There is some silly rule that the number of kids to invite to a birthday party should be: your kid's age plus one. For my 4-year old, that would mean 5 kids. I kind of held to that for his previous birthdays, but this year we said, he's only 4 once, let's give him a big birthday.

And then immediately regretted it. As the list grew longer, we wondered how on earth we could contain the chaos in our house.

Luckily, we found the Bladium's birthday party service. It was awesome. Great for me, but most importantly, my son said afterwards: Mom, that was the best birthday in the whole world.

Aww. So if you're considering it, here's my top 10 reasons to have your party there:

10. Someone else is doing all the work for you: entertaining the kids, serving the food, keeping you on schedule. You get to be a guest, too.

9. You don't have to clean your house before the party.

8. You can invite the whole class. The Bladium can handle 20-25 kids, probably more with some special arrangements.

7. The theme is built in: pizza and sports. No decorations required.

6. Your kid gets to choose which sport to play: soccer, t-ball, hockey, or basketball. Or probably any sport you want.


5. It doesn't even matter whether they participate in the soccer, or T-ball, or whatever. They just run around with unbridled joy on their faces. The boys at our party decided it was more fun to run around holding onto the soccer goal net. They had a ball.

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4. Something about the coaches, who are not parents, inspires incredibly good behavior when it's time to eat. The kids all sit politely at the table, wait patiently to be served their pizza, and eat every bite.

3. Your kids get sugar, but they also get a bouncy castle to burn it all off.

2. They cut the cake for you. And serve it. I know I'm not the only person who has major anxiety about cutting the cake. Everybody watching, waiting for you, demanding a smaller, no smaller! piece.

1. You get to go home while someone else cleans up.