AITA? Kind of sick of giant, extended family parties plus classmates so we downsized this year to a school-friends-only party and family members seem upset...

For context my son is 9. Every year we have a ridiculously big birthday party with every aunt, uncle, cousin, family friend, and some classmates. I always feel as though they’re extremely impersonal, chaotic, and not to mention expensive. My son ends up with so many gifts and I feel terrible because most of them sit in his closet never touched. As he gets older he is showing more interest in hanging out with school friends and so I thought it would be good to do a mini-party plus sleepover with his classmates (just boys). This way it will be casual, he can be attentive to his guests, and maybe I will have time to actually speak to the parents that come. I did think it would be nice to invite his male cousins closer in age but obviously I was concerned this would lead to hurt feelings with other family. So we stuck with the classmates only party. I prepared him with the reality we may only get 4 friends to attend and it will be very small, and we will see immediate family outside of this party. He was happy with this plan and got very excited. We ended up getting 3 RSVPs and he was content with that.Now I have close family members who are sort of rolling their eyes at me or making comments about how they feel like distant relatives not being at his party, and how sad it is that only a few are coming. I tried to explain it wasn’t meant to exclude, and we’d be happy to arrange a time to see each other another day. But I picked up on some things being said behind my back, too.Am I the jerk here? I feel really badly that people are feeling left out but I didn’t even think most adults had fun at those sorts of things. I honestly didn’t think anyone would care. via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2VeK26c