Birthday Party and Update

This weekend was my step daughter's 10th birthday party...and we were all very disappointed.  First I don't understand how people can not RSVP to a child's party.  We sent out invitations on Wednsday which I know is short notice, but we asked for RSVP and recieved three out of seven people invited.  So we assumed that those other 4 children were coming, well we were wrong.  So there was 2 kids at my daughter's party.  The poor girl felt so unloved and unliked.  I know that sometimes you can't make it to the party and trust me I totally understand that but why can't you call the parent and tell them you are not coming.  If we had known that only two kids were going to attend we would have given our daughter permission to invite more kids so that she may have ended up with more kids at the party.  We don't believe in the idea of inviting the whole class because with our luck you end up with the whole class at the party.

I was also disappointed in how the party went, since we only had two girls there we couldn't really do much (I was glad I hadn't spent hours planning activities) but the girls that did come complained through the whole party.  We had mini pizza that the girls made themselves, they complained about that, we had pop (only two choices) and they complained about that.  We had an amazing home made cake (no I didn't make it a friend of mine did) and homemade ice cream and they complained about that.  We got High School Musical 3 for them to watch and they hung out in her room playing with her new toys until the movie was almost over and then complained because they had to go to bed (it was 9pm).  Nothing we did was good enough for these two girls or our daughter.

My question after all of this is...is it really worth it?  When I was a kid I never had birthday parties.  On my birthday my mother would bake a cake and some family might come over for cake and gifts.  Or we would have cake and gifts a few days after my birthday as my brother's birthday is a week after mine so we would share a cake and have family gifts.  Usually we got a small gift and that was it.  Birthdays were not a big thing in my family, my mother made a big deal at Christmas and birthdays were just a day that you got cake if you were lucky.  Anyway my point is that I wonder if it is necessary to have these huge parties for our children to remind them that their birthday is special.  Isn't having a cake for them and a gift from the family enough, why do we have to make such a big deal out of it...especially when it doesn't seem to matter to anyone else anyway.  When you go to a great deal of trouble so that a bunch or a few kids can come to your house and complain about it?

Anyway that is enough venting here are a few pictures...

This is the amazing cake made by a friend of mine.  It is hard to see how amazing it is in this picture.  The little specks of colour around the butterfly are little butterfly candies.  It is a chocolate cake and all made with natural ingredients...it was very tasty and looks awesome.

I love the look on my daughter's face when she saw how cool her cake was.

Even though only two girls came and they complained the whole time it was a pretty good day for her, and I guess that is all that matters.