Dear Amy: Every year, with the help of my husband and six children, I throw myself a birthday party at a local roller rink.

It’s all I want: to party and rollerblade with my family and friends like I’m still young.

We rent out the entire venue and invite many families. We serve a handful of refreshments and play fun music. It’s a blast and I usually look forward to it every year, except this year.

I’m dreading it because one family (neighbors of ours) are just terrible guests. They bring extra people without asking, their four kids come blazing down the middle of the rink and have actually knocked people down before, and last year they took the water bottles from the refreshment table and were throwing them down the stairs to the front entrance, where they would burst open.

The parents never do anything about it and never offer to help clean up the mess their kids leave.

The problem is, they know I have this party every year.

How do I avoid inviting them when I know they are going to ask about it? I feel like my only option is to cancel it for a few years and hope they forget about it.

– Party Pooper

Dear Party Pooper: Yes, you could cancel your celebration and hope that these neighbors forget about it over the course of a few years.

You could also hope that this boisterous family would perhaps join a traveling circus and take their act elsewhere.

Or … you could simply not invite them.

If they ask you about it, you could tell them, truthfully: “We’re trimming the guest list down this year; we’re going to keep things smaller and more contained. Unfortunately your group isn’t included this year. Maybe some time in the future we’ll expand it again.”

I don’t suggest diving into the particulars about why they are being excluded unless they explicitly ask about it. The reason not to lead with your reasons is because if you do, then you might be forced into a dialogue about behavior that happened a year ago which you didn’t react to proportionally (or at all) at the time.

It might be worthwhile to see if the roller rink has a security person who might want to work an extra shift during your party. This would shift some of the pressure and responsibility for enforcing basic safety rules away from you.

You can email Amy Dickinson at [email protected] or send a letter to Ask Amy, P.O. Box 194, Freeville, NY 13068.