If there was one terrible mistake I made during the pandemic, it was hosting a pretty big birthday party for two. At the time, the numbers were steady and our families were all healthy and being careful and the news had encouraged us to make outdoor activities a priority. No one got sick and our two girls loved being celebrated, but in hindsight I feel guilty for the potential exposure and a little gross for flaunting our get together on social media. As we reflect on the previous year, there aren’t many things I would do differently, but this is something I might would have reconsidered (written in December 2020).
We arbitrarily decided, long ago, to only do big birthdays while the girls were in elementary school. Golden birthdays and milestone birthdays are the exception, but we usually stick to small gatherings for our teenage daughter. Since Ella and Polly share a birthday week and I knew we wanted to celebrate a big as we could, given the quarantine circumstances, we decided on a joint party and Polly picked the theme — kitty cats!
She insisted on wearing a fancy dress and we invited all of our friends over to swim. We figured a party in the pool was probably one of the safest options we have and it kept us from changing too much about our typical party planning process.
Ella invited two of her best friends (check out their shoes!) and opened presents right alongside her baby sister.
Polly’s birthday cupcake got dropped three times (ahem, by me) and the candle eventually broke. Thank goodness for a stash of white birthday candles and for a photographer who had already snapped the photo below!
Polly usually cooperates for family pictures, but we never could get her on camera here without a very funny face!
