Happy 5th Birthday to Greyden!

Birthdays at the Jonas house start very early in the morning. Jim leaves for work at 6:30, so we are supposed to have our morning birthday celebration finished by then. Although I admit, we don’t usually make it.

Since everyone was awake but Greyden, Jim went in and woke him up like this:

Jim: “Good morning, 5 year old.”

Greyden: “Good morning, Dad.”

Jim: “Were you 5 yesterday?”

Greyden: “No, it’s my birthday today.”

Jim: “Do you remember what we do on your birthday?”

Greyden: “Well, we’d better get to it!” (Said with much excitement and a jump out of bed).

We always start birthday mornings out the right way – with Breakfast Birthday Cake!! It’s a yummmyyyy homemade crumb cake that Brett has taken over preparing. (Plus the extra sugar helps us to get going).

In this photo, Greyden is wearing our birthday crown. It has seen better days. I made the crown about 5 years ago and even Daddy and Mommy have (I mean get) to wear it on our birthdays. The birthday child gets to wear the birthday crown all day, so it suffers much abuse. Daddy and Mommy usually decline the pleasure of wearing it throughout the day.

After finishing the cake, Greyden goes around the table from youngest to oldest, getting hugs and presents from each person.

Throughout all of this, anyone can (and often does) start singing Happy Birthday. The rest of us then loudly chime in.

When we finish the cake, we retire to the living room, circle around Greyden, and yet again sing Happy Birthday. This is followed by a big “family hug” – which is basically just an excuse to huddle up and squeeze as hard as we can.

I gave up having birthday parties years ago. The last birthday party I remember throwing was Colter‘s pirate party. I buried the goodie bags in gold foil in a back yard garden bed and the children had to dig to find them. We also made them walk the plank over the kiddie pool. It was fun, but a lot of work.

I guess you can just call me lazy, but I’m not about to subject myself to 8 birthday parties a year. So this is how we celebrate birthdays. We make the birthday child feel special all day by doing lots of their chores, making their favorite dinner, and singling that child out for special things. It’s our tradition and it works well for us.

One new thing we did this year were the placemats. About 5 years ago I had made birthday placemats by laminating heavy paper covered with stickers. Problem was, we now had a lot more kids than placemats. We got by the last year by using construction paper, but Hewitt was starting to notice that his placemat didn’t have birthday stickers on it. So I let the children choose “birthday fabric”. They chose this colorful hot-air balloon print. Then they each got to choose their own backing. I let them cut out the fabric, I sewed them together, they turned them inside out, and I stitched them closed. Took about 3 hours to make placemats for the whole family. These are special placemats, and only come out for birthdays. That will hopefully make them last for at least 6 months!

So, Happy Birthday, Grey Bear! I can’t believe you’re five!

More of Greyden’s Birthdays: