Birthday Traditions - An Epic Post

I survived feeding and entertaining 16 young party guests and a neighborhood of boys yesterday. One down, three to go. All of my kids have Holiday season birthdays. It’s fantastic! I only say that with slight sarcasm because, the truth is, when they were all born in November and December I was thrilled. Now that they all have so much going on, on top of the regular holiday stuff, this time of year leaves me overwhelmed and exhausted, a lot. In fact, as much as I love the Holiday’s, I tend to turn in to Ebenezer Scrooge when things get added to our calendar. I think that’s why every fourth quarter for the last few years finds me trying to simplify my life in a really complicated way. Like when I decided these things:

1. Seeing if we could go more than a month without entering a grocery store, thus having to make everything we eat from scratch.
2. Buying nothing new for a whole holiday season. We saved money and the gifts we gave were simpler, but it took lots of thrift store hunting and handcrafting to fit the bill for birthdays and Christmas that year.
3. Cutting our grocery budget in half, just to see what we can do with what we give away. I’m not sure that this actually simplifies anything, but it seemed like an interesting experiment to try.

So, the birthday party. All of my youngest daughter's girl friends from her Sunday School class, two families of siblings, and two friends from school came to help celebrate her big day. Plus, we invited the whole neighborhood out for cupcakes. Not everyone came, but we did end up with about 10 little boys and their moms from various parts of our street. Some of the best parts of the party were:

• I released myself from the notion of having a themed party . We just had a treasure hunt, played a bunch of fun games like charades and balloon stomp, and experimented with dry-ice in bowls of hot soapy water (it’s fascinating, you should try it sometime .
• I didn’t buy any pricey party favors. The day after Halloween, Hannah and I went to the candy story and found lots of cute Halloween themed specialty candies seriously discounted. We bought what we needed and only spent $3 for all 16 of our party participants.

It was a great time, and I stayed in a very small budget. Between the balloons, the dry ice and the candy I only spent ten bucks. We ate snacks we already had (popcorn and fruit from Grandma and Grandpa’s trees) and cupcakes from food storage cake mixes. Good, cheap, fun.

So, what does this kind of craziness have to do with Live On What You Give? Well, beginning last year we started a tradition of birthday service. The idea is that our birthday is a pretty big thing to be grateful for, and maybe there are things that we can do to show our appreciation.

Past Birthday Service projects have typically been simple, take a meal to a family with a sick mom, donate blood, shovel a neighbor’s driveway, help clean our church. The key is that whatever we do, we serve together. Sharing a meal - some of us help with the cooking and some of us help with the delivery. Donating blood –one of us donates, some of us are support team and some of us stay behind with the younger kids, preparing dinner and making things nice for the donor’s return. You get the idea.

For yesterday’s service, we decided to invite all of the neighborhood children for birthday treats. So, early in the morning Hannah and I got up and made 4 dozen cupcakes in two flavors, devil’s food and vanilla (we turned those purple). The day was CRAZY, I had a presentation to prepare, a class to teach, a husband to pick up in Salt Lake, and carpool to run. There was no time for icing all of those cupcakes. But, inspiration comes often when you needed most, so here’s what we did...

“Okay, Hannah and I made these cupcakes to share with everyone.” I told them as I put all 48 of them in front of them on the table.

Wide eyes quickly counted how many cupcakes there could be.

“But, wait,” one little girl said. “How come there’s no icing on them?”

“Well, we thought we’d let you guys in on that fun.” I feel like Tom Sawyer tricking all of his friends into paying him for the chance to whitewash his fence.

“We each take 3 cupcakes. One is for you to eat and two are to give away. If there are enough left in the end, everyone can eat another cupcake.” I instructed.

“This is part of my birthday service. You guys get to help me ice all of these cupcakes.”

“Wait, we’re giving them away?” All the little girls shared looks of confusion.

Then, one girl asked, “So, we’re sharing these with neighbor kids? It’s like a service, right?”

Exactly. As all of the other girls began to understood they went to work . I don’t think I’ve ever seen a happy group of cupcake decorators.

When the neighbors didn’t seem to be coming on time, they all started to get anxious that the love and effort they had put into those cupcakes would have been in vain.

“No one’s coming. What should we do?” Hannah asked, concern in her voice.

“Take the trays of cupcakes and go outside. I promise you will find plenty of kids to give them to.”

“You mean we can just go and give them all away?” a little girl asked.

“Yep. And I know those kids are going to love all your hard work.” I said.

There was a collective cheer as they pulled trays of cupcakes off the table and headed for the door. When they got there, they found a bunch of kids and moms ready to be served. It was awesome. I think it is one of the best birthday parties we’ve ever thrown.