Birthdays, Gifts and Experiences

This past weekend we had my youngest son’s first birthday party. We went out for ice cream on his actual birthday, then had a party on the weekend. As always with my family, the party was complete mayhem and I was glad it when it was over.

The cake turned out great though! I was so happy with it. It was blue and white in the shape of a #1. So sweet!

I still have my oldest son’s party to get through in a month. It will be the first party where we invite friends from his pre-school. It will be complete chaos I’m sure. And, we are having it at home. Not sure if that is a wise choice, but I don’t want to change the date if it rains or transport the cake that I plan to make, so we will just hope for the best.

Not sure where everyone is going to eat cake, but I will deal with that later. Maybe I can borrow a picnic table or something.

We are going to a cabin in a couple of weeks for a friend’s daughter’s 7th birthday. My friend gave her the choice of gifts or doing something. She chose doing something without a 2nd thought. So, they rented a cabin that has 3 bedrooms and sent out an open invitation to others to ether stay in one of the 2 extra bedrooms, get their own cabin or tent camp, or just visit for the day, since it’s a National Park.

I think this is a SUCH a great idea and am definitely going to start doing this as my boys get older. I love the idea of teaching them to recognize that experiences with friends and family are more valuable that stuff and that there is often a trade off.

We are having a ‘no presents’ party anyway for the friends. Big D will get enough from family to warrant anything else from others. That’s a hard one for me though since he loves giving gifts. I sort of feel like I’m depriving his friends of giving him something if they want to, but I would really love it if they just made him a card we could keep in his scrapbook. Maybe I will mention that on the invitation in a cute poem or something.

Is there something special or a tradition that you do for birthdays with your kids?

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