Birthday Season

We’ve had a couple of birthdays in our family over the last two weeks. Sadly the lockdown in Auckland has meant we couldn’t celebrate as planned, but they’ve been special occasions nonetheless.

Our son’s 10th birthday party has been postponed for now. But it wasn’t all bad. He got to see both sides of the extended family at different times and at least some of his presents arrived in time! We had a special dinner (homemade sushi) and he even got to have a swim at my parents place the day before.

Our now 8 year old daughter enjoyed her special day yesterday with visits from family, a trip to the playground and some bakery treats for lunch. Her dinner of choice was dumplings (cooked from frozen supermarket packets). She even got to enjoy her cake twice over, with a celebration on the weekend with my family and another one yesterday with my husband’s family! (I redid the cake with some leftover pieces)

We have a tradition each year where the kids get to choose a special cake from one of our birthday cake books, so even on non-party years this is highly anticipated! Because of the number of kids we have and to allow for my own energy and inspiration levels, we only do parties for the 1st, 5th and 10th birthdays. (There will no doubt be others we celebrate later – my eldest is only 11.) This was a decision I made fairly early on with our first few children, and I’m so glad of it now that we have 6!

So despite the frustrations of lockdown, it’s been worth taking a mental break from the stresses of daily life to make their birthdays a little bit special, and a joy to see how much they appreciate the effort!