How do you celebrate birthdays?

So today is my birthday. I'm a St Paddy's day baby which means everyone celebrates this day. Maybe that's one reason I'm not more into celebrating birthdays. Especially my birthday. Which is funny since my mom is huge into birthdays. She insists on celebrating both hers and everyone else's. She'll bring cake and balloons to my work, she'll offer to host a party, she will do anything to acknowledge the big day.

But for me, the ideal is to have a quite night at home with my family, maybe with a nice bottle of wine and some Indian food that has been delivered. I don't get a lot of time to relax so that tends to be what I want to do when given the option. But I feel bad as my selected way to celebrate I sort of impose on D. I always ask him what he wants to do for his birthday but never proactively look to plan anything big. I think I may be unfairly assuming he'd like what I like. But it's also hard because I don't really know what he'd really enjoy as an alternative. He always plays it cool but maybe he secretly wants a big party?

It was also recently the Pepper's birthday. We decided to throw her a big party at the park on Saturday and it was a huge success. It was also a lot of work but she loved it, we got to see a lot of our friends, and everyone had a great time. It's not hard for me to imagine celebrating the Pepper because I know she'll enjoy it. I know what she likes; I know what she'll have fun with. And while it's work it's straight forward. So that also makes all the hard work rewarding.

How do you celebrate birthdays? Any special family traditions?

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