DD is at a preschool nursery, she is in a room with 10 or so others for 'lessons', but she comes together with the other 2 rooms for most activities and consequently knows most of the other children.
Having had 25 kids in a hall last year for her 3rd, I'd kind of resigned myself to at least that many again, as it wasn't total chaos and everyone really enjoyed themselves.
However... I got the class list from her teacher today and there are 47 kids on the list!
Okay, taking off DD and three kids on the list that haven't yet started at the school... still leaves a potential 43 children and at least 1 parent - and I still have to factor in 6 non-nursery friends & their parents, her cousins (8 of them) and various aunties, uncles, grandparents etc.
So, say possibly about 10 won't be able to make it? Still leaves about 50 children... omg the party bags alone!
Plus the idea of coping with that many children in a church hall...
I think I'd be comfortable with about 30 children, but don't know where to start whittling down the list - DD is bezzie mates (or so she tells me) with at least four little girls not in her room so it's not as easy as just inviting her room and no-one elses... actually she doesn't get on with a couple of the boys in her room, but I really, really hate the idea of cherry-picking and leaving people out.
If I ask DD who her friends are, apart from these 4 little girls it changes on any given day/time/change in the wind who she likes so unless I ask her teachers who her particular friends are (and I can imagine they'd love that kind of request!) do I just resign myself to inviting them all and pray that half of them can't come??
The alternative is a much smaller scale party at home for her, non-nursery friends, cousins and 4-5 friends from school, but then we run the risk of not being able to have a bouncy castle in the garden because of bad weather (curse these February birthdays!), which means entertaining them all - which DH turns white at the very thought of!
Aaaargh!!