Animals On Parade or, The Start of a New Tradition

First, because I know y'all are gonna ask, Yes, Caleb's birthday was last weekend.

Yes, I already wrote a fun birthday post just for him.

Yes, we were supposed to celebrate it with the family a week ago.

However, that did not happen.

We were still recovering from Christmas last weekend, and with other family stuff going on, we decided to postpone the Caleb Cupcake Celebration until today. (Hey, my kid doesn't even what a birthday is at this point -- it's not like he's missing out on anything ;)

So after church today, I got my baking butt in gear and created an edible animal birthday parade with Caleb's favorite snack food:

I used yellow, red, and blue paper liners, a chocolate cake box mix, vanilla frosting, animal crackers, and sprinkles. Mmmmmmm . . . don't they look like they belong in a circus?

We'll add the candles later.

Happy Birthday to you! You live in a zoo! You look like a monkey, AAAAaaaaannnnndddd . . .

Ahem.

Sorry, I sorta get carried away when I bake. It's the sugar rush talking.

Anyway. Today is special for another reason. While we celebrate Caleb's day of birth tonight, we are also starting a new tradition.

When Jason and I found out we were pregnant (almost four years ago!), we knew we'd have a holiday baby. My due date was December 30th. And even though he came late, Caleb's birthday still falls pretty close to Christmas and New Year's. This presents problems.

Who really wants to host a birthday party right on the heels of the biggest holiday of the year? Who's around to attend, anyway? People travel, kids are out of school, the weather turns nasty. Let's face it: a late-December, early January birthday is not ideal. So Jason and I decided we'd do something different with Caleb.

And this year, 2010, will mark the first year we implement the strategy we came up with four years ago.

We are not going to celebrate Caleb's birthday on January 3rd.

Oh, we'll have a family dinner and I'll make cake (like I did tonight). But no party. No presents. No friends over, no decorations.

All the traditional birthday hoopla will wait until late June, when we throw him a Happy Half-Birthday celebration. Then, at the beginning of the summer with no major holidays to contend with, we will send out the invites, buy the gifts, and decorate the house.

I'm really excited to try out the half-birthday idea this year. Even the grandparents are on board; as long as Kim and Helen get to sing him a very very un-birthday, they're good. :)

So tonight we shall eat cake and ice cream, watch the season premier of Chuck, and in a few months, I'll start planning a real birthday party. Hopefully I'll have recovered from Christmas by then. :)