Fun Monday - You Say It's Your Birthday!

Iamwhoiam with her Dungarees Ablaze is hosting this week's Fun Monday!. She's in the throes of planning a birthday party and needs ideas, so she came up with this assignment:

Let's hear about your favorite “Birthday”, it needn’t be your actual birthday just a "birthday" celebration. You can use one you planned, one you attended, one you crashed, just a fun time for this FUN MONDAY.


I've had a lot of birthdays. Forty-six of them, to be exact. But the one that sticks out in my mind was thirty years ago.

It was actually a fairly typical birthday for my family. Being the large group that we were, with somewhat limited funds (when there are that many kids, unless you're Bill Gates or a Hilton, there are ALWAYS limited funds), our birthdays were always fairly simple, inexpensive, family affairs. No ponies, no bands, no store-bought cake. In fact, most of our birthdays started out the same way... with breakfast in bed.

That really was a special treat. It was hard enough to get everyone fed around a table, much less put something separate together for someone somewhere else.

So on my sixteenth birthday, I was awakened with a tray of scrambled eggs, one of my dad's world-famous biscuits, grits, orange juice, and hot tea. After breakfast came the presents! My brothers gave me sixteen cents. They had gone to a coin shop and gotten a nickel, a dime, and a penny - all minted in 1962. I still have them! And I keep them in the little fabric covered box that has become my treasure box over the years. My mother gave me that. I keep quite a few things in it now, but on my sixteenth birthday, it only held three coins - and a pick.

What was the pick for? The guitar that my parents presented to me!!! It was a gorgeous Yamaha six-string. I'd been learning to play, and was part of the guitar group at church for services and sing-a-longs. Now I had my very own guitar!!! I still have that, too! And thirty years later, it is still the best instrument around. My husband plays it all the time. My guitar-playing days ended a while ago. Stiff fingers didn't allow much playing. But I still get to enjoy the music that comes out of it.

We have another tradition, for the large-familied... you only get three birthday parties that include other kids. Six, ten, and sixteen. I forwent my party in favor of going out with some friends from the EYC (Episcopal Youth Club?) for pizza, so my parents were off the hook for that one.

That's my most memorable birthday (so far).

My favorite birthday picture - Birthday Suit!