Birthday excess? (NMR)

jacobandcrystal

Our son's 4th birthday is coming up in less than a month.  I've been wanting to come up with a fun idea to avoid an excess of presents for quite some time, but now that the twins are here I find myself wanting to even more.  We have 4 kids now and I feel like now is the time to decide how to handle birthdays before we end up in a routine that the kids expect every year.

I'm talking about a family party.  I've seen the book exchange idea for a kids party (which I think is awesome), but we're not doing a kids party this year. 

Any of you MoMs have fun ideas?  I don't want to give our families a limit or anything, or deprive them of giving fun presents... I'm just looking for an idea to make birthdays a little more simple and about celebrating our kids rather than filling our house with a bunch more toys. (Probably 80% of what they receive for birthdays barely gets used...)

mmbench

We went to a fun, outdoor "mess" party last year.  Kids wore old clothes and did a variety of art projects.  They had cardboard refrigerator boxes set up as "houses" to decorate.  They had a sand box.

Instead of gifts, they asked for canned food donations.

AlishaMay

A friend of mine just went though this with her 4 year old.  She talked to him a lot about kids in need who don't have it as good as they do, whether it be at a shelter, an underprivileged family, or a children's hospital. 

Later they had another conversation about how many toys he had and how lucky he was, and she asked him what he thought he'd do with all of his new birthday toys.  At this point she had a conversation with him about how he could help some of those kids who didn't have it as good as he did.  In the end they decided that when he got his presents he would pick two old toys for each new one he got, and they would bring it to a shelter so that underprivileged kids could be as lucky as he was. 

She said he really got into it, and actually ended up donating more than two old toys for each new one, and it ended up being a really good learning experience for him.

BelleBaby

Instead of gifts, you could always ask people that want to give something to donate to a charity of some kind.  Maybe a women's shelter or something.  Explain that your children are lucky enough to not need anything, but there are those who aren't. 

Just treat the parties as get togethers where everyone hangs out, talks, etc.  Maybe have a project ready for the kids.  If you don't make a huge deal out of it, the kids won't expect a huge deal every year.

dulcinea03

My BFF has asked friends/family to give the "gift of time" rather than stuff for birthdays and Christmas the last few years. So we take the kids to the jump place, Grandpa took one of her boys to a train show, ice skating, that kind of thing. It seems to work out well as it keeps the kids entertained and they make memories with the family and friends.