Last year we were brave enough to cave in to Jamie’s request for a sleepover as a birthday party. It worked so well that we decided to do the same thing again this year, however as we approached the big day/night, two memories seemed to loom large in my mind. Firstly it was how tired we were the next day – the whole family was pretty much washed out. Secondly it was, and I apologise for the baseness of this observation, how much the whole of the downstairs of our house smelled of farts in the morning. Well, I suppose it should be expected with 13 boys sleeping in such close proximity.
Nice buns
Anyway, in preparation for this year we contacted the environmental health and got a safety certificate that authorised us to put the children in such an environment again, and the party was on!
I suppose the fact that we are both trained teachers gives us something of an advantage on these occasions in that we are both mentally prepared for a raft of excited children and feel a natural urge to control when they breath, eat, sleep, talk, move, sit, smile or enjoy themselves…. (this comes from a bit of a family in joke which emerged in a conversation with one of the midwives who helped deliver one of the boys – she complimented Hilary on how calm and compliant she was and imparted the knowledge that most teachers are an absolute nightmare to help give birth because they are such control freaks and they get very, very upset when they find that they are not fully able to organise the birth event…).
Anyway, it’s only a half joke, the evening was in fact organised down to the last minute. Children arrived at 5pm and were sent straight out into the back garden to run around for 45 minutes while it was still light. Some asked if they could come inside. No, we said.
At 5.45 they came inside, took their shoes off and sat around on the sofa for a debrief about house rules. It went something like this:
- Welcome to our house. Lovely to have you here for Jamie’s birthday party. Now the rules.
- Archie is small. Here he is. This is what he looks like. If you tread on him you’re going home.
- This is inside. That is outside. You throw things and run around outside. If you throw things and run around inside you’re going home.
- We are all kind and supportive of each other, sharing and taking turns. If you are nasty to anyone or stop people from enjoying themselves you’re going home.
- If you fart in our house, you’re going home.
OK, so number four I only said in my head, but you get the drift. Then we had a pizza or pasta dinner and by 6.30pm we were ready to split into three teams and go in groups of 5 to the local sweet shop where every boy was allowed to spend 50p in the pick and mix. We used torches and walked in the dark. Exciting! Those who stayed behind played on the Wii while they waited.
It was a quiet and peaceful party....
By the time the sweets had been purchased and every boy’s bag had been labelled to prevent any mix ups, it was 8 o’clock. Time to start the team challenge. We drew names from a hat and ended up with four teams of 4. The competition had four rounds:
- The building challenge
- The sporting challenge
- The racing challege
- The quiz
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Each team rotated around the first three challenges with one team having a break playing on the Wii during one round. The final round was the quiz, done all at once. One of the rounds of the quiz was the picture round. The challenge was simple – who did these children grow up to be?
Answer in the comments, please.
By the time the votes were counted and the winning tea was announced, it was 10.30pm. Everyone was dispatched to get their bed things ready and get themselves changed into their pyjamas. Once that happened we all met up in the lounge to dish out the sweet bags and watch ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’.
Finally, the film closed and we had 45 minutes of chat and silliness before I sat in the kitchen and enforced a no-fly zone where all discussion was grounded and people had to lie low. By 1.45am all was quiet and we went to bed.
The boys were all brilliant and we had a wonderful party again. Jamie has some lovely friends who were a pleasure to host. By 9.30am that morning all children had been collected and the house again returned to normality. We’ve got a year to prepare for the next one!
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