Happy birthday, my six-year-old!
You’ve been looking forward to this one. You wrote several birthday lists and drew several iterations of your party, cake and presents. You liked to ask us several weeks ahead of your birthday “how many more sleeps?” until the big day. I hope it lived up to the hype.
We made it an extended birthday week. Your Mom invited over all of the kids from your bus stop for a neighborhood party. We had an awesome turn out and I got to meet a lot of parents. Spiked cider is a good icebreaker for adults. We invited the Oars out to the island cabin (more on that below) so you could have a sleepover party with your friends Mika and Cici and ended your birthday with a proper present session and cake with Grandma Vicki and Poppa Steve. You scored some presents like a small robotic puppy, some art supplies and an umbrella. When I type that out, it’s a funny mix. That’s how presents work when you’re six years old.
We gave ourselves the family gift of a cabin this month, too large for a bow or for words. It’s been a long time planning and a little anxiety at the home stretch to make it happen, but we did it. I couldn’t be happier to have a place to entertain our friends and family and have a place to go to and make memories. The summers are going to be dialed! And I bet you’ll have more than a few birthdays there.
In past, pre-pandemic years, we threw some rager Halloween parties. Since you’ve been around, we traded in scary costumes for Bavarian ones, shifting to Oktoberfest birthday parties. This year, like last year, we’ve had neither big celebratoin out of caution for COVID. I hope that next year we have one or both, and we have a couple of venues to host at now. I feel like those verions of parties represented my and Mom’s lifestages and we’re entering a new, very exciting one. There will be more parties.
Happy birthday, kiddo.
Love, Dad