Monkeying around...

Birthdays and gifts


This time of year always seems to be busier than the rest of the year. Out of the 7 of us in our family, 5 of us have birthdays from October to November. In that 5, my husband and I are included. So I guess we can figure out which months we (and our parents) were busy procreating ;-)

We celebrated Justin's (Daddy) birthday recently and had a fabulous time. He had duty the day before, and for those who don't understand that Navy terminology, it means that he had to go to work that day and stay on the ship until the following morning. Usually we collectively hate duty days, except for this time. It gave us the opportunity to create a treasure hunt for him with the gifts we bought and made.

It was nice to do this for him, because his birthday often times gets sadly neglected. We made a large chocolate cake for him and I took writing icing and drew six sections on to the top of the cake so that each of us could decorate our own square with the toppings that we bought that day. We also blew up punching balloons and had them ready to go. It was so much fun! Honestly, it was just as much fun putting this day together for him as it was watching him on the actual day!

I went and picked him up the following morning and when we pulled into the drive he saw the front door covered in a Happy Birthday hanging and when he walked in he saw all the banners that we put up and the helium balloons we bought him. I think he was pretty surprised! I think he expected that maybe we would go out to dinner or something, but nothing like the party we planned for him.

He sat down at the kitchen table and opened his cards that we had laying there. The card that the children gave him had his first clue...so off he went on his treasure hunt. We hid nine gifts in all. Out of the nine, six of them were gifts we made or partially made. I have always felt that homemade gifts are the best kind!

After a while, we retrieved the punching balloons from their hiding place in the little girls' room. We had an unbelievably great balloon war in our living room. If you have never witnessd 7 people bopping each other with punching balloons, you are really missing out. Luckily we have a huge living room. I moved all the breakables to my bedroom, and the war began. We laughed and punched and laughed some more. Finally when we were all out of breath and tired we took a break and headed to the kitchen for birthday cake. Everyone was proud of their square!

We had also made plans to take him to the zoo that night to their halloween town that they had created, but the weather wasn't looking too great. The kids were worried, that we wouldn't be able to go! This is the fourth year in a row that he will miss Halloween (his ship is going out again for a little while), so this was pretty important to them that we get to go even if it was not on the exact day. So I gathered the troops, leaving dad at home, and drove to the dollar store to buy ponchos.

We did get to go, and we didn't need the ponchos! We had such a wonderful time! The whole day was magical from beginning to end. Which by the way ended with a trip to Wendy's on the way home from the zoo, to use our coupons that we were given at the zoo. We each got to pick one item from the dollar menu. So we ate and then all snuggled in my room for a movie. It was the perfect ending to a perfect day.

Now I am off to plan the next birthday which happens to be just a few days away, YIKES!!!