Child birthday parties are the true test of motherhood and a greater challenge for working moms who may spend hours a day researching themes and party games at the office but are without extra time in the day to create award winning cakes and over the top decorations.  This past weekend, we celebrated my son's fifth birthday with what has now been deemed "parental suicide" by everybystander able to comment. 

New to the area and his pre-K classroom, I had no idea who was worthy of an invitation or how to distribute them discreetly.  An invitation was thus dropped into twenty-two cubbies at school, inviting twenty-two classmates to our home for the celebration.  Plus, my husband and I used the opportunity to invite several of our own new friends from church, school, and work to our house for some fellowship, food, and good five-year old birthday party fun.  We survived the day, but I learned a few lessons and will never repeat at least one party game.  Hopefully our party plan can offer some guidance to future overachieving parents in similar situations.

Theme: Spiderman, how my five-year old knows who Spiderman is I have yet to determine, so we were not over the top with the theme.  He wore a Spiderman shirt.  Lunch was served on Spiderman party-ware.  The brownies had a slight variation of a Spiderman theme thanks to my not-so-vast artistic abilities.

Guests: Despite the multitude of guests invited, we were joined by four grandparents, six classmates and their parents, one work friend, two church friends, plus the two pastors of our church and their combined six children.  Only after the party did I learn the rule-of-thumb that a five-year-old should have five children attend his birthday party, for a six-year-old, six children, etc.

Food: For the kids my mom whipped up a dozen grilled cheese sandwiches on an electric griddle to be served with orange segments.  For the adults, I served a pot of chili with cornbread muffins.  Extra snack included chips and salsa, sweet meatballs, and hummus and carrot sticks.  We had no left-overs, but I honestly don't think anyone went home hungry.

Schedule: We started at 11:00 to accommodate afternoon naps for little brother, etc.  The obligation to serve lunch just added insult to injury, but we did so without spending a fortune.

11:00 - arrival activities included Spiderman mazes and coloring pages as well as craft supplies aplenty for decorating plain white goodie bags which cost less than $1 for a pack of 50.

11:30 - lunch was served, adults chatted and the kids continued to play with our everyday toys.

12:15 - the popcorn toss game that will never be repeated.  Plastic party cups were lined up in several rows, the inner-most cups each was marked with a child's name.  With the start of some music, the kids grabbed a handful of popcorn to toss into the cups and were to freeze when the music stopped.  However, the popcorn was all gone by the time the music was paused even once and the dog enjoyed cleaning up the incredible mess of popcorn that coupled with the toppled red party cups looked like an awesome college party had taken place in our living room.

12:17 - Stone Soup story time and trail mix making.  Each child was asked to bring a favorite trail mix ingredient to the party.  As Grandma read Stone Soup, the kids chewed on their popcorn saving the trail mix ingredients to be mixed together and small bags of the resulting mix were sent home as party favors.

12:40 - presents were opened at lightning speed with the help of several five-year olds.  The excitement of opening presents and the nearing of the two-hour party limit left us to forfeit any official presentation of the cake which was actually brownies with red, blue, and brown M&Ms and a drizzling of white chocolate a la Spiderman's web.