Celebrating a child's birthday can be a tricky subject to cover in this day and age with Pinterest and social media; add in a larger than normal sized family and birthdays can quickly become a taboo topic. Remember the days when celebrating a birthday meant family and friends coming together to eat a simple undecorated cake with ice-cream, balloons and streamers, pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, maybe a piñata, but mostly kids ran a muck playing while the adults enjoyed some basic fellowship. Sheesh, fast forward 20 years and now birthdays are an overkill, social media extravaganza with destination event locations, elaborate cakes, hundreds of dollars worth of decorations, perfectly choreographed games; I mean they are legit, epic parties ~ every parent trying to outdo the other!
Yeah well, those types of parties just don't exist in our large family life. There was a time when we had fairly large (homemade) themed birthday parties for our first few children; but as our family grew (and we got all weird with homeschooling, lol) people quit coming ~ so we had to change our way of celebrating birthdays. We wanted to make sure that each of our children knew they were a unique special gift to us, and that their birthdays were important. So evolved our family's method for honoring each child's birthday.
First off, we allow each child to plan their birthday menu, picking their favorite breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Most of the children choose my homemade cinnamon rolls for breakfast. So much so that I hardly ever make them except for birthdays since we have a LOT of birthdays to celebrate throughout the year, lol. Lunch and dinner can range anywhere from homemade pizza to homemade chicken tetrazzini.
Next each child chooses a special party theme in which I purchase decorations to match. I also bake and decorate a cake to match their chosen theme. My older children rarely pick a 'theme' and prefer my homemade ice cream cake (pictured at the top of this post). For our children who prefer a traditional cake they also get to choose their favorite ice cream. Of ALL the birthdays we've celebrated we've only bought one store-bought cake and it was for our oldest son's first birthday. My cakes are rarely fancy but they are one way I love to show my babies they mean the world to me.
We encourage the children to give us a birthday wish list and we try to purchase three gifts. This may be less/more depending on the price of the gifts requested. We do not typically purchase toys/gifts throughout the year. Birthdays and Christmas are pretty much the only time our children receive toys/gifts, so we try to buy them things they're really wanting (within reason).
We do not have guests for our children's birthday celebrations. Sometimes my father-in-law will come by, but not always. It's mostly just an intimate celebration with our immediate family.
Some years, depending on our financial situation, we take each child out to their favorite restaurant with just mom and dad. Its fun to get some one-on-one time with our kiddos on their special day.
Each of our children are treasured gifts from the Lord. Their birthdays are immensely special to us, we want to celebrate them to the fullest. The above has been what works for our family. This system allows us to recognize birthdays as a day of importance unique to each one of our children. Not to mention, keeping them budget-friendly and fun for our little blessings.
Every family has to figure out what works for them and it's perfectly fine to tweak traditions over the years as family dynamics change. But having a 'baseline' plan helps everyone to know what to expect AND allows mom and dad to more adequately plan for those special events.
With Love & Hope,
Jennifer
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