In the midst of birthday party chaos

My ds turned 7 yesterday and we are in the midst of birthday party chaos. He got our presents yesterday morning and played throughout the day with his dad and sister while I was having a minor freak-out over the evening 'family party'. I had to run a couple trips to a store, get a blood test (nothing to do with the party of course), then come home and try to figure out the dessert part. I thought I had the dinner well in hand, having decided to order Indian (ds's favourite). All fine and dandy until the restaurant, which is supposed to be open for lunch on Saturdays, is very, very closed when I go to drop off the order (on my way to the Dairy Queen to order a cake). Came home to sweat a bit and find a back-up Indian restaurant just in case this one has finally really gone out of business. (It's this weird, huge place which never seems to have more than 5 people in it...) The restaurant did finally open, I managed to pick the food up before guests arrived, and we had a grand dinner. Cake in the evening was an angel food cake with ice cream & strawberries macerated in sugar.

I was feeling quite a bit calmer by the time the evening ended. But we're not out of the woods yet. Today at 11 a.m. is the children's party. We usually do them both in one day but these days, Saturdays are filled up 6 months in advance & I didn't get my invitations in on time to make the A list of events. So we were humbled and moved the party to Sunday when we realized that most of the guests wouldn't be able to come otherwise.

I picked up the ice cream cake last night, just before Dairy Queen closed. Ds had decided, right at the last minute, because that's the kind of guy he is, that he wanted a space & rocket ship theme. Luckily I found a cake decorator who could draw a rocket even though it wasn't in their 'design book'.

So now all we have to do is deal with a bunch of kids, feed them pizza and cake, and keep them amused for 3 hours. Eeeeeek.

I make R handle most of it while I try to take calming breaths in another room, with my fingers in my ears. I did the labour and birth part 7 years ago (at home, with 2 midwives and a doula). I figure that R can handle the birthday parties.