Birthday Monsters have Arrived!

We celebrate birthdays a little different around our house.  With so many of us with birthdays spread out throughout the year, it became quite overwhelming (time and expense!) to have big birthday parties all the time.  So a few years back, I told the children that we would only have a big celebration on "special" birthdays.  This is when they could invite friends over and we would decorate and have a huge celebration.  On other years, we would just have a family celebration at home without all the bells and whistles, but always fun regardless.

Special birthdays are when a child (or adult) turns:

• 1 years old, 
• 5 years old, 
• 10 years old, 
• 13 years old, 
• 16 years old, 
• 21 years old, 
• 30 years old, and
• 42 years old.  

I am sure there will be others as the adults in the house get older.

Last year this back fired on us, as we had everyone within 13 months celebrate a special birthday!  We made it work any way and had a lot of celebrations with friends and family.

However, Edward seemed to get the bum deal as we moved the week of his birthday.  We did celebrate and even had some new friends joins us.  However, it just was not the same.

SO...this year I decided that we needed to do something special for Edward on his birthday.

After a little thought, I remembered a book by one of our favorite authors...Birthday Monsters by Sandra Boynton.  It is a fun book that we have read MANY times over the years.  I knew that if we reenacted the story, everybody would be able to participate and it would be a VERY memorable experience.

I only told Michael and Henry about the plan...I did not want anyone to spoil the surprise.  Henry only found out because he went shopping with me for the birthday supplies.

Last night I told the other children that they were to wake up quietly and do exactly a they were told with no questions asked.  This would be there birthday gift to Edward.

SIDE NOTE:  Just so you know that our family is crazy and the wildest things happen to us.  As if you did not already know! I sent them all to bed last night and started the preparations for the birthday.  I thought I would quickly wrapped all the presents and then begin work on the cake.  Zaira actually went to sleep as I wrapped the presents.  The boys would NOT go to sleep!  I finally got them settled into their beds around 10pm. I got the batter made for the cakes and it tasted so good.  Once in the oven, I began work on other items.  However, 15 minutes into the bake time, the oven began to smoke!  The batter had overflowed the pans and was all over the bottom of the oven!  I decided to put a pan under the cakes and hope for the best.  Bad choice...the smoke got progressively worse and filled the entire bottom floor of the house!  I breathed in more smoke than I have ever wanted to breathe.  I opened windows and turned on fans...not a lot of help.  The sad thing was the cakes really tasted great but the overflow of the batter crusted and the cakes came out in pieces!  The worst part was the children, including Zaira, were all awake!  I had every thing else ready so I just called Michael and told him to pick up a fancy cake on his way home.  Sweet guy went to store at 1am to pick it up....then he came home and helped me get the rest of the house ready for the morning party.  I spent the rest of the night and into the day struggling to breathe....not fun!

In spite of the crazy chaos, we woke up at 0530 and got everyone ready in their monster gear.  Everyone, except Zaira, who had just gone to sleep.  She was so tired that she did not even notice when I put her monster hat on her and placed her gift beside her!  I thought she might wake up with all the noise and want to join us but she slept through the excitement and noise and for an additional 2 hours!

This is how it all turned out:

6am

Wake up Edward with:

• Alarm clock
• Knocking on door
• Ringing door bell
• Barge into his bedroom

We all yelled, "The Birthday Monsters are in town! It’s morning!  Let’s begin!"

Then we:

• Grabbed Edward out of bed and took him into the dining room.
• Placed him in Dad’s chair at the table.
• Threw confetti into the air around Edward.

Edward was not impressed and said he was tired and wanted to go back to sleep.  But we wer not done yet!  At exactly 6:08 am, we yelled, "Look, its 6:08!  Your present opening cannot wait!"  And then this is what we did:

• Everybody opened the gifts they were holding.
• Made a big mess…tearing the paper into a lot of pieces and throwing it on to Edward.
• Made a big deal about the present they had as something they liked.

Then we yelled, "And now it’s time for hide and seek…You go hide and we won’t peek!"  This was not any ordinary party game.  We had fun:

• Taking Edward to an empty coat cubby and putting a blindfold on him.
• Ran to the refrigerator and made noises to sound like we were eating everything in the frig.
• When Edward came into the kitchen, we grabbed him and took him back to the dining room.

We yelled, "It’s time for cake!" as we brought out the cake and set it in front of Edward.  By this time he was awake enough to figure out what we were doing.  He said, "Please do not eat all my cake!"

However, we yelled, "So hurry!  Blow the candles out!"  Then we:

• Put the blindfold back on him and told him to close his eyes and make a wish.
• We took the cake away and hid it in the frig.
• We traded the cake plate with an empty plate that just held a few crumbs and some frosting.

When he took off his blindfold, we yelled, "Goodbye! It’s been a thrill!"  And then:

• Everybody ran back outside.
• We left Edward to sit in the dining room alone.
• Then came back inside with a knock at the door and ringing of the doorbell!

We yelled, "Hello!  We are the Birthday Monster Cleaning Crew!" And then:

• Ran around cleaning up all of the mess.
• We showed him that his cake and presents were safe and ready for later in the day.

He was a good sport about the crazy birthday wake up call.  He even played with some of the "gifts" given to the other children.  While in the midst of the chaos, Brendan was so sweet.  He said, "But I don't want to be mean to Edward!"  By this time, Edward was having fun, so all was good.

While we waited for Zaira to wake up, we made Edward's breakfast.  He wanted homemade pop tarts.  We made cherry ones for his sweet tooth, and then some heartier ones with bacon and cheese. They were so delicious and no oven smoke this time! (thanks to Michael for helping me clean out oven before we used it this morning!)

We did open his presents by 0900.  We got him guitar lessons and a scooter.  Gramma found out he wanted a special cape so mailed it to him.  We had to try out the new scooter and cape.  It worked out great watching it flap in the wind as he scooted down our hill.

The rest of the day we spent relaxing at the local park, grilling hamburgers and eating the real birthday cake.  We ended the day with his favorite dinner of Shoestring Ole!

I think it turned out to be a pretty special birthday.  And Edward has already told us that we should do the same thing for all birthdays that are multiples of 11.  So watch out Daddy...you are next!

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