HOORAY! We’ve made it to birthday season! This family of five has four birthdays within 30 days – June 4th and 28th (Ivy & A), July 2nd & 3rd (Paloma & Jonah)

When we first told the kids about our ‘big adventure,’  one of their biggest concerns was if they would have a birthday in New Caledonia.  As if moving away might actually mean you don’t age, or worse, there wouldn’t be any friends or presents.  A reasonable question if you are five or under and only have memories of your big day in the cozy comfort of the friends and family of Frederick Maryland. I don’t know what it is about aging, but kids seem to be obsessed with getting older as FAST AS POSSIBLE.

And so, as we pulled away from Frederick on that freezing cold winter day in January, one of my real worries was who would be there to celebrate the kids birthday’s.  Would they have new ‘kid’ friends by then?

Silly little worry.  Our yearly birthday-a-thon has begun with Ivy.   I had to limit my invites so there were only 17 of her most favorite friends and about 10-15 or so adults.  I’m not much of a future planner nor do I care too much about putting on a good show for the littles,  so if I had a Walmart near by, I would have picked up a piñata on the way to get the Costco cake and pizza and called it a party. But the piñatas here are custom-made and uber expensive, there is no  Costco and my neighbor is a near professional baker who loves to spoil Ivy.

So next easiest option is to ask Ms. Suzi to make a cake, you-tube how to make a piñata and feed an army with easy to make tacos.  Throw in some Sangria and margaritas made by our resident bartender Daddy-A, wrap it up with a fiesta them and we’ve got ourselves a party.

Ivy was deep in play the whole time. Her friends range in age from 18 months to almost 11 years old.  She is mostly obsessed with the older girls and looked a bit star struck for 6 hours straight.  Although she has outgrown her ‘too tight’ relationship with clothes, she ended up nearly topless (for the second year straight as someone pointed out) in some sort of off the shoulder princess dress from most the night. Not only did she get a beautiful birthday cake from Ms Suzi, but a few dozen pink cupcakes and hello kitty cookies too. Mamma hooked her up with not only one pinata, but four (she is turning four after all) filled with presents and sweet treats.  People showed up with presents that were right up her alley and she was straight-faced (that means delighted) from morning till night.

The house and yard looked like a cyclone had gone through (blasting open 4 pinatas will have this effect) and the mid-week party went on until at least 11pm (when i finally disappeared to bed). Jonah had some sort of super sugar high and begged to sleep on a yoga mat in the hallway.  Ivy wailed into her brown blanket when her friend Jessica finally went home the fell asleep within 2 minutes.  Paloma crashed around 5pm and slept right through the chaos. A never came to bed and I found him on Jonah’s bed in the morning.  When the light of morning came, it looked a bit like a college dorm or the aftermath of a ‘girls gone wild’ party.   Jonah was the first of the three to wake up in the morning and immediately asked “why is everyone sleeping in the wrong place?!”

Birthday season.  One down, 3 to go.