring extra clothes, let them deal with the headache of changing the kids if they want. You and your normal let kids be kids and get messy friends can laugh while they are dealing with kids who don't want to change and just want to play. Gifts are a tricky subject. Me I would let them get what they want and set a day to spend returning (small tip toys-r-us takes anything they sell back without a reciept even if it say came from walmart and gives you store credit) I would tell my closer friends if they asked what the boys wanted that you wanted a swingset so they can contribute if they want.

You know what, I am so anti-party-politics, I dont' even know what they are, so I just invited everyone with kids, and those who are cool that don't have kids, and let them decide. I got a lot of nos from the snobs, and that's cool!

I just say go with what YOU want, and don't worry about anyone else and their opinions! No matter what you do, you're bound to do something someone doesn't like, so why worry about it!