Birthday week + weekend is officially OVER! Whew!
Birthdays are a blast, but sometimes I wonder how people who have say, 6 children have the energy to CELEBRATE so many times per year. I only have 2 kids and sometimes find it a little exhausting to plan and implement the relatively small b-day celebrations we do! If you had a large family, it seems you would constantly be buying birthday presents, blowing up balloons or planning something all year long.
I already shared our b-day morning, with the donuts and school treats….
The celebration continued after school.
Asher has been saying for months that he wanted to go out for “steak” on his birthday. Sorry to any vegetarians, but my child is definitely a CARNIVORE. 😬 He looooooves steak. (And bacon. And pretty much any other meat.)
We opted for Texas Roadhouse. Seemed like a good family friendly alternative to a “steakhouse” for a 12th birthday.
He was very happy with his meal! It was all really nice. Texas Roadhouse has a very fun, vibrant atmosphere and they had brightly colored Christmas lights strung up everywhere. Ivan’s brother (the one that lives near us) joined us, along with his son (Asher’s older cousin).
When we got home he opened his gifts!
He was, of course, super excited for this part. He loved everything. A few highlights were some new Nikes, a cool new t-shirt Ivan picked out, and a new comforter set for his bed.
We put the new bedding set on right away:
The bulletin board was a gift from my parents…he was also so excited about that! He loves to hang his art.
Also in one of the gift bags were some new bright mustard yellow curtains. They are going to look super cool once they’re up. Maybe he’s not your average 12 year old, but he was so thrilled about them! hahaha. We just need to get some new rods first. The new room is getting closer to completion…. still really needs a new desk chair, some new sheets and a few other little things, but it’s close!
Before bed he said, “This was a really amazing day! Thanks, mom.” (awwwwww…..)
Then on Saturday night, he celebrated some MORE, with his friends this time. He is still very into having a “friend’s birthday party”. He has a very tight group of friends from school that are thick as thieves. They all came over at 4 pm and we went out for pizza and video games at this local vintage arcade/pizzeria.
It’s an old school arcade, where you drop quarters in to play. We handed the boys all stacks of quarters and off they went. I’m terrible at most of those types of games, but I did play a couple rounds of pinball!
Ivan apparently found an old favorite….he was literally parked at this Street Fighter game all night. Hahaha!!!
The pizza and cheese bread was yummy. The boys all played an air hockey tournament while we waited for the food.
After dinner, we took the boys to our local gym for a little while. They all went swimming and mostly played water basketball. Ivan and I sat at a table and had a drink (our gym has a BAR/ restaurant inside of it- how cool is that?? 😁) and supervised and talked. It was nice!
We finally made it home a little after 9 pm, but the boys seemed to have plenty of energy left. I made brownies and then Asher opened his gifts (which were amazing…. his friends (or his friends’ moms, lol) must know him really, really well, because every gift seemed so perfectly suited to him and his interests! It was so great.)
I’m not really sure what they exactly did after that…they slept over and stayed up late, ate potato chips and drank lots of root beer (definitely a special occasion, because we never let our kids drink soda, normally). I’m pretty sure they played several hours of video games and I also heard nerf guns being shot frequently. 🙂
Everyone went home by 10 am the next morning…tired, and happy! At least I know Asher was. 😉
Daily Gratitude:
I am grateful for Asher’s friends! So grateful he has this great group of buddies.
GRATEFUL KAE 
“I wonder how people who have say, 6 children have the energy to CELEBRATE so many times per year…”
I honestly think this thought weekly.
“How do people with 6 children:”
– ever get laundry done
– ever cook enough for meals
– pack all those lunchboxes
It boggles my mind, because honestly having two kids can just feel like so much work sometimes. I think there is also a lot of group stuff that happens though; bigger kids helping with younger kids, fewer expectations because of all the siblings etc? But still…
When I was a kid my birthday was very much about the party – that was the celebration and it ended there. I think my kids tend to have more drawn-out experiences. A friend party. A special day of breakfast, lunch, and supper of their choice another day. Sometimes some other family friends will come over for a supper at some point. It’s fun and I don’t necessarily want to change it…but I do think that the events are a lot more protracted than they were when I was young…?
Glad it was such a success and I LOVE his room transformation. We’re going to redo our daughter’s room this winter (it is SO dated; 1970’s house without any updates in her room) and I think most of her birthday gifts (March), will be related to to room updates, which seem very practical yet fun for an 11-year old girl!
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I was 1 of 5 kids and I often wonder how my parents did it. But we had a much simpler life because we lived in a rural area. The big deal about our birthdays was being able to pick what my mom made for dinner. There were no restaurants in our tiny town of 500 people, so unless we went to a bar (which obv didn’t happen when we were young), your bday meal was going to be at home.
We have not had a kid party yet – I think we will hold off until Paul is in school? Some of his daycare buddies have had parties, but they were outdoors at a park which is not ideal for a Mar 1st bday! So we keep it very very low key so far. Will ended up having 3 birthday celebrations but they weren’t really ‘true’ celebrations. My mom made cupcakes for his birthday celebration the day after Thanksgiving but he wasn’t feeling well so had no interest. Then we had a little celebration for our family of 4 on Friday – just cupcakes after dinner which he destroyed. So his one real party was a taco lunch yesterday with some of Phil’s family. We had 5 people over so it was still pretty small. I made ground turkey and shredded pork tacos and all the fixings plus banana cake w/ cream cheese frosting for dessert. The food was a hit and it was nice to see everyone. We hadn’t seen this group since June so it had been so long. We’ll see them again in 3 weeks as they always include us in their Christmas Eve celebration. I didn’t buy a single gift for Will which was the right decision since he got soooo many from this extended family + Phil’s mom!
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