January Birthday Madness

The days of January 6th, 12th and 14th are birthdays here in our house, but the mania really starts the day after Christmas, and doesn't end until the night of the 14th. Anders and Addie plot and plan the details of their birthdays for the entire year, but they really get serious about it after Christmas. We've basically stuck to the every other year friend birthday party dealio, and this is the off year- so family celebrations abounded. 

Wow. Friend parties are way easier. Since their birthdays are six days apart, what you do for one, you have to do for the other. We let them choose all of their meals and what kind of cake they wanted. They both wanted animal cakes this year, so we slapped together what we could without any fancy equipment or know-how. They also get to pick a fun family outing. AND, we decided to have lunch with each of them at school with the whole fam. Addie got checked out of school to eat with Anders, and vice-versa, since they're at different schools now. Between all of this, it was some serious birthday shiznit, ya'll.

Anders: Pop-tarts for breakfast, McDonald's for lunch, In-N-Out for dinner, and a turtle cake for dessert. We went to Jump On It for the activity.

Addie: Chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast, Little Caesar's for lunch, Hawaiian haystacks for dinner, panda cake for dessert. We saw "Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked" for the activity. Not gonna lie, that was pretty brutal.

As a funny aside, we went to a 4:00 matinee, and there were only two other people in the theater besides us. The kids were SO weirded out by that. They kept saying, "The movie can't start, no one is here! Why is no one here?! Why are we the only ones here?!" We could have given them explanations as to why no one wants to go to a crappy kids' movie at 4 in the afternoon on a Wednesday, but we didn't because we're trying to be goodish parents.

Nils made Anders' turtle cake. Of COURSE he did.

I made Addie's panda cake. It was mediocre, but she didn't seem to notice. It was very important to her to have the candy letters on her cake.

One of Addie's presents was going to Build-a-Bear. The other kids each got a stuffed animal with their own money. They had a lot of fun, and Addie got to ring the birthday bell and everythang. 

My birthday is the last in all of this, and I'm pretty much over it by the time it rolls around. That, and the fact that I'm friggin' old now, so birthdays lost their thrill many moons ago. Nils and I went to lunch, did a bit of shopping, and went bowling. We don't have a good history of bowling together. We went shortly after we were married, and Nils, whose strategy is to chuck the ball as hard as he can, thought it would be good to give me pointers. This angered me, since I am sort of competitive, and since his ball-flinging strategy ended in a better score than my calculated, aim-at-the-arrow technique. ANYhoo, we decided that we might be a little more mature now, so we bowled one game and clapped politely for each other and really behaved quite nicely.

He beat me by 9 points, but only because I lovingly suggested, toward the end of his game, that he try aiming at the middle arrow. Oh, how I regret that loving suggestion.

BIRTHDAYS OUT! (til June.)