Birthday Fun, Traditions and CAKE!

Sometimes it’s fun to think about traditions and their origins. Some are cultural, some of hyper local and all evolve and change over time! One that we are in the thick of right now is ice cream cake for breakfast! It started when the kids were little and waiting until dinner (arguably every toddler’s least favorite meal of the day) felt stressful and prone to tears and not being fun for anyone, so now we kick off the day with decorations, ice cream cake and presents to start the day, leaving the evening for other activities and ensuring on years when the kids maybe don’t do a birthday party or it has to be scheduled a few weeks out, everyone gets celebrated on their day. It’s a good week to chat about it as both myself and my daughter celebrate early summer birthdays, sandwiched between Father’s Day and Mother’s Day and end of school year celebrations and graduations- so there’s a lot of celebrating going on here!

Growing up, my birthday was most often during summer break and my mom ran an in home daycare – so I often got to celebrate with those friends and neighbors. Most often at home with a backyard pool/waterslide afternoon but sometimes at the coveted pizza/arcade joint, one time at the McDonald’s play place and as I got older, with a sleepover in the camper van! Oh the 1980s!

The significance and regularity of birthday celebrations (and their photo-worthyness) has certainly changed as I have very few birthday pics in my genealogy collection, but here’s a few fun ones!

First, from the Pozun family and of course, like all families there’s way more of the first born 😉

And then a fun project I put together to make some tea towels a few years ago of the Watson family and their favorite chocolate cake! Thousands of others apparently agree!

But meanwhile for us, with 3 summer birthdays and a love of ice cream, ice cream cakes are the current fad in our house! We’ve traveled to deliver cakes and celebrate with others, we’ve had cakes delivered, made cakes from a gas station haul of ice cream sandwiches and dunkaroo frosting and we’ve made space for cake at a hotel breakfast buffet! It’s a fun tradition that we know can’t last forever, but for now, it’s the sweetest way to start out a birthday for us!