In March, I told you about a great new idea for kids birthday parties called ECHOage. I also promised to give you a report once we had tried it out for Big Birds' 4th. So here we go......
I have to say first, that the website does everything it promises to do. It was easy to sign up, easy to organize, and uncomplicated to send out invitations. I would advise you to have a list of email addresses handy when you are creating your invite list....something I did not have. I opted to cut and paste addresses out of my email address book instead, a minor hassle, but not the end of the world.
ECHOage kept track of all the gift donations, and that information was easy for me to view from within our account on their site. As promised, a week before the party, they sent out a reminder notice to all invited guests, which was great for us, because there were a few, oh, let's call them slow pokes who had not yet responded to the original invitation.
And that brings me to my final thoughts about ECHOage....the only *problem* we had actually had nothing to do with ECHOage itself. If you read my original post (linked above) about this approach to birthdays, you'll see that our main reason for using it was to try and cut down on *Gift Overload*. We really want to help our kids understand the joys of giving AND recieving, as well as to minimize the expectation of a mountain of gifts on special occasions. ECHOage helps to do this, *as long as your family and friends are willing to play by the rules!* Several folks on our list graciously donated to the ECHOage site, but also brought or sent gifts as well.
That said, the mountain of gifts was MUCH smaller this year, so maybe we're making progress afterall? (baby steps, Robyn. baby steps.)
I wish you all a happy weekend .... we will be spending most of our time trying to avoid the one hundred degree sun. ( i'm meeelllttttiiinnnggggg.....)
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