Birthday...

My daughter Alli turned five a week and a half ago and we are finally having her party tomorrow.

In years past I would always throw a huge party when my son was school aged and had friends. It would always be in our back yard and I would go totally overboard in decorating and making things- one year I even made a life sized Angry Birds game (you do not even want to know how many hours it took me to ill that off).

Well, things have changed. I used to feel obligated to have big parties because it was what everyone else did. I felt like I had to scour Pinterest for awesome birthday ideas because it was what all the other moms were doing. It seemed like such an injustice to not have a huge bash with a giant bouncy house- wouldn't it make my kids sad to not have all of the hoopla?

Last year I got the answer to this question when we did not have a big party for my son's 6th birthday. We were living in a rented townhouse at the time and money was tight so I asked my son if it would be okay if we didn't have a friend party for him. Guess what? He was fine with it. We did have a small family party though where he did get plenty of presents from love-to-spoil-the-kids grandparents (plus, we ended up getting him an X Box which was way cheaper than any party we would have thrown).

Ever since then I have come up with a very diplomatic birthday plan. Each child can choose to either have a friend party or do something special with mom and/or dad minus siblings. This year was the first year I implemented this and both kids chose to do something special with us which warms my heart that they would rather spend the day with mom and dad.

My son (who turned 7) chose to go to the Lego Discovery Center with my husband and I and my daughter (who turned 5) chose to go the the American Girl store with me. They did not even miss having a big friend party and both kids had a great time on their special outing. Along with the birthday choice, the kids also get to choose the theme for their birthday cake. As long as I can remember I have been making them cakes and staying up into the wee hours of the night to do it- they absolutely love this tradition and even though it is not always fun of me to do it, seeing their smiling faces makes the headache all worth it.

So, tomorrow Alli will have her family party which will be full of lots of fun and yummy food. Plus a  Hello Kitty cake that took me a ridiculous amount of time to make.