Birthday Traditions

Obviuosly, birthdays have been on my mind, as of late, and I've been thinking a lot about birthday traditions. With Anna, I have carried over some from my own childhood, and some seem to have developed on their own.

Back in the days of yore, when I was growing up, here were our birthday traditions:

• We got to pick our favorite kind of sweet cold cereal (like Cap'n Crunch, or something) because we never got the good stuff, ordinarily.
• We got to choose what we had for dinner.
• We got to pick the kind of birthday cake we wanted.
• The kitchen was always decorated with crepe paper and balloons.
• * UPDATE * I totally forgot about the special birthday plate and goblet! I'm so ashamed. (Thanks for reminding me, Jen.) Anyway, we got to use these fancy things when we ate our birthday dinner. I always looked forward to this part of my birthday.

I think that pretty much covers it, besides getting a few presents, obviously. Way, way back, the kids in my family also got to go out to dinner, just ourselves with our parents, and to a movie. I think I only got to do this once or twice because it became extremely hard with eight kids and the birthday-date tradition was eventually abandoned. I even remember doubling up once with a brother whose birthday was in September because my parents hadn't gotten around to him yet. It was fun while it lasted, though.

Probably 15+ years ago, I made a birthday banner (that we still use to this day) from cardstock, curling ribbon, and scotch tape. With quality supplies like that, it's really kind of a miracle that it has lasted this long. And this thing has traveled to many homes and places. We have even been known to send it to different states once in a while if someone is having a birthday.

For some reason, my sister and I started a tradition of making a birthday sign written backwards and putting it up on the wall opposite the bathroom mirror. This year was the first year I did that for Anna, which she loved (probably now that she can read it).

When you're concentrating so hard on writing backwards, it's easy to forget silly, unnecessary letters like H . . .

Last year, I decided to make Anna a shirt with a 5 on it for her 5th birthday. She got to pick the color of the shirt and the ribbon I used to make the 5. 

Although I hadn't necessarily planned on making one every year, she was excited this year to have a 6 shirt, so we made it happen. And a new tradition was born.

The lace she chose had a string of fake pearls up the middle—very fancy. We'll see how long they last. While I was in the middle of sewing this, I mourned the fact that I hadn't thought to do it when she was 4 (because of the straight lines), but I'm totally looking forward to 7. That's going to be a breeze.

I love the traditions. They make the celebrations that much more fun because, while the presents are fun surprises, you anticipate the traditions and know what to expect. It's fun that Anna's at an age where she can remember last year's birthday and birthday traditions and can look forward to them again. All the traditions don't always show up every single year, but when they do, they're delightful.

So now I want to know about some of your birthday traditions, old or new. Last one to comment is a rotten egg!

Happy Birthday to Anna!

Last week was Anna's 6th birthday. 6 is good, but it's also weird. She's like a full-blown kid now. She has left the toddler years far behind and is using words like "prevent" and "voluntary" all the time. She also corrected herself on the pronunciation of the word "invitation" last week, which is one of the words I was hoping would stick around for a while because she said it with a B: inbitation. So cute.

Anyway, her birthday was a delight—for her and for me. We had a lot of fun. (Although I did feel like I got sucker punched every time I looked at a picture of her I took that day because it seemed like she aged all at once that very day. She looks so old to me here!)

Just for fun, here's her at 5 so we have something to compare it to. 

Do you see what I mean? I can see it, but it could just be the loss-of-childhood tears clouding my vision. (Just kidding. I really am okay that she's getting older. I'm aware that she's aging at the rate everyone else does.)

So here's how the celebrations went down (there were many):

For months, Anna has been requesting breakfast in bed. I don't know where she got the idea, but after shooting down the idea several times, I finally told her that she could have breakfast in bed on her birthday. It was pretty awesome because she was totally awake before me but she had to stay in bed until I made her breakfast so it would be official. I did give her a few books to read so she had something to do.

For breakfast, she requested waffles and ice cream and strawberries, and I obliged. When else can you have ice cream for breakfast, if not your birthday? After breakfast, she finally emerged for presents. She got a lot of presents from so many people that love her and was probably genuinely spoiled, but she was also genuinely gracious about all of them. She called several of them "masterpieces" when she opened them and gave lots of thankful hugs. Giving her presents is partly for her and partly for me. It's just so darn fun to know what she would absolutely love and googly-eyed faint over (which she does often about things she's in love with) and then see it actually happen.

We were planning on having a cousin water party that afternoon, but since the Crazy Wind Storm of 2012 decided to make it super cold (and windy) earlier in the week, we bumped the party to Friday when temperatures were supposed to be warmer. (Friday was warmer, but it was still windy. Good thing I like the wind or else I would have been really mad that the wind made the little swimmers chilly. Instead, I was only a little mad.)

But back to Thursday. For dinner, Anna really wanted to roast hot dogs and make s'mores, so we just up and built a fire in the backyard. It was awesome. We also had some chips and sugar snap peas and carrot sticks (to, you know, balance out the hot dogs), and Anna also picked out a special can of pickled beets for us to eat. (By 6, I meant she was turning 86.)

The next day, we got ready for the party, which was basically kids playing in little pools and sliding down slip 'n' slides. They also painted rocks and beat a pinata to death. We had pina coladas and fruit kabobs, which I enjoyed as I laid back on a lounging chair and watched. Since Anna's birthday happened to be the same day as National Chocolate Ice Cream Day, we had chocolate ice cream sundaes. A delightful addition.

Anna LOVES it when her cousins come over, so I knew she would love this party. I think everybody had a good time. I know I did, sipping my pina colada on the patio. Some pictures to enjoy:

some of the cousins in question

I feel like this picture needs explaining. This is a horse trough that has never been used as a horse trough. (People are always concerned about this point.) It has, however, been our pool since before I was born, I think, and it's super fantastic. We generated some pretty great whirlpools in here, growing up. And I loved seeing it packed with 100 cousins that day.

love this one!

Anyway, that was the birthday. Lots of presents, lots of treats, lots of fun, and I needed lots of sleep to recover from it all. But it has been 6 years well spent. Happy birthday, Annabelle.

(And you know what next year means, since she was born on the 7th? GOLDEN BIRTHDAY!)

May Photo Blitz

May was a complete whirlwind. I tried to make it last because I knew it was monumental (last month of kindergarten, last month of school before the calm but routine-free summer, etc.), but it ended anyway. Here are some of the things we did.

Kindergarten graduation. Do you love the upside-down-plastic-bowl graduation hats or what?

Anna showing me the chicks they got to see hatch in their classroom. Sometimes I wish I went to kindergarten.

with her teacher Mrs. Williams, who was amazing

In her outfit for the dance festival. Since the kindergarteners were dancing to Jackson 5's "ABC 123," the teachers requested they wear something from the 60s or 70s, so we went authentic. This is a dress my mom made for my oldest sister in probably 1970. She looked amazingly awesome.

Making a friendship lei at her class party. And I just noticed that's my foot in the corner. Proof that I was there.

The other thing we did this month is grow butterflies. We got this nifty net cage thing from Anna's grandma and we ordered some caterpillars online and all 5 grew into painted lady butterflies. We LOVED watching them grow and change. So fun.

We kept the butterflies inside for a few days until it warmed up enough for them to go outside. Their diet was seriously the cutest thing I've ever heard: fresh orange slices and sugar water dropped on fresh flowers. Doesn't that sound magically dainty?

This one stuck around for a while and didn't want to leave. (My shadow is further proof that I was there for all of these occasions.)

After we let the butterflies go, we noticed they left quite a few eggs behind. We're crossing our fingers and hoping to see some larvae soon. (<— sentence I never thought I'd say)

Now it's on to summer!

Dreams

I am not known for having fantastically magical dreams. They — the ones I remember, anyway — are most often pretty straightforward and sometimes even mundane, like something that would normally happen in my life anyway.

We used to joke about this when I was young because my sister, who is much more creative than I am, always had really cool dreams, like about magic water that would make fruit grow ten times its size, or something. We compared this to one dream I distinctly remember, which was all about how I was upset that this sister ate the rest of my toast without my permission.

Really? Toast? There's almost nothing more unexciting than toast.

But lately it seems like I have had more than my fair share of interesting ones (especially given my lame-dream history). They were mostly just kind of quirky and silly, and while I know no one really likes to hear about other people's dreams, I like to tell myself that these might be somewhat of an exception.

1. One Sunday night, I dreamed that I had to do singing time in Primary at a park, and I was having such a hard time wrangling all the kids. I had this wagonful of weird visual aids and I kept freaking out, saying, "It's just not going to be fun enough!"


Can you guess what my calling is? I loved the irony of the fact that I had the dream the night after church and not the night before.

2. I also dreamed that I had a pet tiger (named Raja, I'm embarrassed to admit), but it was so cool! It was so big and soft, and it would give me high fives. I remember that I sometimes had to be stern with it and give it occasional warnings, "Raja . . . ", but mostly it was a good tiger. Maybe I was still harboring feelings about tigers back from when I read Life of Pi?

3. In another, I dreamed that I had a friend in the cupcake business and she was having me taste some of her cupcakes. She told me that the secret ingredient in her frosting was egg nog. I remember thinking about this as I woke up, wondering if, though I don't like drinking the stuff, egg nog would make good frosting. Maybe I'm on to something?

4. Another night I dreamed that I had to play the violin in church, and I decided to wear these gray pants made out of really loud parachute material. While I was getting ready, I realized that they would be way too loud and I should probably change. Then I was fixing my hair and putting green salad in it. Yes, you read that right. I had a hairful of lettuce, cheese, and I distinctly remember sprinkling tomatoes on my head. I pretty much had a salad wig. What the WHAT?

So, anyone wanna to tell me what any of them mean?

Which one would make the best book?

So, it's been a year.

That's right. It's been one year since I went public with my write-a-book-by-30 goal. What have I done since then? I wrote a book.

By the time I turned 30 last November, I had a significant rough draft under my belt. But there were some holes and it needed some revisions, so I kept working. I've been working on those and fine tuning and fine tuning for months (with several breaks in between because I sometimes get tired of myself).

But now I'm done! <pant, pant> (I seriously just finished the final revisions a few days ago and I'm still feeling a bit out of breath. It was hard work. My matted hair and glazed-over eyes had quite a tale to tell.) So I'm done and I'm quite proud. It was a feat, and I accomplished it. There are more feats ahead, like getting an agent and getting published, but at least I've done this much. And even though this book has been my constant companion for the last year, staring it in the face for hours on end, and a nearly constant source of emotional upheaval (for good and for bad), I don't hate it.

But I wouldn't say I'm in love with it either. The hard part about doing this is having better taste than what I can actually produce. It's not as good as I want it to be, and that's a hard pill to swallow. But I think it's a great first draft, I'm proud that I wrote it, and I will focus on that.

So here's where things stand:

• I have a first draft, and now it's being read by a few friends and family for some much needed feedback while I put my feet up and catch up on all the ice cream I've been too busy to eat.
• I have a first draft, which means there will be other drafts. This almost makes me cry a little, like a baby, because getting to this point was such a challenge, but I think the first might be the hardest? Maybe? Someone tell me it is. At least I know how to get this far now, and I don't have to start at zero all over again. (That is, until I decide to write another book.)
• So I will continue to revise and make it the best it can possibly be.
• And then I will start querying for an agent.
• And then that agent will try to get my book published.
• And then it will get published and I will finally get to swim in that pool full of pink starbursts like I've always wanted.

Thanks to anyone and everyone for your excitement and questions. Talking about the book kept me excited and motivated to finish. And there's only more excitement to come! <pant, pant>

Tecla was for real!

Can you believe it? Tecla... What on earth. I just have to keep saying it over and over again, I can hardly believe someone was burdened with that name.

So the ones I made up were

Florice

Elma

Reva

Velna

and, you guessed it, 

Ulna

But the worst part about this is that it means all the rest of those were for real. Verla, Arthel, Athra (what?!), and, yes, El Jean. Leatrice is pretty bad, as is Melva. Man alive! It's so hard to pick the worst. Erna and Una . . . now it's just starting to sound ridiculous. But I guess if I had to pick the worst of the worst, I think I would have to go with Tecla. That's one of the best attempts I've seen to feminize a near-random grouping of letters. And who doesn't love "Tec" for a nickname?

Old lady names — with a twist

It's time for some more old lady names! Instead of putting these names head to head, face to face, toe to toe, or what have you (I never realized how many body-part phrases there are like that), I thought I would put all of the latest old lady names in one big list so you can enjoy them all at once. They are a wonder. Some names we've had before, but these are the ones I had to choose between this round. We had some real doozies this time.

But the twist is this. I have put in 5 fake old lady names, ones I just made up, but the rest are bonafide, published names. So the game now is to see if you can pick out the infiltrators. Good luck!

Athra

Leatrice

Florice

Melva

Arthel

LaRee

Elma

Reva

Gertrude

Verna

Zelma

Veva

El Jean

Tecla

Verla

Velna

Ulna

LaVon

Wilma

Erna

Una

Lula

So leave me a comment with your guesses about the 5 fake old lady names. And tell me which name is the worst of the worst.