Special Days

Sometimes life doesn't work out the way we want it to and it's especially diffcult when there is not one thing you can do to change it. Such is the plight of Bekah having to share a birthday with her mother and Mother's Day this year. I keep telling her I told her not to be born on May 10th, but she didn't listen to me...funny how that fits perfectly with her personality! It's so hard for Bekah to realize that there is really and truly nothing that can be done...she's already born and she was born on May 10th. It's even more permanent than the name we gave her. So what can we do? Make the best of it, and Jason sure did everything in his power this year to make us both feel special.

Last Friday, he gave Bekah the choice of celebrating her birthday the next afternoon or "how about right now"! Well what kid wouldn't choose right now! So we go to eat out as a whole family at McDonalds (something we haven't been able to do for a while) and Bekah got to play for a long time on the playground. Then, as if that wasn't enough of a birthday treat, we went to play games at Chuck E Cheese. After using lots of tokens and redeeming tickets for prizes, we came home to eat a homemade ice cream cake out of ice cream sandwiches and strawberry cool whip. Wow, Jason! Even James really got into things that night. He got to eat his first bites of a McDonalds cheeseburger...a trend I hope we don't repeat too many times but was so funny to see him so excited to get to eat big people food! (He is so interested in what we eat but as yet has a hard time not choking on anything that's chunky, so McD's hamburgers were perfect because they are ground up so much they don't take long to chew up.) He and Daddy went up into the playground for the first time while I tried my hardest not to be anxious about the germs he was being exposed to. James truly didn't want to leave--except for the over abundance of screaming from all the kids.

Next day, after a Stake Relief Society event, it was mommy's turn. The whole family came to pick me up from the Stake Center, and then we got to go shopping at Woodfield Mall. It seems like forever since I've been shopping in a mall! Then we had a dinner at P.F. Chang's. The dinner was delicious...but we learned the hard way not to take James to nice restaurants for a while. After enjoying the scenery at the Rainforest Cafe (the kids like to look at the fish and mechanical alligator and other animals), we drove home and had another homemade ice cream cake. (Jason wanted to make sure we each had our own special cake.)

Sunday was Mother's Day, so we got to celebrate three days in a row! And so Bekah wouldn't have any reason to feel slighted, and because we love her :) we decided to throw a surprise friend party for her today. Bekah was really surprised. It turned out great. We just played a few easy games (freeze dance, limbo, mummy wrap, duck-duck-goose, hula hoop race, telephone, and bubbles), decorated cupcakes (since I ran out of time to do a cupcake cake), and did a book exchange instead of presents. I really liked that we ended up putting a candle on each cupcake so everyone got to blow out a candle and everyone got to open a present (book exchange) so everyone felt special. It was a great way to have a birthday party without increasing the sense of entitlement and greediness that seems to have built up with each year's birthday. Maybe we'll continue this tradition, except for the surprise part. Bekah asked if we could do a surprise party every year, but I told her it's like jokes. After you do it once or twice, it doesn't seem to work anymore.

All in all, we've had lots of special days this past week.