Birthdays/Holidays... advice please
So BM lives just a few minutes away from us, but in an apartment with sketchy neighbors and no kids around. Her whole family lives out of state and she is single (for now, but that literally changes weekly), so pretty much all of her friends here are single too. Almost all of the kids' friends live around us and are the children of my friends and neighbors. Skids will be turning 3 and 6 the week before Christmas, and I'm wondering how to go about the whole birthday party thing.
I really have no interest in collaborating a joint party with her just so she can feel like she's a part of it (it will have to include both my family and my in laws too... so it's just too weird for everyone). I know if I let her take the reigns on it then they will have no friends at their parties. My DH is kind of against the idea of over-spoiling them with 2 parties each followed by two Christmas'. I agree that it would be a bit of an overkill to do that, but I don't want them to not have their friends celebrate their birthdays with them either. I don't wanna just take over or anything, but I'm not really sure what else to do.
Suggestions anyone?
I agree with the every other
I agree with the every other year. We did NOT do that and spent many years carting SD around to various parties. All it resulted in was the expectation that we would do the same thing for the sgrands, which gets even more complicated with more extended family. It's not necessarily a matter of spoiling them but rather trying to maintain sanity.
We do separate parties. I
We do separate parties. I don't think it's 'spoiling' them because one is low-key and one is with their friends.
For example, if BM does the big blow out party with the kid's friends then she'll bring her family to that one and we'll just do a low-key party with dad's family and us. If we did the big party with friends (has never happened - BM is too much of a control freak) then I assume that dad's family would be included and BM could have one with just her family separately.
Our low key parties don't cost much because it's usually just at our home or in a park somewhere. There's a cake and maybe a few handmade decorations but nothing else.
It works well for us.
We tried having a joint party
We tried having a joint party for 1 or 2 years for Birthday...it gets too awkward and stressful, so now we each have our own parties. It's just much easier that way, for everyone.
We don;t do joint parties
We don;t do joint parties either but what we do do is to have a small get together for the skids. They get a gift and dinner or we take them out to dinner other than that. The reason is b/c bm will have huge party for them with lots of friends and stuff. But then if their bm doesn't do big parties or she just takes them out then I think it is ok to have the big party. does that make since?
We've always had separate
We've always had separate celebrations. Birthday parties at our house when the kids are with us, at her house when they are with her. I see absolutely no reason to have joint celebrations for anything. Sure, she'll be there for graduations, weddings, births... but that's the extent of what should be shared IMO