birthdays

My twins just had their birthday, they turned 6. It was fun, kids all had a great time. However, I'm starting to notice certain things about their parties & wondering how other moms of twins handle the day.

A big one: gifts. So far, we've just had them sit together and hand them each a present but they are both opening at the same time. I was really hoping to keep track of gift this year so we could send thank you cards....but it was chaos! All the other kids wanted to help, kids were grabbing things out of my hands, presents were opened & mixed in with the trash, nothing was labeled so I had to ask for every gift "who's this from and who's it to?"...and I know, I know, this is pretty normal for a kids birthday. But it drove me nuts. Any tips on how to better handle this?

Also, does there come a time when you do separate parties? For now, they're in the same class & do most things together so they pretty much have the same friends. But if you do separate parties, what do you do?

 

We don't oen presents at the party. We open it after the party. I have them open it one at a time so i can keep track of who gave what.

We talked about doing separate parties for my girls this year since orginially Dani wanted a make-over party and Sydney didn't. What i was planning on doing if we did that was Dani was only going to allowed to have what ever the min. number. Family friends/ neighbors whould both girls would want to invite would have only been invited to one party which would have been mostly Sydney's party. Instead both girls wantd an exoctic animal party, so that is what we are dointg.

 

We did open presents. I had all the kids sit in chairs and Sarah and Allison sit in front of them, then I handed one gift to Sarah and she opened it, then one gift from Allison and she opened it. Then they both told the child thank you. It helped with the chaos, but birthday parties by nature (to me anyway) are just chaotic no matter what.

 

Hi:

My twins are boy and girl. They wanted separate parties this year for their 6th birthday (one all boy party and one all girl party -- go figure). After much debate, we did their parties on separate weekends at our house, so we could really focus in on each one. Both were great (one "Alien Invasion" party and one "Kitty" themed party, complete with visiting cats.) My SIL took the "non" birthday party child out for a special birthday event (and while I had originally said "no" to that, as I thought the sibs should each be invited to the other's party, it actually made things easier.) We opened presents after the party each time (which made it easier to keep track of who gave what.)

Next year (for 7th Bday), we may do a joint party, or separate ones, depending on what the kids want (and what Momma can handle).

Much peace,

Meg

 

I like the idea of having all the kids sit in chairs & birthday kids in front. Seems like that would help keep them back; most of the chaos came from all the kids trying to grab the gifts, etc.

I'm also thinking if I have like a designated place to put gifts, I can have 2 piles so that as people come in they can put them there.

Both my husband & I come from big families, so we usually have quite a large turnout. This year because we did it at a pool, we REALLY cut down the guest list. But normally we do the party here at the house & have anywhere from 30-50 people....and that's without inviting any friends from school. So you can see how if I don't have some kind of plan, it can get pretty crazy!