Our Birthday Traditions

Birthday's at the Cook house are a blast!! John and I decided from the get go that we wanted this to be a very special day in each of our lives. (however, i spent my birthday this year in bed with the flu and could care less if it was special:)) We have some great family traditions that I thought i would pass along to inspire you. Most of these ideas were passed along to me so I thought I would do the same.
1. Every year the birthday person wakes up to his door decorated with streamers and balloons.
2. They usually make their way to the dining room where they find decorations galore, some very specific for them:
3. For each of our kiddo's their first birthday gift from me and John has been their traditions box. It includes a birthday banner:

-a birthday tablecloth or runner:
-a painted birthday plate:

-a birthday hat:


4. We start the morning by having cinnamon rolls shaped in the number of that birthday.
5. Dad takes off work for the day and we spend it together as a family - child's pick (or in Brady's case we pick what we know he likes)
6. We have a special birthday dinner - person's favorite- with cake and presents. (we have the intention of dad doing a slide show of the year and we all watch them as a family after presents but because we have moved 50 times :) this hasn't happened yet.)

Well this is a typical birthday at the cook house. We also try to purposefully have their parties after their actual birthday so that they are really excited about their day first rather than being bored by it all because they have already done the party and cake stuff once. Just a thought.