Ivie's 6th Birthday Celebrations

This year, in lieu of a "typical" birthday party (the kind where you pay a lot of money to take the child and his/her 10-15 friends to a set location for a couple hours of fun), Ivie decided that she wanted to have a sleepover.  Dale and I were all for this transition, given that such a celebration would undoubtedly be less expensive than the alternative!

So, starting at age 6 in the Herman house, a new tradition of birthday sleepovers begins...

When we sat down to work on Iv's guest list, we quickly realized a problem.  Ivie still has great friends from her time at day care, but she also has great NEW friends from Kindergarten!  So we ultimately decided that she would have an "old friends" sleepover, and then a "new friends" sort-of-sleepover (everything but the drama associated with actually sleeping at a strange house!).

The good news about these sorts of gatherings is that you pretty much just have to provide food, a movie, and 1 or 2 little crafts for the kids to do.  Other than that, you can just turn them loose in the house for an extended play date!

The bad news?  The mess to clean up on the back end of said "turn-loose-dom", the occasional child who gets homesick and you have to place the late-night call to the mom, and the lack of photo opportunities.

I did manage to take a few pictures of the girls all together on these two great evenings.  While there were a few bumps in the road, as you can imagine any time you get a group of girls together, the parties were both deemed a great success.  Iv's already looking forward to her next birthday sleepover!