Birthday party

Grace came home from school on Wednesday with a birthday party invitation. She was so excited because it came from a boy and the boys and girls in their class usually don't play together (there are 7 boys and 3 girls in her class.) She has never even mentioned this little boy until the invitation came home. Up until this point, she has been going to close family friends or people from church, which we all would go to together as a family. No big deal. Now that she is in school, we are in a different league. The league where you invite everyone you know and see how many presents that you can get. I really don't like this at all. We went to a birthday party for a little girl at our church a few weeks ago....there were over 30 kids there!! They rented those big blow up things that you jump on and had them in our church gym for the kids and they all ran around and had fun for an hour, ate cake, and then the last 45 minutes of the party was her opening all her presents. She was turning 4!! What does she have to look forward to when she turns 5, the whole town showing up? I know her sweet mom and she probably just didn't want to leave anyone at school or church out, but there were a ton of little kids there and I really don't know if half of them knew why they were there other than to jump on the bouncy thing! This past Christmas, we worried about the girls getting too much and took most of their Christmas money and put it in their saving account. They have so much already....do they need a party where they are going to get over 30 gifts? AKKK!
Okay, maybe we have been pretty sheltering of our kids to this point. For Grace and Susie both, we have always had family and friends parties at our house (or Nana's house depending on moving situations at the time.) Grace got a invitation to this party at it is at the movie theater. Pretty cool idea, except that there are no kids movies on right now. They are going to see "Cheaper By the Dozen 2"...I haven't seen it yet, but I went to ScreenIt.com and looked up all the details on it. I may just be jumping to conclusions here and maybe I just need to get a grip and relax, but the movie is PG (that's fine) with many situations of children talking back to their parents. The language is fine, I just don't know if Grace needs to hear that it is okay to talk like that to ANYONE, especially your parents. What ever happened to cake, ice cream and playing outside parties? They grow up fast enough, why not save the movie parties for when they are older and can actually enjoy the movie...or why not wait for Curious George to come out in Feb.? The girls can't wait to see that movie and it's something that they can understand and enjoy. Okay, I'm off my box. Grace isn't going to the party. She hardly knows the little boy, and her teacher told me that his family rented the whole movie theater for them. The little boy is 4 for goodness sakes!!! When he is in real school, then give him a party like this and he can invite whomever he wants!!
What do you think? Big or little parties?