Turning 41

I celebrated my birthday this week.  Because of the way Christmas lines up in the week, the children were in school through the 21st of December.  I can't remember the last time they've had school on my birthday.  It was disappointing not to be able to plan a fun activity for the day.  But I still managed to squeeze all the playing I could into our time together in the evening.

Since the children were at school, I invited my friend Dana to have lunch with me.  We went to a sushi restaurant in Smokey Point.

I got the 911 roll and she got the caterpillar roll.  I wish they would let you get half size portions so you could get more variety!  A funny story about our lunch date.  Last year I invited her to have lunch with me but she forgot about it so I ended up getting my lunch as take out.  We managed to connect this year and had a nice time together.

After lunch, I set about putting together the evening activity for the family, an "activity hunt".  I created some pretty bad Haiku poem clues that would lead the children to different places.  Most of the clues were hidden inside helium balloons they had to pop in order to get the clue.

I didn't want to deflate the balloons by using a sharpie on them so I tied numbers on the ends of the strings.  Not such a good idea because Miriam and William played with the balloon bunch adding another layer to the challenge.  Unravel the strings to find the correct balloon!

As soon as we finished with dinner, I gave the children 15 minutes to do their chores and then it was time to begin.

Once they got the balloons untangled, they popped the first balloon revealing this clue...

Mom's birthday today,

She loves you all, wants to play,

Find clues, have fun, now!

Built many years ago,

up the stairs, cross bridge you'll go

reach down inside, find!

They went up to the tree house to find a party bag at the top of the slide.  Inside was a 50 piece puzzle they needed to assemble and then flip over to reveal the clue on the back.  To make it more difficult I didn't give them the puzzle box.

Isaac had fun with the bag everything was in.

They split into pairs and worked on different parts of the puzzle.

Time to load up van

Love books? You'll be such a fan,

Hold for seven days.

We loaded up and headed to the library where I told them they had 10 minutes to find a book they wanted to check out.  Everyone scattered and soon had a stack of books they wanted.  The plan was for the children to hide a birthday card to me in one of my books on hold so I could "discover" it when I checked out the book.  On the way to the library, Dode and I realized that they hadn't managed to sneak the card into the book yet.  They spent the drive to the library arguing in whispers about how to hide my card with me watching, while I tried to remain in the dark about the plan they'd come up with with their dad.  Later Anastaya told me the library visit was her favorite part of the night.

Back in the car after the library, we popped the next balloon which said,

10 pins and a ball

Gutter balls we all despise

Who's up for some fun?

That led us to the bowling alley where I'd reserved two lanes.  Once again, we were the only people bowling the entire time we were there!

Since we were celebrating, we splurged and bought the large nachos plate and two baskets of fries.

Miriam used the time she wasn't bowling to read the book she'd gotten from the library.

When we finished up with bowling, it was time for another balloon.

We visited weekly

earned a dime every time

news of our city

The next clue led us to a newspaper stand.  Dode had snuck out during bowling to place the gift bag inside it.  I wasn't too worried that someone would come along and want to buy a newspaper because when we used to deliver to the newsstand, we'd almost always pick up as many old papers as we'd deliver.  And, the paper is delivered on Wednesday and we were there on a Thursday.

Inside the newsstand we found a bag filled with party hats and blowers and the next clue,

Over the river

through the woods we go to find

a place where love dwells

Sheri is lighting the candles.  Her job was to bring the lighter!

We drove over to Dode's grandparents where his parents are staying while Dave and Viv are out of town.  Dode had called Sharon earlier in the week to have her make her famous lemon jello cake.  Dode was supposed to bring ice cream but he forgot.  Dicksons ALWAYS have ice cream with cake and I think it was really hard for Sharon to serve that cake without any ice cream! We had a nice visit with Sharon and Lynn and Dode's grandparents.  Elizabeth told me the jello cake was her favorite part of the night.  When we finished with cake, there was just one balloon left.

One last stop to make,

once a place we came often

baptized in their font,

We went down to the church where Elizabeth could show me her skills flying her remote control airplane. She was pretty hesitant to fly in front of the family at first but when she saw the ribbon Dode made for her to attach to her plane, "Happy Birthday Mom", she got excited. She was so proud to navigate it around the gym.  

Dode had asked Anastaya to master the Happy Birthday song on the piano but she'd forgotten, so while Elizabeth flew her airplane, Anastaya went in another room and practiced.  Once she had it down,  Anastaya played the Happy Birthday song on the grand piano while everyone else sang.

The kids thought it felt weird to be in the church all by ourselves with most of the lights out.  Jacob walked in the building and said, "Yup, it smells like the church!"  I agree, there is a distinct smell to the Arlington building.  It smells like home.  Miriam said this was her favorite part of the night because she could run in the gym and no one told her to stop or be quiet.

We arrived home right around 9:00, bedtime for the children.  I don't think we could have squeezed more into my birthday!  The children were horrified that I had to come up with my own fun on my birthday.  Dode had asked them last week if they wanted to help him come up with things to do but they weren't interested.  I'm not sure how they thought it was going to come together if I wasn't involved.  It was a raging success.  How do I know?  All the fighting over who got to read each clue and in the car heading home!