December Birthday's: Last Minute Party

December is already a busy enough month with Christmas, New Year's and all the other Winter Celebrations that take place. As soon as December 1st hits my calendar is filled with Daily Activities. To name a few we have Breakfast with Santa , Christmas Parties, School functions and to top it off there are quite a few Birthdays in December. 

So an already hectic month just got that much busier. I can count at least 16 birthdays in the Month of December and I'm sure I'm missing a few. My Oldest boy's birthday is 3 days after Christmas. So when it comes to celebrating his birthday with friends we either do it at the beginning of December or Early January. We refuse to combine the two. It wasn't his fault that his birthday lands at a terrible time of year for a party. 

Usually with Family we celebrate closer to his birthday but it's been difficult now with family members moving in all different directions. I was totally prepared for Christmas, but for the first time ever I wasn't prepared for my son's birthday. I think with everything going on in our lives right now, I got swamped and before I knew it December was here and I hadn't planned a celebration or anything. (Until he asked me about it that is)

We wanted to keep it low key to try and avoid over stimulation (that and I had to somehow throw a party together in a couple of weeks). He actually came up with the idea of having a sleepover party. I was totally game. 

He invited 2 friends and they would come over for pizza, cakes, video games, a movie and a sleepover. I kept things simple, I sent out a Facebook invitation, ordered his favourite pizza, got some Kool-aid Jammers, Chocolate milk, some chips and snacks. I even cheated and bought mini cupcakes from the grocery store. Normally I would make his cakes but there was no way I was going to add anything else to my schedule. (The kids don't really care anyway).

I bought shower caddy baskets at the local Dollar Tree and used those as their snack caddy's for the movie. It held each kids cup, and snacks and kept everything easy to clean up and keep track of. I also put their loot bags in them and it kept things a little organized. 

I bought a few helium balloons and that was it for decorations, besides our elf on the shelf, who happened to be dressed as a Cupcake. I was not going all out for this party, in the past I had gone "Pinterest" crazy throwing elaborate party's for the kids, when in all reality they often don't remember it, and only really care about having fun with their friends, the decorations are nothing overly exciting. 

The boys had some Nerf gun fights, played some Mario Kart, ate some food and cake and watched Despicable Me 3 before falling asleep. They of course were up at the crack of early so I made them Pancakes and let them build their Lego sets before they had to go home. I didn't want to do "junky" loot bags filled with crap that would get thrown away in a couple of days, so I bought each kid a Micro Lego Star Wars set and put some candy canes in a bag. 

In the end all that Matters is that my Son had a good birthday, and he sure did. He was all smiles, and was so happy that his friends got to sleep over and that the party continued in the morning. 

I'm writing this with a sleep deprivation hangover, the boys were up late giggling and my youngest decided sleep was lame. 



I survived another Birthday Party (a Last minute one at that) Have you ever had to entertain or throw a party at the last minute? What did you do?

~Mommy Dearest