This has been EG's most anticipated birthday yet, I think, and that's due mainly to that phrase above: double digits. She turned ten on Thursday, and has ended up with something of a birthday weekend. Birthday weekends, by the way, usually mean quite a bit of work for the mom. How is it that this always happens?
Wednesday night, I baked a cake (yellow, two round layers), and Thursday morning, I frosted it (chocolate buttercream). I also made our family recipe sweet rolls for breakfast, along with scrambled eggs.
After a few false starts (literally - our van would not start and we had to all squish into my parents' van), we made our way to White Water. EG went on nearly every slide there! We saw Smrt Mama and company there, as well. After we left White Water and cleaned ourselves up a bit, we headed to the new Chipotle in our area for lunch. Yum! Then it was back to our house for cake and presents. Spousal Unit and I gave her The Complete Poems of Christina G. Rossetti, which she loved, and a charm bracelet with two charms already on it - a big initial "G," and a "Big Sister" charm. My parents gave her two more charms for the bracelet, as well as a book - Spy vs. Spy.
Then, Spousal Unit and my father spent a few hours fixing the van, which now runs again. Hooray!
The next day, Friday, we headed downtown to the Zoo. This was after baking cupcakes on my part. We rode the train and the carousel, made nice with the animals at the petting zoo, peeked in on various animals, and were saddened at the lack of otter play. We had lunch at Piccadilly (the one with the best fried cod), then dropped off EG's bracelet at the store to have the other two charms added. We had ice cream and went to the bookstore while we waited, then picked up the bracelet. In the evening, I made more buttercream and frosted the cupcakes.
Today started earlier with finishing up the necessary cleaning, decorating a bit, and heading to the farmers' market. I am overjoyed because I am an autumn girl at heart. There were both apples and sweet potatoes at the market today! Bliss. Then FB was off to a friend's birthday party while I finished putting away a few things, vacuumed, and decorated the cupcakes.
EG's family party was this afternoon. MIL was over 30 minutes late, which was more trouble than it sounds, as the first item on the agenda for the party was eating lunch. So I had to keep the beans & taco meat warm for longer than anticipated. Then my aunt acted weird after awhile. I never know why she acts weird. Rapid cycling bipolar? Despite all of these hiccups, EG had a great time. She got a couple of big double-dutch style jumpropes, a fashion design projector, Julie's Bike (American Girl), Julie's Floral Jumpsuit (American Girl), a mood ring, and a digital camera. Almost all of the cupcakes are gone already, too.
Because I was clearing and cleaning for the party, the main rooms of the house (living room, kitchen, and dining room) look fantastic, as does the playroom half of the schoolroom/playroom. The schoolroom half and the bedrooms all look decent. Now if I can only translate that success to the upstairs landing area, the sunroom, the library, and the cupboard under the stairs.
We have a quiet day planned tomorrow for the remainder of the birthday weekend. Then it's back to work on Monday morning! Up this week: Master's Academy orientation and the first meeting of math club.
Showing posts with label can't pick your relatives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label can't pick your relatives. Show all posts
4.4.10
Not-So-BIG Celebrations
As a child, our Easter celebrations had a delightful regularity. In the morning, I would see what the Easter Bunny brought, and then we'd eat breakfast, get dressed up in new clothes, and go to church. After church, we'd return home, and I'd leave my new clothes on until after my grandmother, aunt, & uncle arrived. When I was even younger, my uncle wasn't married to my aunt yet, and my paternal grandmother was still alive and mobile, so the party would have been two grandmothers and my aunt.
You'll notice I was the only child in the picture, literally and figuratively. I am an only child. My father is an only child; my mother's only sibling, my aunt, adopted her daughter the same year I was pregnant with my oldest child.
We'd take pictures, change clothes at last, eat Easter Dinner, and hunt eggs. I can remember legendary egg hunts, especially as I got older; we'd all take turns at hiding the eggs and everyone tried to find them. The hiding places got more and more complex as we tried to stump each other. Often, after hunting eggs, we'd play board games until it was time for everyone to leave.
While my extended family was not huge, I felt for years that holidays were, in a sense, defined by the presence of extended family, and the more extended family, the better. When my aunt adopted my cousin Emily, I was thrilled that EG would have a cousin her age. No, we didn't live in the same town, but we're separated by a distance of less than 100 miles, and our family made the trip often; the rest of the extended family, less often; my parents, quite often indeed. And, in fact, holiday celebrations for several years were more or less what I had pictured at one point.
Of course, long before I ever knew the Spousal Unit, I had dreams of having nieces and nephews via my imagined-spouse's imagined-siblings. Spousal Unit does, in fact, have two sisters, but I knew by 2001 or so that things would not be precisely as I had once imagined. One of his sisters is a good bit younger than me, and I had had my children pretty early, after all. I honestly didn't anticipate the other sister having children at all, due to her own statements.
(She does, in fact, have a child now, who is almost three. I've seen my niece maybe three times. Things deteriorated with most of Spousal Unit's family around the time of FB's birth.)
But years passed, and my extended family was less willing to travel. We were less willing to travel, too, as we added first FB and then PC. I understood a reluctance to travel on Easter Sunday, and Christmas, but when my grandmother stopped attending birthday parties and Thanksgiving, it was hard not to take it personally.
Okay, I'm trying to write this dispassionately, but here's the truth: it's still really hard not to take it personally. She says we're too far to drive, now, on a flat, straight shot of an interstate highway, but will still drive northward, into mountains, on state roads or worse, a journey of far more miles.
So our celebrations are smaller, certainly. My parents come, and that is the extent of our guests for holidays. Birthdays still include Spousal Unit's mother. Things don't look how I had always dreamt, but the positive side of that, I suppose, is innovation. No one is going to complain, after all, that instead of pastel-shaded cupcakes or a bunny face cake, we had a standing bunny.(My bunny cake was somewhat awkward and left-leaning, so we named him Al.)
How, then, did our Easter look, compared to those of yesteryear? The kids woke early - very early - and went to see what the Easter Bunny brought. This was EG's first chance to help stuff the baskets and she had a lot of fun helping with FB's and PC's baskets last night. We ate breakfast, cleaned up, and the kids watched a video. Later, they put on new clothes, and we took lots of pictures, and hunted a few eggs. The kids changed clothes. We ate Easter Dinner (ham, macaroni & cheese, asparagus, & glazed carrots) before eating Al the Bunny Cake. Then we did a lot more egg hunting. After my parents left for home, EG & FB played Monopoly in her room, EG practiced piano, PC took a much-needed nap, and we've had a lazy sort of evening.
What would I change? I admit, as much as I feel conflicted over many churches, I greatly miss the ritual of worship in a church. And I do miss the complex egg hunts, though I know those will gradually return as the kids get older. I do regret, somewhat, that my kids won't have the experience of waiting for "everyone" to show up on a holiday, but except for EG, they have rarely known any different, and it's hard to miss something you haven't experienced.
We keep rituals and celebrations, though, and as I said before, there's no one to complain about change or innovation. We can keep tweaking away until we have rituals and routines that feel right for our family, not for an imagined family. In that respect, I'll keep our not-so-big celebrations, after all.
You'll notice I was the only child in the picture, literally and figuratively. I am an only child. My father is an only child; my mother's only sibling, my aunt, adopted her daughter the same year I was pregnant with my oldest child.
We'd take pictures, change clothes at last, eat Easter Dinner, and hunt eggs. I can remember legendary egg hunts, especially as I got older; we'd all take turns at hiding the eggs and everyone tried to find them. The hiding places got more and more complex as we tried to stump each other. Often, after hunting eggs, we'd play board games until it was time for everyone to leave.
While my extended family was not huge, I felt for years that holidays were, in a sense, defined by the presence of extended family, and the more extended family, the better. When my aunt adopted my cousin Emily, I was thrilled that EG would have a cousin her age. No, we didn't live in the same town, but we're separated by a distance of less than 100 miles, and our family made the trip often; the rest of the extended family, less often; my parents, quite often indeed. And, in fact, holiday celebrations for several years were more or less what I had pictured at one point.
Of course, long before I ever knew the Spousal Unit, I had dreams of having nieces and nephews via my imagined-spouse's imagined-siblings. Spousal Unit does, in fact, have two sisters, but I knew by 2001 or so that things would not be precisely as I had once imagined. One of his sisters is a good bit younger than me, and I had had my children pretty early, after all. I honestly didn't anticipate the other sister having children at all, due to her own statements.
(She does, in fact, have a child now, who is almost three. I've seen my niece maybe three times. Things deteriorated with most of Spousal Unit's family around the time of FB's birth.)
But years passed, and my extended family was less willing to travel. We were less willing to travel, too, as we added first FB and then PC. I understood a reluctance to travel on Easter Sunday, and Christmas, but when my grandmother stopped attending birthday parties and Thanksgiving, it was hard not to take it personally.
Okay, I'm trying to write this dispassionately, but here's the truth: it's still really hard not to take it personally. She says we're too far to drive, now, on a flat, straight shot of an interstate highway, but will still drive northward, into mountains, on state roads or worse, a journey of far more miles.
So our celebrations are smaller, certainly. My parents come, and that is the extent of our guests for holidays. Birthdays still include Spousal Unit's mother. Things don't look how I had always dreamt, but the positive side of that, I suppose, is innovation. No one is going to complain, after all, that instead of pastel-shaded cupcakes or a bunny face cake, we had a standing bunny.(My bunny cake was somewhat awkward and left-leaning, so we named him Al.)
How, then, did our Easter look, compared to those of yesteryear? The kids woke early - very early - and went to see what the Easter Bunny brought. This was EG's first chance to help stuff the baskets and she had a lot of fun helping with FB's and PC's baskets last night. We ate breakfast, cleaned up, and the kids watched a video. Later, they put on new clothes, and we took lots of pictures, and hunted a few eggs. The kids changed clothes. We ate Easter Dinner (ham, macaroni & cheese, asparagus, & glazed carrots) before eating Al the Bunny Cake. Then we did a lot more egg hunting. After my parents left for home, EG & FB played Monopoly in her room, EG practiced piano, PC took a much-needed nap, and we've had a lazy sort of evening.
What would I change? I admit, as much as I feel conflicted over many churches, I greatly miss the ritual of worship in a church. And I do miss the complex egg hunts, though I know those will gradually return as the kids get older. I do regret, somewhat, that my kids won't have the experience of waiting for "everyone" to show up on a holiday, but except for EG, they have rarely known any different, and it's hard to miss something you haven't experienced.
We keep rituals and celebrations, though, and as I said before, there's no one to complain about change or innovation. We can keep tweaking away until we have rituals and routines that feel right for our family, not for an imagined family. In that respect, I'll keep our not-so-big celebrations, after all.
