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Birthday traditions
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Anytime have some good birthday traditions to share? We prefer not to promote selfish, self centered thinking and expectations around birthdays… But I think I’d like to make them more special somehow. We usually just have a cake and sing Happy Birthday… and give them some kind of gift. But it would be nice to do something a little more intentional to celebrate their growth and inspire them towards maturity.
I always sit down with the birthday boy/girl and look through their baby album with them. 🙂 My 20 year old son acts embarrassed but I know he enjoys it. I also make meals extra special-we use my good china for breakfast and I do silly things like make smiley faces on their pancakes (or toast or whatever) with raisins or chocolate chips. We also take the day off from school if the b-day falls on a school day.
The birthday child gets to help me make their cake. And usually they decorate it or at least help me if they don’t want to. It is something they really look forward to. My 6 year old daughter will sit and look at Pinterest for ideas with me also which she loves. We aren’t big on toys so we try to go with the theme “making memories, not messes”. This means we would rather go to see a play/musical at the local theater, go to a new or fancier than normal restaraunt, or maybe have a couple families over just to hang out, but no gifts please from people.
My seven year old daughter still remembers when we took her horseback riding on her third birthday. We took lots of pictures, and then got on Snapfish and made a storybook about it. I agree with making memories. She has has no idea what she got for her third birthday, but she remembers that horseback ride and has a lovely book full of pictures to look back at it!
We also don’t have elaborate parties for every birthday. We live on a military base, and have access to a cheap bouncy house for the weekend, so this year we rented a bouncy house for the weekend and just had a birthday cake. The neighborhood kids came over and played, and we had fun just being outside with friends.
My second daughter’s birthday is in January, so we have to get a little bit creative to have something fun since it’s so cold outside. 🙂
In the last two years we have gone from big parties, basically since we had a lot of friends in one area and we loved getting together, to moving into the making memories field, we live with no one around that we know now so this works out well. This year I took my oldest to her choice of lunch and then surprised her with going to the movie theater, her first time, and watching Cinderella. Its been 6 months and she is still talking about it, so the making memories part there. We did let her invite one neighbor kid over and they did things like targets with ground up chalk in eggs, cornstarch and water 🙂 and painting with chalk paint. The other kid is still young and doesn’t really want anyone but her sister so she doesn’t mind us doing activities as a little family, for her 3rd birthday this year we painted pottery after having lunch of her choice and going to the homeschool used curriculum sale the day before convention. Oh and they get to pick their breakfast and dinner and I make them as well as the cake, although this year I put white fondant on the cake and let the 6 year color with food color markers…saved so much time and effort
We try to do something special as a family (since we have no family nearby). In the past we’ve gone bowling or to an arcade (Pizza Ranch). One year they each went to Build-a-Bear on their birthday. I bought a small gift or two so they’d have something to open, but their bear was the main present. My DC with later birthdays learned a bit of patience since they had to wait 8 or 9 months for their bear. lol
Another tradition is that they get to pick a special birthday dinner. Usually it’s pizza or corn dogs and soda (which is a big treat). 😉 They also get to pick out the flavor of ice cream to go with their cake. We also skip school on their birthdays…I’m usually busy decorating a cake that morning and we tend to celebrate in the afternoons.
We have 5 DC, so I’m okay with making them feel special on their birthday. I think if we had one or two DC, I’d have a different perspective on the matter. I think it also teaches the non-birthday kids to put others first. When we’d go to the arcade, everyone would pool their tokens and get the birthday kid a special prize.
We let the birthday person choose the menu for the day, and I make pretty much just about anything they request. We have no family in the area & don’t do parties, so I usually surprise them with some Dollar Tree type of decorations when they come down for breakfast in the morning.
Rather than choosing the menu, we used to do cake for breakfast, and everyone pile into the birthday person’s bed & have cake & presents. Little kids + sugar early in the AM? Didn’t take long to abandon that, though they really enjoyed it. 🙂
With a family of 9 as you can imagine eating out is not in the budget. Also, all our birthdays, anniversaries and holidays fall from Aug 31 – Feb 22. It’s a busy and spendy 6 months. So we group 3 peoples birthdays together and go out to eat, somewhere special like Olive Garden, Pizza Ranch, and Mongo’s. These are our families go to for birthdays. If you aren’t noticing or don’t have any of these around your area you might miss the fact they are all buffet or offer some type of all you can eat. With 6 (including dad) growing boys this is a HUGE hit.
Being we don’t eat out otherwise this is a big deal and we have a great time as a family. Then the kids on their actual birthday will get a gift – here’s the kicker – wrapped in something like a bath towel, a left over holiday bag from Christmas, or even a large blanket which will throw them because it might be a very small gift and they have to find it! They think it’s great and it’s always a surprise what we’ll decided to ‘wrap’ it in.
I love some of your ideas!
We gave up birthday parties about 10 years ago, and now either do a family outing/daytrip, or a family dinner & a smaller outing (just the birthday kid and either me or Dh, maybe one friend or sibling). This summer, we celebrated one son’s 10th birthday with a family daytrip to a water park. For our oldest son’s 17th last month, we all had dinner at his favorite pizzeria, then the next night he and Dh went to an MLB game.
Our kids (even the teens) always make cards and gifts for each other, we mark the birthday child’s height on the wall in our basement, and I bake a cake. Dh and I give a few birthday gifts, and usually try to choose one that’s related to the fact that they’re getting older.
I’ve enjoyed reading all the ideas here. I love the idea of a gift related to the fact that they are getting older. I’d love to do that and I’m trying to think what that could look like. Examples anyone? Or other ideas?
My ideas thus far for this one (ds 9) are taking him out for lunch or ice cream, and shop for a pair of cowboy boots together (grandma and grandpa will provide half the money), and maybe tickets for Daddy to take him and two sibs to a play next weekend (The Boxcar Children). That’s getting pretty spendy though, so I’ll probably have to narrow it down some more. Seven kids here, and 4 of them in the next three months.
Our tradition has always been that the birthday boy/girl gets balloons. However old they are is how many balloons they get. It’s a simple tradition that they just love!
We also try and make their gifts more of experiences such as a night away, a trip to a place we’ve been wanting to go. Memories last far longer than gifts do.
Love all the other suggestions too!
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