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June 19, 2006
Making Birthdays Special
By DEANNA DAHLSAD
My household has all its birthdays, five total, between May 30th and June 29th. Not only is this a mini-Christmas for our wallets, but it takes a bit of creativity to come up with ways to make everyone feel special.
Take birthday cakes, for example. How special is cake when we barely finish one cake before I have to make another? (And in this heat, I don't feel much like baking that much either.) With some of the birthdays just 4 days apart, we literally can have our cake and eat it too! But eating birthday cake twice daily for so many weeks isn't the fun you'd think it would be. So we had to come up with another plan.
In general, we have one birthday party for all three of the children. At that party, we may have a cake. This of course depends upon how many grandmas, great grandmas, aunties etc have already fed us cake when we visit them for the mandatory birthday visits. If we do not go to their houses, we invite them to our family party, and then we have a cake. That's "a cake". Just one.
But in order for each of us to feel special on our special day, we still have to do something different.
So we came up with a plan for each family member's birthday. The birthday boy or girl is allowed to open one present on the actual anniversary of their birth, saving the rest of the presents for the party day, and they are allowed to choose the family dinner that night. Not only does each person get their favorite meal, which varies from the youngest's macs & cheese to dad's pork chops, but each birthday dinner is accompanied by root beer floats.
Root beer floats are easy to make, require no use of the oven, satisfy the sweet-tooth, and feel special because it's something we just don't normally do. They also leave no leftovers, so having one on Saturday does not mean you are sick of them by Wednesday.
Now birthday root beer floats are our family tradition. It makes the day special, and as a mom, I love to hear our children talking with excitement over 'birthday season' and 'our root beer floats.'
Posted by photocartoonist at June 19, 2006 11:31 AM
Comments
Happy Birthday to all of you! *smooches 'n hugs*
Posted by: Kat at June 22, 2006 9:40 AM