Family Party

Our extended family came over to help celebrate some more with us on the evening of Rachel's birthday.

Miriam had changed her clothes for the millionth time that day and thought she looked superb.

Friend Party

I bet you all thought I was through with writing about Rachel's birthday. Well, I'm not.

Rachel had her friends over on Friday morning. When I originally asked her which friends she'd like to invite she got really pouty. She hemmed and hawed for a long time before I finally asked her what was wrong. "It's just that I don't know which friends to invite. I kind of want to invite them all but I just have so many friends!"

It's true; Rachel does have a passel of adoring (and adorable) friends. And while I didn't want to throw a huge party I would have felt bad telling Rachel to limit her guest list to a few of her closest friends. Why? Because we're moving in two weeks and she'll never see her little friends ever again (or at least not for a long while). That's why. So in addition to this being Rachel's birthday party it was kind of like a final play-date with all of her little friends as well. She invited her whole primary class, including one of the new girls in the ward, and some other kids from primary and around the neighbourhood. Almost everyone was able to come and it thrilled Rachel to pieces!

We started out the party with colouring pictures of Hermione and Harry while we waited for everyone to arrive. Then we took a little walk around the house and entered the yard through the gate, which was decorated as platform nine and three-quarters, before hopping on the Hogwarts Express.

Birthday Parties

This year Rachel turned five. I've been dreading this year for a few years now because five is a party year and Rachel has been talking about her party for months now. We've been telling her since she was about three (and started being invited to parties) that she could have a party when she turns five—a party where she can pick a theme and decide which friends to invite and make requests for games and food and things like that. We've decided to throw parties when our children turn 5, 8, 12, and 16, which are kind of milestone years in our family culture (kindergarten, baptism, graduating from primary, and being old enough to date...or drive...). It's how Andrew's family did it and I think it's rather smart so it's a tradition we've adopted. My family threw parties every now and then...but not in a set pattern that I remember.

In between party years we do small family gatherings, or (as was the case in Egypt and likely will be the case in North Carolina) informal, intimate gatherings with close family friends (because our family is too small to eat a whole cake by ourselves).

The only problem with this whole party-throwing idea is that I'm a little bit of an introvert. Big gatherings exhaust me. Thinking about having to throw birthday parties for my children stresses me out to the point where I lay in bed at night calculating how many parties I'll have to throw in any given year.

2012: Rachel - 5, Miriam - 3, Benjamin - 0 (one party)
2013: Rachel - 6, Miriam - 4, Benjamin - 1 (no parties)
2014: Rachel - 7, Miriam - 5, Benjamin - 2 (one party)
2015: Rachel - 8, Miriam - 6, Benjamin - 3 (one party)
2016: Rachel - 9, Miriam - 7, Benjamin - 4 (one no parties)
2017: Rachel - 10, Miriam - 8, Benjamin - 5 (two parties)

2017 is going to be a rough year, I can tell, but I'll get to recover in 2018 so that will be nice. Unless, of course, another little one gets thrown into the mix, but I supposed they'd have to turn five in 2018 in order to have a party that year which means that we'd have to have a baby next year and hahaha to that—I'll get off scot-free in both 2013 and 2018 or there will be tears).