Parties

This morning I found a post on celebrations-a Mom who says she has frequent parties for her kids on no notice. And she has 13 kids! I've had the subject of parties on the back the back of my mind. Sometimes after Easter the whole celebration season seems to begin. We have Easter, Dad's birthday, Mother's Day, memorial day, Mimi's birthday :( , the end of school, Leanna's birthday, Justin's birthday, Tom's birthday, the fourth of July, Sue's birthday, Jacob's birthday, My Mom's birthday, Laura's birthday, labor day, and the start of school again! Followed soon after by my birthday and Timothy's! Then Halloween, then Thanksgiving, then Christmas season!

This year instead of Mimi's birthday we'll be celebrating my cousin's wedding (not that it's an actual substitution, just they're around the same time). And I think in April Laura will be getting her master's, so that's another celebration!

Our parties are pretty low-key, the main ingredients are just family, food, balloons and presents. I don't bother to hand out party favors, and I don't do expensive restaurant parties or things like that. But I've been thinking about how to improve them. I know, I know! Claire and Garrett vote alcohol! Sometimes we remember to find music to play, generally not. I usually intend to have music and a lot more decoration. I like to make their birthdays really feel special and different from any other day. But unfortunately I'm limited not just financially, but with my time. So much of my cleaning has to be last minute, and I try to make the food last minute so it's fresh. And I've been getting experimental with birthday cakes in recent years, that takes time too. My sister Laura generally comes over a few hours early to help with last minute preparations and that helps tremendously! My Mom will usually slice up some vegetables. Which is in itself another change in recent years. Since my Mom's diet changed so drastically after her heart attack, so to has our food on holidays and parties changed. I think this is mostly for the better. I like that my kids will grow up thinking it's normal to munch on peppers, carrots, broccoli, and celery in addition to chips and pretzels. Certainly different from our parties! But I also know that my in-laws haven't seemed to have as much fun lately either, so I'd welcome suggestions from them, as well as anyone else, on different ways to add to their enjoyment.