Birth stories are a big deal over here. As each of our children celebrate a birthday, there is always a sweet moment where they snuggle close and want to hear about the excitement and adventure surrounding their birth. They never tire of hearing about our anticipation of their arrival and the aspects that make their birth so unique and special. We pull out the pictures and reminisce. Birthdays are such a wonderful time to celebrate as a family.
So why don’t we celebrate our “family birthday” the same way – as a family, reminiscing? On our anniversary, my hubby and I usually go out for a fancy dinner and the kids go to my parents. We actually did that this year, but celebrated the night before since Keegan had a Kindermusik performance on our actual anniversary. We had a beautiful dinner at Searsucker. Who knew that tumbleweed could look beautiful and hip… We learned our lesson though on ordering unfamiliar items without asking questions first. Word to the wise: Beef Tartare isn’t for everyone.
So on Monday morning while we were reading together a thought struck me. I bolted upright and asked the boys if they wanted to help me plan a birthday party. Three faces turned towards me with a mix of excitement and confusion. I told them that we were going to celebrate the birth of our family with a Family Birthday Party!
A Family Birthday Party!
We didn’t have a whole lot of time and I didn’t feel like making any fancy trips, but here is what we pulled together for our Family Birthday Party!
♥ We made a cake! What is a party without cake? The boys were so eager to help. Keegan in his eagerness decimated the egg and it went squirting out everywhere which typified some of the mess that ensued. But they were so proud of the fact that THEY made it…
♥ I pulled out wedding décor. I still have our cake topper – a fairy-tale castle to represent our happily ever after. And yes, 13 years later we still have wedding napkins, so those were pulled out too! I’m excited that we now have a special way to use them so I can stop hoarding…
♥ Special occasions call for fine china! This is a treat and the boys treated them with utmost reverence.
♥ We kept dinner simple. Since we didn’t get back from his Kindermusik performance until 5:30, we kept dinner simple.
♥ Pulled out the wedding photos and/or video – I get dreamy and wistful. The boys get excited. It is like “Where’s Waldo” to them. Have we really changed that much in 13 years? They scour photographs looking for familiar faces.
♥ We paint and draw and celebrate! – The boys are enthralled with water-coloring letters after they see me give it a whirl. Our getaway jeep with packing peanuts pouring out and my dress practically spilling out too was another favorite thing to draw! We plan to make a collage to hang next to the kitchen table!
♥ We sing, would have blown out candles {we’re currently running really low} and EAT CAKE!
Oh yes, Rich and I will still go out and celebrate privately, but we plan on making this family celebration of our family birthday a tradition too!
If you were to have a family birth-day celebration, what would you include?
Related Posts: Speaking of birth stories ~ Treyton’s and Greta’s. :sigh: This makes me want to write up the other two birth stories as well as our love story…
Sheyenne
What a lovely idea. Happy Anniversary!! 13 years…what a landmark….you are *teens* in the marriage world. Where are you in this family photo my friend?! 🙂 It’s amazing how quickly we do change….it’s scary, don’t you think?
Blessings to you,
Camille
I love this idea! It’s not too late to start 22 years later, right? I still have wedding napkins, too. 🙂
What a FUN idea! Love this! Off to pin. 😉
WONDERFUL! What a super idea! I’ve always missed that my husband and I didn’t do this ourselves on our anniversaries but I see now the key is to share it all with our children as they grow up! What a true, godly message to imprint in their minds about families in general and theirs so specially! Thumbs WAY up!
I. Stinkin’. Love. This. I’m always looking for a reason to celebrate! Since our anniversary is two days after Christmas, we might have a party on the anniversary of when we got engaged or met or something like that.
As always, thanks for the inspiration!
eeeek! You are giving me even more ideas! THANKS! 🙂 I may just have to do an engagement something or other either with the kids or just as a special date with Rich!
I’m so glad you tweeted me!
I warmly remember the ‘about me’ stories, and the “tell me it again!” pleas.
My two are 24 and 21 now…so I really enjoy the memory triggers from younger moms.
It looks like we might meet at Allume too!
I love the idea of knowing some people BEFORE we go to Allume! This will be my first year going and I’m super excited!
ohh my goodness I love this! Our anniversary is next week and I think we might have to do something very similar!
We’re a couple weeks away from the 28th anniversary of the start of our courtship…if we define personhood at conception, then the seed planted for our family was on that day so we’ll go ahead and celebrate it*! We’ll pull out the photo albums of those early days together developing our friendship and then falling in love. We were just 15 (almost 16!) and 18…younger than our oldest children are now! We’ll also pull out the vinyl albums of the Contemporary Christian groups we saw in concert together back in the 80’s (Steve Taylor, Altar Boys, Randy Stonehill, Petra, Whiteheart, etc. Heavy Metal Christian band Stryper will horrify our children for SURE and that’s always fun–LOL!)
*I am so in favor of celebrating anything under the sun–we do Half-Birthdays too, mostly because of the Christmastime baby who gets forgotten in December 🙂
Love it… Our kids aren’t old enough to see anything different about our music choices yet. Ahhh, Petra. That brings back memories.
And yes, we celebrate all kinds of birthdays although we haven’t done half birthdays yet. But then, if we had a December baby, we probably would have by now. 🙂
I love your idea & all the work the boys did. You need to post it on facebook so everyone can see it. I remember the day well.
BTW…I think you are lovely currently…I’m sure you were a beautiful bride. It’s a known fact that brides get better with age. 🙂
What a lovely idea. Happy Anniversary!! 13 years…what a landmark….you are *teens* in the marriage world. Where are you in this family photo my friend?! 🙂 It’s amazing how quickly we do change….it’s scary, don’t you think?
Blessings to you,
Camille
hahaha… teenagers. That still makes us practically newlyweds, right?!?! We are most certainly overdue for a family photo. Greta sacked out and I was taking the picture, so only boys in this one. 🙂
What a super great idea. Love it!