The BIG Birthday Blog…

For those of you who have been following this blog for a while, you might remember I wrote a blog last year after having a bit of an epiphany about birthdays when you have kids. The gist was that I realised (a little late perhaps) that having a fun family day out made for a much more enjoyable day for everyone, rather than trying to replicate what I would have previously considered a lovely birthday outing but adding kids into the mix.  I still do those ‘grown up’ celebrations like dinner/drinks but I don’t try and force the kids to be a part of that.  That’s what babysitters are for, no?

My beautiful birthday cake

Somehow that was a whole year ago and my birthday is rolling around again, as they tend to do.  You would have thought that after my epiphany last year, I would have it nailed this year and a perfect day would be planned.  And you would be right, a perfect day was planned, except a pandemic is still upon us and that’s kind of put a damper on a lot of people’s birthdays this year!

I am a big fan of birthdays generally, not just my own, and I had been particularly looking forward to this year’s celebrations because it is a milestone birthday… yes, 21 again!  When I turned 30 I was (fairly recently) single and I threw myself a big party with lots of friends and family.  It was a lot of fun, especially as it was 80s theme fancy dress – somewhere on social media there are pictures of me dressed as Danger Mouse… If you don’t know who/what that is, look it up!

There were plans for another big party this year.  My best friend and her family were planning to visit from the UK and we planned the party date around them being here.  It meant the world to me that they could be here to help me celebrate.  Now though, they aren’t able to come and the party won’t be going ahead.  It’s pretty hard for 50 people to socially distance themselves and still call it a ‘party’.

I have had several friends already turn 40 (there I said it for anyone who hadn’t already worked it out!) during lockdown and they seem to have managed to have a good day.  I’m fairly sure I will too, it’s just not what I have envisaged so I’m trying to adjust my expectations.  That is hard for a birthday lover like me though! 

Birthday Flowers

Birthdays aside, I’m also one of life’s big planners so the whole COVID 19 situation is causing me a lot of anxiety as it is.  Nobody really knows when or how life will return to some sort of normality and we all just need to ‘wait and see’.  I’m not very good at that though, I like to have a plan!  That said, Military Life has a way of laughing in the face of plans so I really should be used to that by now.

So back to the birthday (it is a birthday blog after all)…I would like to plan something to celebrate but I just don’t know what.  We aren’t in full lockdown here anymore.  Stores and restaurants are opening up and life is beginning to restart.  However, we are still meant to be socially distancing ourselves and once you’re with more than one or two people that is actually very hard.  2m/6ft is a considerable distance if you are trying to spread out seats for people to sit around and if you have more than a handful of people, you would need to shout to be heard.

That said, we aren’t in full lockdown any more and we can see people outside of our family so it seems odd to not take that opportunity to try to celebrate with some friends.  We are also a month away from my birthday and who knows what our situation will look like then.  If there is anything I have learned from this pandemic is that things can change way quicker than anyone expects.  A month from now we could be done with social distancing and we can have a big party after all (unlikely) or we could be in strict lockdown again because there has been a second wave. 

I really wish I was a spontaneous person who could just wait and see without getting a knot in her stomach, because ‘wait and see’ is really all there is for it right now…

~

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