Our family has entered what we affectionately call “birthday season”. From the beginning of August until the end of December we have a child’s birthday every month and Curtis and I double up with the older girls. I wanted to share how we do birthdays in our family.
We don’t do birthday parties with friends. This is for several reasons. One, several people in our family are introverts and parties with crazy kids hyped up on sugar are no fun. Two, we don’t need all the presents that would come with a party. However, any kid that wants to have some friends over for a play date/hangout around their birthday can do that.
We do have a family birthday party with the grandparents. We usually do this the Saturday before or after the birthday with pizza, cake and ice cream. This is pretty low key. We buy pizza and ice cream and Curtis has started making the cakes with the kids.
Each child gets a special birthday date with the parents. This is the highlight for the kids, they love it! They get to plan a special day, doing whatever they want (mostly), eating food they like, with just the three of us. Here is a list of dates we have had, or plan to have:
attending a rodeo
visiting an aquarium
visiting a zoo
getting ears pierced (for the girls‘ 5th birthday)
going to a museum (we have done quite a few of these including: tank, train, dinosaur, space and rocket, etc.)
going to a book signing
attending an amusement park (we do this on their 11th birthday because they are tall enough to ride everything and this is an overnight date with just one parent)
roller skating
bowling
movie theatre
special shopping trip (usually to get something really nice like a tent or a cool store like American Girl)
salon visit and pedicures
Last year with a lot of things still closed we got takeout from their favorite restaurant and went to a park to eat it together while we watched a downloaded show or movie on a iPad.
While we try to do the dates close to their birthday it doesn’t always work that way. Some notables were the book signing and amusement park visit. The book signing was a month after Girl9’s birthday because that was when it was scheduled. The amusement park visit was two weeks early for Girl12 because the park closes after Halloween.
What do you do to make birthdays special in your family?
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