My sweet little girl turns 8 today! Happy Birthday Kaitlyn!Amazing how quickly they grow up. I can't believe it was 8 years ago I had this tiny 4 pound 12 ounce bundle of happiness...
Anyway. I think today is a good day to talk about birthday celebrations and traditions. I'm one of those people that likes to make a big deal out of things (or at least a small deal), because let's face it, my life would be super-de-dooper boring if I didn't. And birthdays rank right up there with Christmas and Valentines. And my kids' birthdays rank even higher than that. So I try to put at least a little of my creative energy into making sure their days have more than one surprise or fun thing in store for them.
It has become a bit of a tradition to do something on the "eve" of the kids' birthdays, to surprise them when they wake up. Kaitlyn even asked if I had anything planned a couple days ago. One year we blew up a ton of balloons and covered the floor of her room with them. Another year we covered the door with crete paper streamers that she had to break through to get out. Yet another year I only had mini balloons on hand so we filled those up, then rigged them in a piece of tissue paper hung above her door that was designed to rip apart and let the balloons fall on her head when she opened the door. We just duplicate whatever we do for her on Tyler's birthday that year. There is a limit to my creativity :)
This year I was planning to put all the balloons on fishing line and hang them from the ceiling all around her room. But due to being really tired that night and the fact that once I started hanging them I realized being in her room that long would really risk waking her up, I only suspended 3 of them and lined the floor with the rest. She was happily surprised all the same :)
Then came breakfast. This year I kept running across the idea of cake batter waffles over and over on Pinterest so I decided to try it. Mmmmmm. It's really great if you want a giant dose of sugar first thing in the morning. And it tastes just like cake!
*all you do is make up the cake batter just as instructed on the box (with the oil, water, and eggs) then use it just like waffle batter in your waffle machine. The same applies to pancakes I'm sure. The only difference is that the cake waffles did seem to take a bit longer to cook than regular waffles.
Kaitlyn asked if she got a candle in her waffles - so I hunted one up. And added whip cream and fish sprinkles (how funny that digging through my cake/cookie making supplies turned up those fun sprinkles in not only her party theme but her party colors as well). The waffles really didn't need syrup. (and I made the kids eat yogurt for breakfast too just to balanace it out a bit)She also got to open one gift before heading off to school.
Do you ever find it interesting how often celebrating revolves around food?Kaitlyn had requested that she get nacho lunchables in her lunchbox on her birthday, along with some "cake and sprinkles" yogurt (have you seen those? we discovered them about a month ago and the kids love them). And as I have been doing every year for her birthday, I dropped off a little treat for her to share with everyone at school
. Normally I do cupcakes that match the theme of her party and had the fish ones all planned out for this year. Then someone mentioned that this school doesn't let you bring in anything home made (what?! why do people have to be such control freaks? It's not the first rule at this school that annoys me lol) and since I wasn't gonna drop $15 on a couple dozen cupcakes from the bakery I grabbed some mini donuts instead and dressed them up a little bit. Kaitlyn also got to pick what we were eating for dinner (mashed potatoes and gravy with corn on the cob are her favorites this year). That's about as far as we go with traditions. She got to open her gifts as soon as her dad got home from work. And we saved the cake and another set of candles for her birthday party the next day.
What is your favorite way to celebrate a birthday?
No comments:
Post a Comment