107/365: Celebrating Birthdays

In my family, birthdays were always a big deal.  I can remember as a child always having a family party.  My mom has three sisters and my dad had a brother and sister, so I had lots of cousins.  They weren't elaborate affairs.  We would have a meal of some sort, typically mostacolli, chili or sloppy joes, and cake.  I can only remember ever having one party where I invited my friends. 

I've tried different things to celebrate birthdays with my kids.  Bella's first birthday, and Boo's first three birthdays, were celebrated with huge family parties.  We had all of both sides of our families--great grandparents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and the like.  With just my side, that's 30+ people if everyone shows.  It was a production and I didn't have fun.  For the last several years, we've just invited grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins--the kids' not mine and Klucker's.  That purges the guest list down to 12 . . . a much more manageable number.  And this year we let Boo have a kid party, with family invited, at Chucky Cheese. 

Tonight my cousin had a party for her youngest child--he was three today.  She invited the entire German mafia, i.e. our aunts, uncles and cousins and had chili, hot dogs, and fixings.  It originally seemed odd to me that she had it on a weeknight until I thought back to our childhood.  (Only nine months separate us, so we have a lot of shared memories.)  Our birthday parties were almost exclusively on a weeknight.  Tonight was a nice, controlled affair.  People stopped by after work and had dinner.  We got home at a decent time.  And the kids had a great time playing with their cousins.  (The kids don't know that they're really second cousins or that Aunt Teri and Uncle Lou are really cousins as well.) 

The only event this evening begged me to question how to celebrate the birthdays for my children.  As a kid I often wished my mom would let me have friends over to our house for my birthday.  I also frequently wished that I didn't have to share my birthday party with Jeffrey . . . which may be the reason that birthdays are so important to me now.  I want my kids to be able to celebrate with friends, but I do enjoy having my larger family there to celebrate.  How much is too much?  Where do you draw the line?