Awesome job. She really, really wanted everyone fawning over her little darlings didn't she?
I doubt that was why she wanted them there. As the OP posted it appears she's a "Don't tell me what to do or I'll do the opposite" kind of person.
I have a brother who was like that for YEARS....
When we were growing up, nobody could tell him what to do....but I don't remember him trying to take children to an "adults only" party.
I do remember a Valentine's Day party when the single guy organizing it thought that the "entertainment" would be movies playing in the background.
Then he found out that his idea of "romantic movies" and that the women who were coming (dates, fiancées, or wives) did NOT appreciate the movies he'd selected.....with such care to go with the beer and six foot submarine sandwich. The sandwich was good - but beer & cold cuts are not generally high on the list of "romantic" dinners, either.
A rather catty comment about "well, she's obviously not a natural blonde" was about the ONLY comment that could be repeated on an etiquette site. We were really, really scathing in our comments about the movies' actors, scripts (hah, hah), cinematic values, and lack of artistic merit or romantic content....I swear that Conan the Barbarian would have been more romantic (this was before the first Terminator movie - or I might have mentioned it, instead).
It was after the Christopher Reeve Superman movie - so that one might have been a better choice, even - the flight scene was pretty romantic....