My brother Spencer’s birthday was this week. He’s on a mission for our church at the moment, so we just sent him a care package in the mail. I had Cooper and Ellen draw pictures as part of Uncle Spencer’s gift and I explained to them that we were sending Uncle Spencer a special package for his birthday. Cooper’s eyes lit up as he said, “Uncle Spencer! Birthday . . . cake!” I could see the gears working in his…
Last weekend we drove to Utah for a quick trip to see my sister graduate with a Masters of Social Work from the University of Utah. Logistically, the whole thing was a bit of a fiasco, but once it unfolded it was quite fun. We’d found a great deal on a rental car, that according to our calculations would actually cost less to rent and drive than to drive our 18-year-old car. (See what a difference fuel efficiency can make?)…
Apparently, people can go pretty crazy about their child’s first birthday. When I was “doing research” (AKA googling stuff on the internet) in preparation for Ellen’s birthday I found this poll on Baby Center and was shocked at how much money some people spend on this special occasion. I like to think birthdays can still be fabulous without emptying your bank account, so that’s exactly what we did. We didn’t really decide on any sort of theme, but looking back…
I get excited about weird things (Groundhog Day, cloth diapering, bread, etc), so it shouldn’t really come as any surprise that I’ve been dying to celebrate Noel’s 12/12/12 birthday for almost a year. When one has a birthday on such a cool day, one must celebrate in style. So I plotted, planned, and managed to keep secrets (no small feat for me). I wanted the day to start off right from the very beginning, so at midnight (12 am) Noel started…
Our Cooper isn’t quite as mini as he used to be it seems. He turned two this past week. We had wonderful plans of going to the zoo, but we literally could not find a parking spot within a 5 mile radius. Fortunately, Cooper had no idea and was not at all disappointed when we went to the park instead. We took him to California Pizza Kitchen and uncharacteristically ordered Cooper his own BBQ Chicken Pizza. (PS This recipe for…
I had Noel fill out a questionnaire last week to help me plan the “Perfect Day” for his birthday. To get an insight into what makes this wonderful guy tick, here’s what he choose: Wake up a little early to fit in a run. Eat creme brulee french toast and a glass of orange juice. Work (Okay, this was not necessarily part of the “perfect day,” but Noel really does love his job.) Lunch at D’Deli. (If you ever visit…
This year we spent Thanksgiving with my family. It was our first time driving back since we moved here and we remembered why we’ve previously chosen flying over spending 9+ hours crammed in our car. BUT, the weather was more than cooperative and the cold Wyoming wind didn’t blow us away, so we really don’t have much to complain about. While we were in Utah we also celebrated Christmas since everyone wanted to see Cooper’s reactions to their gifts (hopefully…
To commemorate Cooper’s first year we gave him special treatment from the moment he woke up (Wait, how is that different from usual?) and threw a true fiesta (minus the piñata since he can’t wield a bat yet) that night.
The one who loves cake had a birthday. The oven and I were able to come to some sort of an agreement, so I think it ended up being a happy birthday after all. This is me not posting a tribute post, as per birthday boy’s request, so I will say no more 🙂
The other day we were invited to play “Would You Rather” with a family we go to church with. One of the questions in the game was, “Would you rather have each monumental birthday (16, 18, 21, etc) be so awful that you never forgot it or so average you don’t remember what you did?” I answered that I would prefer the awful birthdays since they would make good stories for later and half jokingly added, “Wait, I think that…