We hosted a joint birthday party on Saturday for Shannon and Daniel since their birthdays are so close together and I have not the energy nor the desire to have separate parties. Because we have a relatively small house, I told Shannon she could invite 3 friends. (2 originally but I realized 3 girls total would not be wise--girlfriend drama has already begun)
Also there were 2 boys, (our friend's kids, Shannon and Daniel's ages) and Katie.

That's 8 kids total. Not too much really when I think about all the parties I've dropped Shannon off to where there were 12 or more kids let loose wreaking havoc.
Who are these parents and how do they not go bonkers?

Here is what was supposed to be 3-tiered cake but turned into 2 because I love to think up grand ideas without researching or practicing, and so last minute modifications became necessary. If I kept it at 3 tiers, not only would it look like a big pile of you-know-what, gravity would have gotten the better of it and we would have had crushed cake souffle for dessert.
So now we have lots of left-over cake.

Lots.

I really was organized at first. I even had chores written on the calendar for every day leading up to party day. Which would work if I actually continued checking off my list after Wednesday. Then I ran out of steam causing me to go berserk on Saturday morning in a vain effort to clean a house that was just about to get messed up again anyway.

Thank you Tim for helping clean while I decorated the ridiculously time consuming cake. I never anticipated how much time it takes to make stupid little multi-colored candies. I've got to stop looking at stuff and saying to myself "Look at that. I can do that. It'll only take a couple hours."

It never takes just a couple of hours.

Once the guests arrived, I realized (sort of panicky) that I hadn't really planned any activities for these folks. Was I supposed to entertain these little people? I guess I figured they would just run around screaming and playing anyway so why bother to try to get them to play Parcheesie? In retrospect, next time I will absolutely plan something because when 4 (only 4!) 8 year-old girls (well ok, and 3 boys) lack an organized event, they make up their own chaos.

Some of which included this catchy diddy: "Girls go to college to get more knowledge and boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider" (repeat a million times to get the full effect)

Oh but the boys had great comebacks like "Yeah? Well girls are dumb!"

Future politicians here.

I'm convinced that hell consists of fire, brimstone, and hundreds of these clackers in the hands of screaming pre-teens.