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Aria's 10th birthday is this coming Saturday. She didn't want to "use up" her actual birthday having her party (we always have a special day of doing whatever she wants), so we had it this past weekend. She wanted a slumber party, so we invited all the kids in her class for a pizza party 5-8pm and then girls to stay for a sleepover. Last year, we tried a similar format and only had 1 friend who actually showed up - though it was her BFF so that was the most important one. This year, she had 10 kids for the beginning part and 6 girls for the sleepover, which fortunately was about the most we could have crammed into her room.

Notes:

* To make this happen, we had to deep-clean the house, and particularly her room, which has been in a hazmat state for a couple of years and required a few months' intervention. We started out in early May saying "we're going to have a garage sale! let's start purging stuff down to the garage!" and by a week ago I was going "ok, still totally not ready but it's now or never" so we did that a week ago Sunday. Did not get rid of much stuff but cleared $100 (for my 12-hour day). Still have a garage full of crap that has to go somewhere!

* Aria and Mr. Y have been playing Ocarina of Time this year, so she wanted a Legend of Zelda themed party. Needless to say, there is not a lot of commercially available Legend of Zelda partyware at this point in time (RIP Party City), but we grabbed internet graphics and made signage and homemade party games, including Pin the Shield On Link, a Heart Pieces scavenger hunt, the boss level Ganondorf Swordfight Pinata, and the highlight: Kakariko Village Cucco Round-Up, which consisted of throwing rubber chickens up into her swingset playhouse. For this purpose we obtained a box of 20 x 6" rubber chickens which make an actual "bawk" noise when you squeak them. I don't think any of the other kids got why this had anything to do with Zelda, but they were all game.

* Only 1 girl took the "sleep-under" option wherein she hung out in her jammies until her mom picked her up at 11pm. I guess that means the group is getting to actually be old enough for sleepovers.

* The first activity on the sleepover agenda was Aria's homemade Kahoot quiz game, in which she prepared 10 trivia questions about herself. "What is Aria's favorite color? [lavender] What is Aria's SECOND favorite animal? [deer - the bunnies were the red herring, being her well-known FIRST favorite animal]" This worked out great since every single child had brought her own phone or tablet from which to ring in (the one exception, the 8yo, got to borrow my phone for a few minutes).

* The second activity was YouTube Karaoke, in which they take turns looking up YouTube videos with lyrics to any song in the world and stand up front to sing along. This was way more of a success than I expected. Aria kicked it off with "Guns and Ships," which she has been practicing hard. :-) At some point I snuck in between songs with bowls of M&Ms and Reese's cups, and one of them said admiringly "Aria, your mom came in clutch," which is an accolade I will treasure forever.

* Aria got peopled out around 10pm and escaped up to her room with her cousin, where they sat quietly playing 99 Nights in the Forest (a Roblox game) for the rest of the evening. The rest of the girls stayed in the living room and watched KPop Demon Hunters once they got bored of karaoke. I would actually have liked to see that myself (I've been hearing good things since Aria watched it the first day it was out), but I couldn't see trying to sit down long enough, let alone squeeze into the living room.

* Did I mention that Mr. Y had been recruited to play a gig that night and was out of the house after 6:30pm? By 11pm I was making my 4th batch of popcorn and pondering the wisdom of a double vodka tonic with an ibuprofen chaser.

* By about 11:45pm everyone was in the bathroom brushing their teeth at the same time, which I have to admit was super adorable.

* We got everyone settled into Aria's room and I was out cold in my own bed by 12:30am. Around 4:30am I heard some sort of kerfuffle across the hall, had to go in and intervene. It turned out that no one had actually been to sleep yet at all (that, too, is traditional), it's too hot, she's kicking me! etc etc, but I made them all put their tablets away and try to sleep.

* The first parent pickup came at 9:30am. It was an adventure trying to get one half-asleep kid (the 8yo) extricated from the puppy pile, and we never did find her shoes, let alone the rest of her belongings; they're going to have to come back for them later this week. Everyone else started lurching downstairs like zombies around 10:30am, until they hit critical mass and suddenly it was peak squealing time again. :-)

* Overall a success, and it's nice to have a mostly clean house now, but OMG all of us need to sleep for a week to recover.