Birthday Magic

Confession, I don't do kid birthdays. I'll bake homemade muffins, snuggle my kids to sleep every-night, and otherwise put a lot energy into my daily life with them. The kid birthday parties with the organizing, chaos, and more toys is just too much for me. Additionally, the Kita already celebrates the kids' birthdays. Each birthday-kid brings a cake and his buddies give him a small group present. This year I sent Hugo with chocolate rolls from the bakery to share with his friends. Again - Kita for the win. 

Our general birthday plan is we do some fun activity with one other family on a Saturday around the birthdate. Additionally, we have dinner (birthday kids' choice) followed by birthday cake with Val. However, this year Hugo got a bonus birthday extravaganza because Papa and Coco came to town. About six months ago the boys were watching some youtube clip about indoor skydiving. Once we learned there was a place to do it in Berlin, and the minimum age was four, we knew indoor skydiving clearly made the most sense for Hugo's next birthday.

Without air.

With air.

Hugo was a total boss in the wind tunnel. He's such a brave little man. Also, Cros had a great time:

Indoor skydiving isn't cheap (thanks financing our fun - Papa) but man was it worth it. For one fun morning, it felt like all the nonsense of the last year-and-a-half of covid got sucked out of that wind tunnel. Also, it was a good reminder to Paul and me that we should probably get back to the gym. 

Abs = necessary for skydiving and life.

On his actual birthday, we made the 1.5 hour train-ride out to a dinosaur themed park with our family friends and their boys.  I'd heard about this park for years, but the inspiration came when Hugo said he wanted a dinosaur costume to replace his Tails (orange fox from Sonic video game) costume. 

He fit in great (and by that I mean, per usual, he was the only kid in costume). 

Crosby also, unknowingly, nailed his wardrobe choice. I knew there would be a petting zoo, but the meerkats were a welcome surprise.

This being east Germany - there were our favorite coin operated, unattended amusement park rides of questionable safety...

But unquestionable fun.

Hugo definitely was not tall enough for this ride, but no attendant = no problem.

As you can see from Hugo's red cheeks it was warm, but we had some cool down options:

Our usual go to: ice coffee and iced cream.

Also, a little swimming area, or questionable water quality, for our naturalists.

Our original plan was to have cake with Papa and Coco and Val on the weekend after Hugo's birthday, but a round of the Kita barfies interfered. So, we continued to spread out the birthday fun over the month.

He was already really excited about the emoji cake and then...

Boom: Gummybear cave in the middle of homemade funfetti cake with blue buttercream frosting. Mommy was also happy that this emoji won out over the poop emoji. Crosby has been talking about the poop emoji as his cake, we'll see if his preferences change between now and January.

Per usual, Val's cake was the gift that kept on giving. He got to eat the tongue part of the cake with his friend Tomas the next day. And, one of the eye slices is in the freezer to wait to celebrate with one our favorite people, Gen, this weekend.