Ben's 8th Birthday Party, Part II

Ben has a lot of friends in 2nd grade. I remember going to back to school night the day before school started last August. I expressed some concern to Ben's teacher that he was new to the school and to the area didn't know anybody. She told me not to worry and that after tomorrow he would have 25 new friends. Well, she wasn't kidding! Ben is always talking about his school day and it seems like he mentions someone new all the time. So, although we like to keep things pretty low-key around here, we ended up inviting Ben's whole class to the Fun Park for pizza and Laser Tag. We had 17 kids from the class plus a few cousins there! The kids had a great time, the parents (us) were glad and also glad when it was over. It was unfortunate that although I had reserved for 17, the party was only set up for 7 when we arrived, so we were a bit cramped in the party room, which made it a challenge to attend to everyone's needs, but we survived and Ben had a great time with his friends.

Here's a tip that worked really well for me, by the way. For both Erik and Ben's parties, I took an individual photo of each guest with the Birthday Boy. I then uploaded them from home to my local Ritz/Wolf Camera store through RitzPix in 3x5 size with a white border around them. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays 3x5s are 6 cents a piece and I picked them up the same day (no shipping). We wrote a thank you note on the back of each and the boys handed them out at school. It worked as great Thank You cards.