Birthdays Are Coming Up

What we were thinking of is holding parties for both of them at home and doing it in two shifts on the same day. This will cut out running around for two parties and cut down the cost of throwing both parties.

The first shift would be for our daughter turning eight. We would invite some of her friends over to play and celebrate. Maybe some close family too.

The second shift would come later for the little guy. Here we would invite some close friends of ours and more family. We know a lot of people who have had children recently and would want to celebrate with us.

What we’re trying to do is give both a great party without incurring huge expenses or asking people to go too much out of their way. We’ve seen too many extravagant first birthdays that we can’t understand. Yes we want to celebrate but the little guy really won’t remember it.

What do you think?

There’s another reason we want to try to keep the parties small – gifts.

We appreciate everything anyone has gotten for us in the past but with the holidays so close we end up with a lot of stuff that just doesn’t get played with and takes up a lot of space. Having the parties at home limits how many guests we can invite, thus how many gifts we’ll get. Maybe that sounds strange but we can only fit so many toys in our home. We want the kids to be stimulated but want them to appreciate each gift.

We’ve even considered asking guests to not bring anything (or at least telling them they don’t have to). Besides cutting down the amount of gifts this would also allow people to come without feeling like they have to buy two gifts. We’ve thought about maybe asking for bonds or contributions to 529’s but we don’t want to sound like we’re asking for money. We feel weird telling people what to buy. Honestly we’re happy just having friends and family there to celebrate.

Any suggestions? Is it wrong to ask for specific gifts? I’d love to hear any ideas you have!