DS wants a birthday party - he'll be 9, help!

[admylin]

Up to now, I've been lucky and ds has always turned down the offer of a party in favour of going to the cinema with us and for a meal. This year he wants a party and has invited 3 or 4 lads. What on earth do I do with them, leave them to it in the garden or suggest games, let them watch a DVD (he's getting Night in the museum) and what should I feed them? They are here from 3pm to 7pm.
Any suggestions from party hosting experienced mums?

They will probably enjoy a dvd. let them prepare their own pizzas, give them a plain base lay out tomato puree, cheese and other toppings in bowls and let them choose what they like. If they are anything like my ds1 they will be quite happy putting playstation/gamecube/xbox on, playing footabll in the garden and watching a dvd.

HTH

What does he like?
We've had a Star Wars party, where everyone brought light sabers and then we had a light saber battle in the park
A football party where we took them to a football match
A Yu gi oh party where we had a yu gi oh tournament

If you're going to show a film then get hotdogs and popcorn. Can you borrow a projector? And if you did do you have a bland wall somewhere?

That is good news, so I won't have to plan any party games! I had visions of them doing musical chairs and pass the parcel but it didn't look right!
I was thinking of maybe doing some sort of food that I could prepare the night before so I can have the morning off - maybe meatballs in tomato sauce or chilli con carne type dish.

Well, party over and they ended up playing football in the garden and I had to practically force them to come in and have birthday cake and tea but they all behaved and needed no special treatment or game playing organized!
Phew, next year I hope there's a really cool film on at the cinema that he absoloutly wants to go and see rather than have a party though!