birthday traditions

 

Happy Wednesday, friends! I thought I'd share a little about birthday traditions, what we've done in years past and what we're doing this year. I hope you enjoy reading this as I reminisce a little.

As is the new normal, birthdays are being celebrated a little differently this year. That is my new theme in life and even if I don't love change, it's inevitable and I try to just go with the flow. I started asking about a night we could be together this week, last week. It's hard to get all of us together these days! 

When the boys were young, we always had two parties—one for them with their friends and one for the family. (We have a very large family!) This meant there were three birthday sleepovers every year along with the other ones we had every weekend as a normal routine. For Jonah and Noah, I let them each pick two or three of their best friends to come since I combined theirs for obvious reasons. Graham and Drew always had from three-six friends at theirs as well. This always worked best for us, because we didn't have a lot of money and it was very inexpensive to do this. We would order pizza and they'd be up all night playing Nerf wars or video games and we all suffered the next day. I always made their cakes from a box, which was what they always preferred. All of their friends were always having grand parties at event places, but we never had any complaints. 

Also, the best parenting advice I ever received came from my dad. He always told me to never say no to friends coming over to spend the night. If we did that, it would always guarantee that we would be the "hang out house" and he was right. We enjoyed our years of that while they lasted and I'm grateful my dad passed that on to us.

Aside from their friends parties, we also had family parties. We almost always had hotdogs and Rotel for this party with a cake from Costco. Sometimes Bill would bring a yummy dip with chips, like his famous buffalo dip. This was always a fun night for everyone as well, because the grandparents all got the chance to catch up. My mom mentioned this last week as I was hesitant to continue on with this. This year we picked a date in between their birthdays and we'll celebrate them all at once. Jonah and Noah are March 10, Graham is March 11 and Drew is April 3. I don't know what we're doing this year yet, but I have until the weekend before to figure it all out. Our night to do that this year is Monday night, March 21. This all means than on their birthdays we will probably eat at home on each night. Except for Graham, he's leaving for Nashville on his birthday Friday. 

That being said, we decided to go out to celebrate. We went to Longhorn's and had the best time. I made them all pose for a picture afterward, even if one of them pouted about it. 

Aren't they handsome? I certainly think so. I'll share more about them each on their actual birthdays. Thanks for reading my blog, friends! Love to all.