Stressed about birthday party, and questions?

ladybugg82

I was so excited a few months ago when I started thinking about all the fun things we could do. But it seems now that everything is so expensive. I wanted to rent out our clubhouse and have a pool party, but the condo manager said absolutely no pool parties.

After that was shot down, I thought about using my IL's community pool but that would be about 200 just for the people to use the pool, not including decor, food, drinks or cake.

We can't have it at our house because it is just too small. The guest list is over 20 and we only have 1000 sq ft condo. My IL's offered up there house, which is HUGE (7000+ sq ft), which we are strongly considering.

My question is what in the world could I do to keep 20+ people occupied?? The kids will range from a few months to 14 yrs old. 

Alexandra&John

Oh God, the more I think about, the more I stress.  I got some pamplets from Similac where it says, "Keep the party short - 1 to 1 1/2 hours is about the most a one-uear-old can handle"

Gave me alot to think about

Butterflie6381

Indoors or outdoors?

Provide one or two structured activities and then some toys games so they can occupy themselves.  Just stay away from anything small/ dangerous for the lil ones like water balloons.  Kids will play with each other and make up their own games and have fun because thats the way kids are.

Some ideas -

frisbees, jump ropes, hula hoops, big bouncy balls

sidewalk chalk (yes its messy, but that is a plus if you are slighty miffed at your ILs, right? )

Pin the tail on the donkey/ candle on the cake, musical chairs, hot potato, a pull string pinata (no stick required), freeze dance/ freeze tag

GL! 

AshNicole331

Your parents house sounds like it'd be great!

Are there any local parks that have a shelter you could rent? We rented the picnic shelter next to a local (small) waterpark for a whopping $35 (used my aunt's resident discount). I just google searched parks in all of the towns that surround me and stumbled upon the little waterpark, didn't even know it existed. Would something like that be an option?

lindeenwedding

What about doing it at your community room, but not using the pool? Otherwise I'd do it at the inlaws. I considered parks but every time I have something planned here it rains so I figured I would rather have it at our house outdoors if it doesn't rain and indoors if it does.

My friend recently had her 1 year old's party scheduled for a park and it was thunderstorming BAD that day so 1/2 way into the time the party was suppose to be being held she was still calling guests trying to give them directions to her aunts house with was a 1/2 hour from the original party destination, then her cell died so she didn't have anyone's phone numbers to tell them. We ended up not going and the whole thing was a mess, so just plan for something doable weather wise.