365 Maze Days: Together

It's time for another birthday here in the M house!

My sister-in-law teases me that every time she calls me to work for her I can't because it's somebody's birthday.

In her words, "It's always somebody's birthday!!!"

Our kids are pretty evenly spaced throughout the year, so it does sort of seem that way.

Anyway, we make a big deal out of birthdays!

We don't have grandiose parties or anything like that, but the birthday person is basically royalty for about a week. And everyone chips in - and is excited to chip in!

The kids all work together with J to decorate the dining room with streamers and poster board signs.

(This was Little Sis hard at work decorating the "birthday chair" while Younger Brother and Big Sis wrapped presents.)

*Fun fact: Our dining room is always decorated for a birthday.*

Yes, always.

The tradition is that the birthday person gets to have his/her decorations up until the next person's birthday; then we switch them out.

I'll admit, I get annoyed with this from time to time when it starts to feel a bit cluttered.
Ha! The "a bit" part is comical if you've ever been to my house. :)

But I know I'm going to miss never ending birthday decorations one day when my kids are grown up.

Also a tradition: In the morning, everyone waits at the top of the stairs for the birthday person. Then they all come down together to see the decorations, have special cereal, and watch the birthday person open presents.

Princess A has been wanting a Rey costume for forever!

Younger Brother and I found this one for her over over the summer and have had it hidden in my office ever since. But yesterday, Younger Brother saw a Rey Nerf gun at the store, and he spent $20 of the $23 he made shoveling snow to buy it for her. Granted, he'll probably spend a good portion of the next week chasing her around the house and tormenting her with his own, bigger Nerf gun, but I'm taking this as evidence that he does in fact love her.

After breakfast, and sufficiently juiced on sugar cereal, they all scattered to various parts of the house and donned Star Wars gear. Then they spent probably the next hour running around with Princess A in some sort of multi-sibling galactic battle.

I didn't follow the entire plot line, but based on the laughing and screaming I'm guessing it was good.

As I sat and had my coffee, and did my morning reading, I was suddenly struck with a deep thankfulness that we are homeschoolers. I thought about what our morning might have looked like if we weren't. The kids probably would have had breakfast together and watched the birthday person open presents. But then they would have gone their separate ways. They wouldn't have played, and laughed, and had that time. Princess A would have gone off to school and shared her birthday joy with her classmates. Not that that's a bad thing. But she and her siblings would have been compartmentalized. They would have spent more time away from each other than with each other.

Instead, we didn't have to rush to be anywhere.

I could afford them the opportunity to play together, to share in their sister's joy, and to build bonds with the ones who will be with them for life.

And then, yes, they did their school work.

But this is one of the things that makes me really appreciate having my kids at home.

After school, we had an unexpected bonus...

SNOW!

When Princess A went up to take a bath, there was no snow at all.

And when she came out, it looked like this!

I thought, "Aww, hey, this will be great! Why don't you guys squeeze together for a quick group picture!"

But you can see what Baby Sis thinks about group pictures.

(Side note: We did not forget a sibling. Biggest Brother just got a new book series, so I don't expect to see much of him for a few days.)

After sufficiently sabotaging my group picture efforts, Baby Sis retreated back into her world - which at that moment consisted of nothing except trudging through snow in a too-big hat with a snowman in a sled trailing along behind her.

2 sounds nice.

Little Sis made a mini snowman and a snow angel, which contrary to what the two-dimensional photo suggests, she did not actually make in the middle of the street.

Bubs and Baby Sis are finally getting to the stage where the fun of snow outweighs the cold part of it.

Our yard cannot have more than a 10% grade. if that, but that doesn't stop them. I shot this based on what I determined our yard must look like to Princess A.

From what I remember about my childhood, any slope whatsoever was a sledding hill!