Why celebrate your birthday for one day, when you can stretch it out for a week?!
We began Little Bean’s 8th Birthday celebrations on the Friday before her birthday. It was the last day of the Half Term holidays so I had all of the Beans at home with me. I dropped the boys off to holiday club at lunchtime and then began the preparations with Little Bean. We collected three of her friends and spent the afternoon horse riding. It was Little Bean and her friends’ first time horse riding but they all loved it. Little Bean was quite the natural and took to it with great ease.
Afterwards I took the girls to McDonald’s for tea and then home for birthday cake followed by playtime and then a DVD and sleepover. The girls had a great time and eventually fell asleep somewhere around 11pm, better than I was expecting. In the morning they played well together before heading off on their separate journeys. As the door closed to the last friend leaving, Little Bean wrapped her arms around my waist and said “thank you Mummy, that was the best birthday present ever”. And we hadn’t even reached her birthday yet!
On Sunday afternoon, we had a family party at home with birthday cake to share with Nanny, Grandad and Auntie E. Little Bean was very excited by all the lovely presents she received but the one thing which I really noticed about her this year was how she sat and read every single word of her birthday cards.
This was to be Little Bean’s first birthday at school since her birthdays have always been during the school holidays up until now so she was very excited to see all of her friends on her birthday and to take sweets to school as her friends have done on their birthdays. She was able to choose a present from the ‘birthday box’ at school too and came home brimming with excitement. She’d had a brilliant day and was made to feel very special.
After school Nanna came over for another little birthday tea and even more presents. Not forgetting of course another birthday cake! Little Bean absolutely loved all of her presents and went to sleep that evening with the biggest smile on her face.
You’d think that was all though wouldn’t you?! Nope, she had more to come the following weekend with a special date on Saturday with one of her Godfathers who took her out for the day. They went shopping, had lunch at Pizza Express and then went to the Museum in the afternoon.
Finally in the evening Little Bean and I went to Nanna’s house for a girly sleepover, film and pamper evening. It was a beautiful evening so we decided to go for a walk to the park where Little Bean seemed to go into overdrive. She certainly had more energy than Nanna or I did that was for sure. When we arrived home we all popped our PJ’s on, tied our hair up and slapped on a face mask and then painted our nails whilst watching a DVD. By 9pm our little birthday princess was totally pooped and had to climb the stairs to bed but I think it was safe to say she’d had a brilliant birthday packed with celebrations