When my sister and I were growing up my mom used to make a huge deal about our birthdays. It was more than cake and singing, it was a holiday. It started with mom waking us up at the hour we were born, mine was 6 AM. I remember she’d sit beside me on the bed, put her hand on my head and tell me how happy she was that I was her daughter. How much I’d changed her life and how she loved every minute it of it. The three of us would take the day off from school or work (to be fair, I got my sister’s birthday off and she got mine), we’d go out to eat, go to a park, maybe go shopping. It was very much OUR day. Even opening presents was a production. She would usually give us one present, and with it was a clue to find the next one. We loved the scavenger hunt and mom really enjoyed coming up with the clever clues.

Now that I’m grown I look back and love that she did that. It clearly stuck with my sister as well, I talked with my nieces this morning and they’d just finished an Easter scavenger hunt. They woke up with a basket in their room to go find all the hidden eggs. The trick was, they found some eggs with candy and others with puzzle pieces in them. They had to work together to find all the pieces, and the finished puzzle had a scrambled word on it. Once they figured THAT out, they could go get their big prize.

And the tradition lives on…