Birthday Parties. Ep 35

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vanderkam. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode thirty five in which we will be talking all things birthday parties. Yes, because by the time you have three or four children, birthday parties start becoming a major chunk of your life, both your own kids, other people's kids, sometimes even your own birthday parties. We have birthdays every year, sometimes we celebrate them, Sarah, Which birthdays, either your own or ones you've attended or kids do you remember most. I definitely have much stronger memories of my childhood birthday parties than I do with any of the adult ones. My parents were good with birthday parties. We usually did them at some venue, so there was like a few unique golf years. Roller skating was huge, it did multiple of those. And then I will say, you know, around that nine to eleven age range, the sleepovers were where it was at. So definitely memorable, fun and simple from my perspective as a kid. Although if I think about my brave parents, you know, having ten ten year olds invader our house or whatever many there were, that's that's bold. I'm not sure I'm quite up for that yet. Yeah, how about you? Well, I think from childhood I remember a couple some early memberies of the ones that must have been like fifth or six, five or six year old birthday, like roller skating or something. I have one memory of when I was in eighth grade, so I must have been turning fourteen, I want to say, or I did have a bunch of girls over to We watched The Cutting Edge. I don't know if you ever saw, of course, Hello, I think anyone born like around the time that we were born has watched that. Probably. Yeah, So we watched that, and we did a game where we had two teams. We decorated people up as Christmas trees because of course I have an early December birthday, so it's always you know, holiday tie in type thing, so that was kind of fun. It's just had some memory of doing I don't know if it was roller skater or bowling or something. When I turned eleven, and I remember that we took a bunch of girls from school. It must have been like a Friday afternoon or something, picked from school to go to the party. And Millie Vanilli's Blame It on the Rain was on the radio. It was on the radios going there, and then their like follow up song, so that was there all the way on the way home. This is like this radio station was literally playing Millie Vanilli every hour on the hour at that point, which should tell you exactly when I turned eleven, like within the month of when Millie Vanilli was popular, but I probably as an adult, one of my best parties was because I've had a few for myself and I turned thirty, I hosted about two dozen people at a cooking school and we cooked our dinner for the evening with our professional help. So there's a lot of wine and a dinner and it was it was fun. You know, it's a good way. That's really cool, and actually that's what we're kind of planning on for my almost six year old, but probably a little bit fine for the adults. Yeah. No, that's a fantastic party. And you also had a trip that was fairly memorable correct well, but it wasn't for me. It was now that i'm thinking about it, this was a really awesome fortieth birthday party. Or though I can't ask the same people to do this again so closely thereafter, but my brother in law when he turned forty, he and his wife invited. So my husband is one of four children, so those four siblings have all remained fairly close, and so the siblings and their spouses we all went to Napa and Sonoma together for a couple days in it was May of twenty fourteen, and we rented a limo and we would go to like a couple of wineries a day and go taste the wine. We even actually got to go to French laundry, and that's pretty impressive. French laundry we went. I can't we really don't have, like our lives are not that glamorous, but I will say we share that one experience and I'm hoping someday to do it again. We did it for our tenth anniversary, and it was it was a lot of work getting those reservations. But yeah, well it's funny because it's only in retrospect. I've thought about how amazing this trip was. But partly it's because I didn't have time to process it after, because I came home and about two days later started feeling sick as a dog. And it turned out that kid number four accompanied me on the nap of visit, which is one of those things. It turns out that children, even in the womb, are highly resilient, because I would not have gone to four wineries a day if I had had any inkling that I was pregnant, but very very early, so he was. He was not actually receiving any he was. I think he must not have been implanted at that point, so he was not. He was safe. It's actually probably great that you didn't know. It would have ruined it. Well, that is true. I was glad that also wasn't like three days later, because it would have sucked so much to be like nauseous for French laundry, Like can you imagine, yeah, emersions, so like you know, go to this amazing restaurant and then like feel like you can only eat the bread. Oh my goodness, that does sound like an amazing trip. I don't think I've ever done anything that ambitious for a family members, but hopefully maybe maybe in the years to come, we'll have to see. Yeah. Oh, my my sister in law did a great job planning that, So that was cool. What about what about your favorite kid birthday? Like for your kids? So when my oldest son turned four, this was shortly before we left New York, we sort of had a combo birthday party for him slash going away party, and we did the party at the American Museum of Natural History, And so it's really kind of a priceier party than I might have naturally done. And also because there's this one woman who's like party planning company has the contract with them. I don't know if that's still the case or not, but you had to go through this party planner to have your party at the Dinosaur Museum, which is basically what it was. You know, there's all dinosaur related stuff from my sutton's four year old party, which is what he wanted. So you know, we had to go through her. But it was really fun. I mean, you know that we're have have a dozen four year olds there in this you know, amazing museum, and so that was a really good time. That sounds great, So what's your process? How Like I definitely feel like I have it somewhat down to with science at this point in terms of when I think about each kid's party and you know, all the things that you have to do and the decisions you have to make, do you have do you feel like you have a down at this point? You've done a lot more parties now, a lot of parties. So my philosophy is, ideally, if we're going to do a party, we do it at one of those places that are just like birthday party factories, right, so you know, the go kart place or bowling place or bouncy house type place. There was one birthday cycle for my older three children that they actually all three had their party at the same bouncy house place. And it was awesome, Like I mean, because I just call up my lady at the bouncy house place, like I want this date. You know, they have the party platters that you could just order, so we'd do the cheese pizza for the kids and we'd also get you know, veggie platters. And fruit plotters, because I always imagine some adults will stick around or you know, you'll want to have something for them, and they take care of everything and then you don't really have to worry about it, you know. I try to be sort of more inclusive than not in terms of inviting kids. Like many times, I've just tried, especially for younger kids, just invite everyone in their class. That seems to be the way to go, because a lot of people won't come anyway. I you know, not generally worried about having too many people with with that sort of thing, you know. So that's generally what we did, what we've started. As the kids get older, sometimes we try to do sort of bigger things with smaller numbers of friends. So one year we took my oldest son and his and three friends to a Phillies game, and that was I think a pretty big hit. The kids were a little antsy by the end of the baseball game, because it turns out that baseball is sort of a long sport. But they like this. It's like a commitment. It's a commitment in terms of timing. But you know, I don't feel like we ever have gotten really we've done a few at our house. It's I don't know. I always try to have somebody help out with it. Then generally, like one of our sitters will come help or you know, run some of the games or come up with some of the crafts, because I'm just not that kind of person, and it's always fun for me to read stories about people who are like longtime podcast listeners may remember that I have a bit of a thing with Martha Stewart Living Magazine that I read it a lot, and in this most recent issue, so Jude and Truman are Martha Stewart's grandchildren. They were born about a year apart, almost exactly a year apart, and they so they have joint birthday parties that are of course run by Martha Stewart, and it becomes something she you can put in the March issue every year of like doing a child's birthday party. So this year it was the Lunar New Year for the Chinese Chinese New Year, I guess that is what I mean, and they did various dragon rooster related things. I guess last year was the Year of the Rooster or something they read. I mean, they had the whole Martha Stewart headquarters decorated for it. Of course, you know, it doesn't have to be that. It doesn't even have to be the wonderful Jessica Turner does anyone, I don't know if anyone checks out her blog. Who's listening to this? The Mom Creative? It's pretty awesome. She always has like backyard birthday parties where she does amazing crafts and we'll have things like a photo wall where the kids can take photos of them dressed up in various things. And those are fun to read for inspiration too. But I think the important thing to keep in mind with people like this, I mean that's one of their business lines. I mean her case, The Mom Creative is its own business. And obviously Martha Stewart, this is what she does. She does. You know, magazine spreads on parties only viewing it for inspiration, as opposed to thinking this is something you should do, and to some extent, I mean you have to think it is that something that's fun for you. Because I do have a lot of friends who really enjoy those crafty things. They get a lot of pleasure out of it. I don't, so I'd rather, you know, do things that I think the kid will really appreciate, but not spend time making things and you know, crazily printeresty. Yeah, because I don't feel like it's worth it in my case. Yeah, do you have a checklist though? Right? Yeah, I mean pretty much, I feel you know, my kids' birthdays are about six weeks apart, so there's definitely a season. And you know, Genevieve actually is about two months earlier than Cameron, so basically there's gonna be four months of the ye where I have to think about birthdays, which means if I don't do them in advance, it's like by the time another party is happening, I kind of already need to be starting to plan the next one, if that makes sense. And that's not because I want to put a ton of effort. It's actually because I just want to all the options and just get it done and you know, not run into the fact that now I have to call three cake places because you had to have a week lead time and I didn't do it. Like it makes it much easier if you just do it in advance. So I will just my checklist and I'm sure you'res as similar is pick a date about eight weeks in advance, don't wait, because that way you're not going to have problems getting your venue, draw up the invite list, get your kids input, put the emails into Usually I use paperless posts that seems to be that or evite than most people are using these days. I order the food, confirm any entertainment that we're doing, order the party bag stuff on Amazon. That's important because I don't want to be rushing around last minute for that, and order the cake. And that's usually as long as the venue takes care of things like knives and forks and any kind of decoration that's usually kind of it, and then you can just show up and then it's shocking with those pieces in place, how easy it is on the day. Particularly, like Laura said, if you pick a venue that's good at doing birthdays, and I don't necessarily always go for the I will say, like we've been a lot of parties. I don't like doing the same ones that everyone does because then I feel like, oh, you know, it's boring. I'm tired of another party at this play center. But I'll do things like a museum like the Miami Children's Museum does birthdays and they take care of all of it, but it's not as commonly used as a venue or we're going to use this cooking class studio or Cameron's we've done at the JCC does great birthday parties actually, and you can do a number of variations there. So yeah, yeah, I mean, I guess that would be the thing, like if you are doing a party at your house, you need to think through what the entertainment is going to be and like what the kids are going to be doing at different points during the party. Because I sort of thought about this with I mean, you know a lot of people when they've planned their weddings, you put a lot of thought into things that aren't really as much a part of the guest experience as like what they're actually doing while they're there. You know, people think a lot about the decorations and place settings and stuff like that, but you know, the guest experience of the event is not the decorations, it's what they're doing while they're there. And so it's the same thing with you know, a backyard party. You got to say, well, what are the kids going to do when they get there, and then what are they going to do for the ten minutes after that? And you know, what are they going to do. That's another upside of using one of these birthday party places. They've got that down to a science like that, and you can just kind of relax and enjoy and socialize during the actual party itself too. Yeah, we we've often wound up leave you know, if we will sometimes have a set ter come with us to help with the little one, because you know, we've always had, like for the bigger kids parties, we always have little siblings, and especially if there are other parents around, like, you want to be able to chat with them. You want to be able to focus on your kid, and if you're chasing a toddler, you can't. So you know, we don't want to leave the toddler at home necessarily, although sometimes we have if they're a little really little and won't notice. But you know, that was one way we were able to sort of make it a more relaxed and focused on the kid as well. A few questions here follow up. What do you guys like to do for party favors? Oh, well, we just did for Cameron. I'm not so into the candy because everyone has all kinds of different allergies and restrictions for their kids, and honestly, I think there's too much candy around all over the place anyway, sorry hazard of my job as a pediatric into chronologists. I'm not a big fan of like the ubiquitous candy. So we did for his birthday there was a kind of a dinosaur theme. We didn't really pull it very strongly throughout, but I think we had dinosaur plates and we did and we it was basketball and dinosaur, so there was dinosaur stuff and stuff. But for the basket hours, yes, for the party favors, we went dinosaur. And I got these dinosaur eggs off of Amazon that you put them in water and they hatched, so very thrilling for a four year old. It takes like twelve to thirty six hours, so there's a mystery and not knowing when that's going to happen. I think they were like at the most two dollars each, maybe a dollar each, and they came in like a big pack, and then I stuck in some dinosaur temporary tattoos and a little stamp and some stickers and I put it in a bag and called it a day. And all that was purchased on Amazon in a timeframe of about two minutes, and my kids had a fun time putting everything together. So that sort of was an impromptu activity to make an assembly line for all that stuff. So, yeah, that that I like to do. You know, one slightly bigger item you mentioned, like a book. I think that's a fantastic idea. We got a book at a recent party that kind of you know, met with the theme of the book. And that's so easy again, and then you just order a bunch of copies of that paperback for wherever, and and then it's done. Yeah, I mean you can often wind up being similar costed by the time you add up a bunch of smaller little things. You know, a book itself can can be somewhat competitive with that. And it's a cool thing to get, like it's an actual real yeah, or even something else you eat it like a box of crans. It's pretty cheap too. Yeah, our supplies are big. I think we've got little mini platos at one party and that was a big hit. Or even like a pack of balloons. I mean, kids love balloons. That's like half the fun of the party sometimes is balloons. So you can do balloons or bubbles or you know something that the kid will actually use I mean that's kind of the problem with a lot of the sort of plastic crap that kind of yes, it needs to pick it out of toy box. Respect Yeah, the consumable. Okay. Also question, when do you guys hit drop off age? Oh, Miami, I think we're about to hit it with my daughter. Like, we've been invited to a few parties that are drop off optional, and we've had mixed success with the drop off on ourselves. She did not consider it drop off optional. Well, yeah, it was a movie one and she the movie was a little scary. So the combination of if it had been a movie that she liked, I think it would have been just fun. But yeah, so I think actually for her sixth birthday party, which is coming up, we're going to do drop off optional. So I think it's right around there. What about you, Yeah, it was. You know, it's funny that when you move into a community and you have no idea what sort of the norms are, and also when you know you're a first time parent, like with your oldest kid, you don't know what people will do, and so up until age six, it was always sort of expected that you would be kind of at the party with the kid, and so, you know, you go to parties, you're kind of hanging out a lot of parents hat if it's in their backyard, they have beer, which is great. I'm a big fan of having stuff for the adults too. So, you know, we'd been to a bunch of that, and all of a sudden, I went to a six year old party with my oldest son and there were no other parents there, and I was like, oh, am I not supposed to be here? Like, am I supposed to leave? Like he didn't really want me to leave because this was the first time he'd ever been to something that was drop off either and sit well not, but it was. It was one of the first times, and so you know, I was like, oh, well, maybe everyone else knew this that all of a sudden, the six year old party is when you leave. I feel like at that age it's to be specified on the invitation what the situation is, because it could be drop off required, drop off optional. Oh my gosh, Genevie, you have just made a rude sound. We are multitasking and yeah, I may be feeding a baby while we record this. Well, if you managed to change the diaper, too, it'll be very impressive. No, I feel like it needs to specify or else it's it's confusing. And it also it's nice when they specify if siblings are invited as well. Oh, I am so big a fan of parties where siblings can come to. You know, obviously I will stay and watch the little sibling. It's you know, not something I necessarily expect another parent to take on, unless it's you know, sometimes it's that sometimes we know that family has a younger child of the same age as the younger sibling and their friends too, and so then it's then it's more sort of like, well, is everyone coming, in which case we'll go ahead and bring the younger sibling too. But the yeah, because you know, especially when you've got bigger families, the weekends are such this intricate, panic, mosaic patter of trying to get people to the right thing and so throwing a birthday party in there. You really, you know, want to come to a friend's birthday party. But sometimes it's really nice if you can bring another kid along too, because then that doesn't mean that the other parent has to bring that kid to say, a swim meet or to a basketball practice or whatever it is, and so we've been very grateful when some people have been open to that. So we did. We did an option for my eight year old this fall, which I don't know if Sarah is a big fan of this or not, but the joint birthday party, so one of my son's little friends has the same birthday as him, and they had they had actually hatched this plan I think during Little League practice when they were not paying attention to the ball in the spring, that they would have a joint party in the fall, and it woant to be really cool because it was then a lot of kids. We had it at this laser tech slash go kart place which had a bar attached. That was nice for some of the parents. They just go hang out in the bar, and you know, it was a lot of the same kids would have been invited to both, so we didn't have to. I mean, I think it would have been nice of us to try to coordinate anyway in the sense of either completely not having them at the same time, or if they're going to be at the same time, you know, make sure they're together. So that I've seen. I don't know how you feel about, like, you know, twins have parties. Often, a lot of people have their twins parties at the same time. I assume when they get older they might move away from that, and it becomes more apparent that, yes, these people are different people. Just because they happen to be twins doesn't mean they're the same person. But you know, what do you think of the time? That's awesome? I was thinking more like the sibling ones that I've seen that I think, like true to Julie, True to Jude, and true They're gonna have the joint birthday party forever, as long as Martha needs to make a march spread out because she wants to be able to make a big splash with both of them. No, but like I've seen people force it with like a five year old and an eight year old and I'm bad. I'm like, but maybe they wanted that, and you're and if they thought about that, like, my kids would not want that because they have their own specific desires for what they want their project party to be. And if I get I mean, I guess we could have done a basketball, dinosaur cooking party. But yeah, I mean, our two kids who are closest together in terms of the birthday. So salmon raiths are are only two weeks apart, less than two weeks apart their birthday, so we always have to plan the birthday parties at the same time. But I'm pretty sure they will never want the same party because they are different, very very different. They are different, you know, she is a girly girl. He's like the kind of kid who impact. He's action packed, like whether you want it or not, like I have. I mean, the the like volume of things that become weapons in the house, you know, like it doesn't even the books that show up from the library of like you know weapons. I mean, they're just goodness. He's the little boy, you know, and so he's never going to want anything that's the same as hers. And in fact, there are big gifts. This past year was she went to the American Girl Doll Cafe with me in New York. He went to an Eagles game with me, so very different. So yeah, that will that will never be an issue for us. I think, do you think that at some point you will move to those experiences in lieu of parties? I assume so I think my eleven year old will probably be there this year anyway. I mean because I think it becomes either that you have maybe like two or three friends to do something with you and you know, go out to eat or go to a sports game or something like that, because it just, you know, it starts being a little bit less cool to have a party. And I don't know, I mean, I think maybe the girl's slumber party thing still happens for a while, but that may be different for boys. I have three boys, so I think we'll be more in that mode of doing the smaller one or two buddies go to a movie kind of thing. I could definitely see that. I mean, because right now our parties sort of serve that dual purpose of being parent parties and kid parties. But once they get older, if they it's not going to serve that. So if they prefer something else or something bigger, then I'm all for, you know, doing those more experiential things. We do have sort of a rule in our house, ridiculous rule that we go to Disney instead of a birthday party when you're three. Ah, so that's what we've done for Annabel and Cameron, which were well when you're three. I don't know, I mean, do you I guess if you're in preschool at that point, then you do have a group of friends. But yeah, oh so there didn't have a real party for three because he hasn't in school yet. Yeah. Our school, the preschool that we use, starts actually at two, so by three, you're already getting lots of invites. You start to know the other families. And I actually felt kind of bad not doing it because I felt like I was, you know, not integrating with Cameron's classmates, I guess the way that I knew Annabelle's. But you know, this year, we did his fourth and it's fine. Now I know his classmates and I know their parents and it went great. So yeah, I like our little three year old traditions. I think that's the earliest year can be Disney and not having been horrific exactly. Yeah, Disney with very small children is, oh my goodness, it's stressful unless you don't know any better. We went for the first time when we had a four year old, a two year old and a six month no way. Wow. We have photos of me with the four year old and the two year old in the double decker stroller and little Ruth and a carrier on my chest and We kept having people come up to us saying stuff like, oh, my children are forty eight forty seven now, but we were once there. I guess, yeah, well there you go there like I will add that too, my goodness. That is that we went when Cameron was fourteen months and Annabelt was three for her third birthday, And that's when I realized three is the youngest age. Not for not do that again, exactly exactly. Yeah, well, you live, you learn, and we can we can put that out there for our listeners for pondering that Disney trip that you might wish to wait until they're old enough to not, you know, totally melt down in the hot Florida sun while waiting in line for everything. So do we have anything other other birthday party points we wish to make. I'm looking over our notes. Well, we sort of mentioned this, but I guess I would I would be careful with going this quote unquote simple route and like using your house or a park, because I've found that that actually sometimes doesn't work to be that much less expensive and is a lot more work than the venues. Of course, your knowledge may vary. It depends on what kinds of things you want. There, but kind of write out all the things you'd have to do and have to buy, and make sure that it's that it's worth it. Said. Some of the park and house parties that I've been to have been some of the best because it could just be relaxed and you know, but for me, I don't enjoy throwing them as much. Yeah, and again, if you are going to do that, make sure you have enough adult coverage for the number of children who are showing up, especially if it is a drop off party. Yeah. I mean, because having like ten seven year olds in your house is no joke new or fifteen seventeen year olds for that matter. Like, you know, even if it's you know, both you and your partner there are like, it's not not easy. You sound like you're speaking from experience. I would. Well, we had one party. I'm trying to remember if it was Jasper who was in kindergarten. Maybe we had it in the house and it's gonna be an outdoor sort of gardenish party. We're going to play in the backyard. It rained, so we had pretty much his entire kindergarten casts in the basement. It was fine, We had a good time, but it was a little bit nutty, and we even had we had three adults, but it was still you know, he also had two younger siblings that had to be watched during that time too, so it was it was a lot of coverage. But we're still here. Our basement is still here, so and all the kids survived. So that's good. All the kids survived, We're still We're still here. But something to to keep in mind. I actually, you know, one friend just a safety thing. A friend through a pool party, a pool birthday party for her son, and they hired a professional life which I think is also a very smart idea because you know, you can tell people like if your child doesn't swim, you have to stay here, you have to be you know. But like people have different ideas of what it means to supervise, yes to supervise, and what it means to swim. So we have we have definitely discovered that as well. So we definitely have a role that there's you know, we have a backyard pool, but if there is always adults watching, there's like you know, a certain ratio you have to hit for any number of kids, like yeah, so we're very careful about that and I'm always glad to see when other people are too. Yeah, Well, for our Q and A today, we have kind of a special edition because Laura is going to ask me her Q and A and I am I'm looking for ideas. And actually it could be sort of both Q and A in the sense of, so I am turning a milestone birthday that is not thirty this year, and it's not fifty, and it's not for yeah, I'm turning forty at the end of the year. Actually, my husband's turning fifty this year, so we both have milestone birthdays, and I want to you know, I don't I don't actually really totally feel comfortable planning his party for him. I need to have input from him of what he wants to do. I suspect it's going to be something more family related, possibly with his siblings, just as his brother did, although we don't have time to plan a Nappa party before his birthday at this point. But yeah, so I'm going to ask him what he wants to do. But for me, like, I want to do something really awesome for my fortieth birthday party. So Sarah, what should idea? You should? I mean, I don't know that I have like earth chattering ideas, and we welcome further ideas from our listeners party. But the things I came up with, well, I will say for Josh's fortieth, we did an old fashioned party at our house. You know, we actually you know, ordered food from a restaurant, kind of did simple catering that way, had a lot of wine and it was really fun, but it was you know, it was traditional. We didn't do anything crazy. Some more like out of the box ideas are you could do a cooking party. And I didn't know when I wrote this that you had actually done a cooking party before, so that was kind of spoiler. But you could either do it like professional cooking school, or you could do kind of an Iron Chef style party where you know, you're in teams and you have like a some sort of quest and you can compete against each other and you have all the ingredients there, and if you want to be really fancy, you could like hire a professional chef to be a judge or something. Idea. Yeah, you a dedicated wine tasting party. You could you know, make that as a labord as you wanted to be. Or I've had friends that do would open that bottle night where everybody brings like their fanciest wine that's just been laying around begging to be opened, and you go crazy with that. I also, you know, I didn't really think about climate because I live here, but I wrote to you that everything's more fun on a boat. The problem is I turned forty in December, and everything is not more fun on a boat and the freezing waters of the school Killer the Delaware River. Now I didn't think through that, but you could always, you know, go to Bermuda or Miami or somewhere else on a boat. Miami, I'm going to show up there and I'll be on a boat outside your house. And then my last one that I don't think you'd be that into, but I totally would be a wine and paint party at one of those studios where you each get to like paint something or you paint the pottery and you all drink wine and paint the pottery. Yeah. I think that would be kind of cool. So those were my ideas, but I am we would love, yeah, we'd love other ideas. So PLAY said, I have a couple of months upon er this, so yeah, no, I like the wine. The sad part about turning forty, is that my ability to drink more than two glasses of wine as completely Well, you have to take small SIPs of those fans, very small SIPs to open that bottle night. Yeah, so that'd be great. We had we had one other, so we're doing a double Q and a yeah on this one and this one I think I had gotten on my blog someone wanted to know what are my go to birthday gifts that I buy or that we like when we receive for the kids, which adults too. I mean, I gotta say the wine thing is always a good when we go to parties. We have one sort of our wine collection. We have one area where we put the nice bottles of wine so we don't accidentally like drink that on Tuesday night or something. And you know, well often just that's just a go to thing, right. We have a stack of like wine bags and wine bottles. Grab a nice bottle, throw a ribbon on the bag, You're good to go. I mean, you know, because even if the like, obviously you wouldn't want to give it somebody who doesn't drink. But you know, even people who aren't that into wine can always just use it for something else. Like if they're hosting a dinner party at their house, they can they can use it, So that's sort of an all purpose gift. I'm all about the consumable gifts. Yeah, for adults I like to give. Yeah, wine is a big one. Coffee can work, yeah, or chocolate, cheese, anything like edible exact. I think it's going to be a win as long as you follow that person's dietary restriction. Although I've gotten some funny things in the past, I was just thinking about. I mean, one one people brought me some funny presence when I did throw that thirtieth party, you know, many many years ago now, I got a pair of ug ear muffs, which I've found hilarious because people gave me those sort of gaggy sort of jokes, which it was a nice gag gift, like those ug ear muffs are not cheap, but that was funny. Somebody I threw a small thirtieth thirty fifth birthday party, which they were supposed was supposed to be bigger, but it snowed like crazy that day and basically no one could get to the It was a small but hardy crew who showed up and then we were eating leftovers from the restaurant forever. But somebody brought me a wooden sculpture of Rudolph. That is random. This is when your birthday is close to the holidays, you get holiday related stuff. But you know, so I was sort of thinking of that when Sarah made this list of great sort of gifts you could give me. On it it said swim suits. I'm like, really, somebody would give you a swim but she has like children, the kids, and then I pointed out that Plato was awesome. I'll give you the list. Do not buy an adult a swim suit unless like your sister. But I put on their books, Lego sets, puzzles, Calico critters are big and my daughter just class and they're expensive. So they're a good gift because you can just get one little thing and call it a day, and it's like a nice gift. Bathing suits that's big in Miami because everybody swims, and I don't know, they're fun for the they're useful, the kids like them. They're yeah, bathing suits. Jewelry, little bracelets for girls, headbands, sunglasses, other accessories. Pajamas. We got two sets of pajamas for Camera's birthday. And I'm like, yes, something that you know I don't want to throw out, like this is great. I would I would definitely put a check mark on, you know, next to sunglasses and pajamas. Suit kids love sunglas. Yeah, they're like and they're actually useful shoes, Believe it or not. I have a friend of Annibals. We always buy each other's kids many Melissa's shoes, like, so I always asked the size, and it's like kind of our thing. Any kind of crafting supplies that are like disposable sticker books, and we got a few us Born usbou are n E which is kind of a multi level marketing thing. But they're also in regular bookstores and I love their products, and no, I do not sell them. I'm not going to sell them. But they make a lot of really really cute, gifty like books. So yeah, yes that's true. Often you get those books and they have a tag on the back saying to buy or sell. I'm no call the local sales lady, who yeah, no it is, but but some of them are fun. We have actually used a fair number of the Usborn books that we have received from people who may be in on that scheme or whatever. But yeah, they have like a lot of truck books. For instance, they have some lift the flap type books, which I mean we heard a couple of weeks ago. I mean the you know, travel with kids. If you're on an airplane with a small child, a lift the flat book can occupy them for maybe like thirty minutes, which is golden to get thirty minutes of no screaming. So I would definitely say that's good too. Yeah, we've done a lot of Lego sets. I think books are often good. If it's something your kid liked, probably that kid would like it too. You know, we've gotten a lot of gift cards, especially if the kids get older, you start getting a lot of like Amazon or Target gift cards, which is which is great, except like I mean, we we sometimes get bad about using them and then they become in a pile and we we can't even remember which child got. So if you're the kind of person who uses the gift card, quickly use those gift cards. Otherwise you're just kind of like beating those corporating It's crazy. There is no side just giving money exactly. I don't think they need it, you know, so funny, Yeah, oh my gosh, all right, Well there was that was kind of a lot of love of the week, so I guess we should do a love of the week. Yeah, quick level of the week. And we hope this episode wasn't too frivolous for you all. But you know we've been we've been heavy on the career content, so which I thought it'd be fun. My love of the week is glutter tattoos. So you know, people do different things for their birthday party around here. There is kind of like most of the birthday parties, we go to have some kind of entertainer. Either it's a princess, or it's a bloom guy, or it's a tattoo guy. And it's actually not as expensive as it sounds. And so I looked around and decided, actually I just checked it off the box at the JCC because again, they make it pretty easy to get the glitter tattoo artists. And I love them because they're not messy like face paint, but they look really really cool. It's like something for the kid to take home. Kids will they love it. They'll stand in line patiently for like, you know, an hour sometimes and they're happy because they're like obsessing over which glitter tattoo they're going to get and they wash off fairly easily. So yeah, that's my favorite little kid birthday party entertainment. Yeah, I would say my dislove of the week is face painting, and that makes me like such a like birthday party scrooge. But it's such a mess and it gets like all over your the kid forgets to take part of it off. It's on their sheets and pillow as like all over your towels and they're trying to get it off. So yes, dislove of the week would be the be face painting. So I'm going to have to look into the glitter tattoos so I can make that into my love of the week that I will have to be like no face painting, please, no face painting. So yes, do you have an actually all right, well know love yea, let's just go with that. Let's go with that, all right? Well, this has been best of both worlds. This has been episode thirty five. We've been talking all things birthday parties. We'll be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together