My birthday is January 21st and 7 days later is Kelby and Brylers’ birthday. Needless to say, it was another busy month. Here’s how we celebrated…
A few days before my birthday, Husband asked me if I could get off work early on my birthday, but he wouldn’t tell me where we were going. So on my birthday, he had made arrangements for his mom to keep the kids, picked me up at work, and took me to the Melting Pot. (He said that they were disappointed because they wanted to celebrate my birthday with me. How sweet!) He actually gave me the choice between Ye Old Steakhouse (which I love) and the Melting Pot, but I picked the Melting Pot because we had never been there before and we don’t get opportunities like this very often.
The Melting Pot is a fondue restaurant and a quite expensive one. We spent 15 minutes trying to find a place to park and ended up paying $6 to park in the closest parking lot (Ugh!). Anyway, we go in and are seated at a little booth with a hot plate thingy built into the table. Of course, the fondue pot went on the hot plate and we dipped and cooked our food with skewers there. The waitress was our “chef”, mixing the cheese & fondue right there at the table and preparing our salads and “ingredients” (veggies, meat, batter, seasoning dips), etc. The meal took two hours, but it didn’t feel like it. We started with the cheese fondue with bread and veggies to dip. Then we had a salad. Husband’s Caesar salad was the best he’d ever had. I had a bite of it. It had sweetened sunflower seeds that were super yummy! Next, was the main course. We ordered the option with steak and lobster tails. (We’d never had lobster before, and neither of us cared for it.) The main course was our least favorite in terms of taste. I missed the baked potato with my steak bites. : ) Then we had the dessert. It was chocolate/peanut butter fondue and a bunch of different things to dip in it. Yummy! I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t been so full already. I left so stuffed I was uncomfortable. If we go back, we’ll probably skip the main course and still be plenty full. All-in-all, it was a really fun experience and I’m glad we went.
We had our first birthday celebration for the kids on Jan 17 because Uncle Lee was off for MLK Day and was able to come in town and attend Layla’s birthday party on Saturday, Jan 16. Layla’s birthday is Jan 5 and the party was scheduled for the 9th, but it snowed so they postponed it to Jan 16. Layla’s party was fun and Kelby especially enjoyed it because she got to deliver all the presents to Layla and then she got to dress up in one of Layla’s new Tinkerbell costumes. We also had Lance’s white chicken chili – Yum!
We celebrated Kelby and Bryler’s birthday the next day with Lee after church at Lori & Lance’s house. He brought them each an ice cream cake and a gift. They thought this was great! It was even more special, I think, because it was an early birthday celebration that they hadn’t expected. Lee gave Kelby a music box with a ballerina doing a pirouette and she was very impressed with it. The next day, she carried it with her everywhere.
With Kelby and Bryler’s birthday on the same day, the logistics were a little bit problematic to work out. Kelby wanted her own birthday party. I could understand that. I mean, most kids get to have their own day. And she wanted a surprise party. Kelby is all about surprises. For instance, last night, I asked her if she was excited about going to Granda’s house tomorrow and she said, “Don’t tell me about it. I want it to be a surprise.” Of course, I told her that she couldn’t have a surprise party if she asked for one because then it wouldn’t be a surprise. I gave her a few suggestions and she chose to go to the Children’s Museum with just Layla and her best friend at school, Alex. This worked in our favor because I told her that this was her special thing for her birthday and that she would have another birthday party with Bryler with the family the following week, but we actually planned a surprise birthday party right after the Children’s Museum at our house.
So I planned it all out for the Saturday before their birthday, Jan 23, and got everyone coordinated for the surprise party. And then nothing turned out like I’d planned. First of all, I just assumed that the Children’s Museum would be open at 4:00 on a Saturday, but we called on our way there and found out that they closed at 4:00. So we quickly changed it to the Museum of Science & Energy. Kelby’s wasn’t terribly disappointed. She had been to the Science museum and liked it and had never been to the Children’s Museum. Thankfully, we didn’t have any trouble contacting Lori and Alex’s dad to change the plans.
We caught the end of the hair-raising demonstration at the Museum, and Alex and Kelby both got their hair raised by the electricity ball thingy and the rest of us enjoyed watching them. As we left the auditorium, Kelby and Alex were holding hands, and Layla and Bryler were holding hands, and it was super cute! We spent about 45 minutes at the Museum and I think they all enjoyed it.
The biggest surprise for me was Bryler’s reaction to Alex. Sure, Kelby loves Alex, but Bryler acted like Alex was his best friend, too. Maybe it’s because Alex is short for his age and the same height as Bryler and Layla. Bryler doesn’t normally go out of his way to be friendly to other kids, at least not from what I’ve seen. I knew he’d made some friends at preschool and often talks about his friend Jenna (His face lights up when he says, “I played with Jenna. I love her.”) But I just wasn’t prepared for him to welcome Alex so warmly. It opened my eyes to an aspect of his personality that I hadn’t seen before. Quite welcoming and generous and not a bit self-conscious.
So the museum actually turned out quite well. But during it, Granda had planned to decorate our house for the surprise party but the combination lock on our garage door wasn’t working so she couldn’t get in our house. Time for plan B. Lori offered to take Kelby home with her and Layla while we picked up Little Caesar’s Pizza and then went home to decorate. So that turned out fine. We had plenty of time to decorate and Granda brought the cake over. It was a ballerina and butterfly birthday party. Kelby loves to dance and we got her a new ballerina outfit for her birthday and planned to sign her up for a ballet class. So Granda made her a ballerina cake with a ballerina Barbi on top. It was really impressive. (Unfortunately, Bryler shook the table on accident and make the ballerina fall off. Granda held it up while we sang Happy Birthday. Kelby didn’t seem to notice.)
My parents arrived with a veggie Pizza Hut pizza a few minutes before Kelby arrived. Husband went out to meet them in the driveway and took Kelby up to the shed to burn something on the burn pile while the rest of us regrouped and got ready to jump out and yell surprise. Kelby asked about why there were cars there (she recognized whose cars they were) and he gave some flippant answer and quickly redirected her attention to other things. After about 10 minutes of last-minute preparations, I went out and told them that it was time to come in and then we all waited at the front door and yelled “Surprise!” and “Happy Birthday!” as she opened the door. She really was shocked and surprised. I think she was a little confused at first, but then she was really pleased when she figured it out. It was priceless! She really enjoyed herself and still talks about her surprise birthday party. After opening presents, Kelby and Layla danced for us in their ballerina outfits. Thankfully, Plan B on the birthday party worked out just fine.
On their actual birthday, which was on a Thursday, I took Kelby a cookie cake for a birthday party at her preschool. Her birthday didn’t fall on a school day last year, so this was her first preschool birthday party. Unfortunately, I had double-scheduled my lunch for that day and wasn’t able to stay for the party, but she was happy to see me and I got to take a few pictures of her with the cake and with her friends while they finished up their lunches (it was a pizza day).
I’ve learned from experience that Bryler falls apart when he sees me in the middle of the school day and I’m not there to pick him up — very clingy and cries when I leave, etc. So I felt that it would be better to let him celebrate his birthday at preschool without me. I sent mini chocolate chip muffins for the class. I left them with his teacher that morning. I really missed seeing him when I went to the preschool to drop off Kelby’s cookie cake, but they weren’t in their classroom when I went by, which was probably a good thing because I would’ve been tempted to stop.
After work, I picked up a Beta fish as a little surprise present for Kelby and Bryler. We let Bryler name him, but he couldn’t remember the names he made up and he finally settled on Bluey Fish (because he is blue), which I think was Kelby’s idea. They liked him that first day, but the fish hasn’t been a big hit. Maybe it’s because we have to keep him in the foyer because our gas heater is in there and it’s the warmest room in the house. Maybe they will take more interest in him when it’s warmer and we can move him back to the kitchen or dining room where they’ll see him more.
The following Saturday was Bryler’s birthday party. It snowed the night before and the roads were covered, but Bryler was really excited about his birthday party and didn’t want to wait so we decided to go ahead with it anyway. Granda and Big Dad live on the same street as us, so we felt pretty sure that they could still make it. Lori & Lance have a really steep driveway and weren’t able to come. I told my parents who live about 20 minutes away that we didn’t expect them to try to come, but they came anyway despite the snowy roads, which was a nice surprise.
The party was a train and cars theme. We had quesadillas and lentils for lunch. Granda made Bryler a chocolate train cake and one of the train cars was carrying a car. It was really cool. Bryler loved it but wasn’t convinced that it was a cake until we put candles in it and cut it up to eat. It turned out to be a fun party and you could tell that Bryler enjoyed it, so we were happy that we’d gone ahead with the party. Kelby told me she was “a little jealous” during Bryler’s party, but we talked to her about it and she was a good sport.
I love the way Bryler shows us how old he is, holding up his thumb, pointer, and middle fingers and saying “I’m free!”
I know I’ve left out a lot of details, but it’s been a month since all this happened and it’s already getting fuzzy. Good thing I took plenty of pictures and video!