Feliz Cumpleanos (That's How They Say It in Spain)

My first birthday. Love the angle of this picture, not just stylistically, but because it captures what I remember about birthdays at my house growing up. Cake at the kitchen table with streamers strung from the chandelier to the four corners of the dining area, balloons in each corner and from the center of the chandelier.

Not sure which birthday -- I'm guessing third or fourth. I love that I'm pondering my cake. The cake in this picture is one of the heavenly banana-nut cakes that my Nana would always buy for us. Grant and I both agreed that there are some definite resemblances between Eliot and me when I was little.

I hope it's not narcissistic, but I love birthdays, including my own. I love the chance to celebrate someone and their life and their likes. I love fixing a special meal, finding just the right gift, coming up with just the right cake and ice cream combination, all to help that person feel special for the day. And I'll admit it, I like to feel special for a day (or weekend, or week, depending on how it falls and how we're able to celebrate). It's fun to get to go out to a favorite restaurant in your honor or have a lovingly prepared favorite meal, and who doesn't like indulging in their favorite dessert and getting to make a wish?

I think I love birthdays because I grew up in a home where birthdays were a magical thing, thanks to the generations of women before me who apparently loved birthdays and thought they were a big deal, just like I do. My Mom and her mom were probably the ones who instilled in me the importance of celebrating birthdays. During my early years, I remember my mom asking me what I wanted for dinner and making me spaghetti or her amazing from-scratch teriyaki chicken. She would always have just the right gifts wrapped to perfection with hand-selected cards signed with her perfect penmanship, and with all my sisters' and dad's signatures, too. When my grandparents were still alive, we would usually celebrate with them within the week of our birthday with a Sunday afternoon trip to Bountiful, where we enjoyed yet another homemade masterpiece of a meal, complete with a beautiful banana-nut birthday cake from Dick's bakery in Centerville, topped with a porcelain birthday doll and just enough frosting roses for each of us girls to have one of our own. What special memories those were -- I wish I had realized how thoughtful and carefully planned all of it was. I think I would be more grateful. But in my little girl heart, I think that was what I loved most -- to feel so loved and special and treasured. Which is what I want to pass on in my own home and family. To continue in those traditions that instill a sense of worth and value. I want to celebrate each person's place in my family and let them know how grateful I am for their life, that they are a part of my life.

Some of my happiest birthday memories include my 8th birthday, when I got to have a "friend" party, something we didn't do too often at my house. I also got to go to dinner at the Hotel Utah (now "The Roof" at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building), all dressed up in my white baptism dress. I got a pink rose, a corsage, eight crisp dollar bills, and extra special treatment as I had dinner one-on-one with my mom and dad. I felt like a little princess as I rode the elevator to the restaurant and other hotel patrons admired me in my beautiful dress. My mom's good friend in the ward even brought me a wonderful bouquet of pink, white, and red balloons. That same birthday is filled with wonderful memories a couple months later when my Papa and Nana were able to come home from Hawaii, where they were the temple president and matron at the time, and participate in my baptism. I was baptized in the font underneath the Tabernacle on Temple Square, which, to my knowledge, is no longer there. My dad baptized me and my Papa confirmed me.

As I got older, Mom and Dad changed traditions a bit and started taking us girls out for our birthdays for an individual date night. I would almost always choose Olive Garden and would often frustrate my dad when I would order plain spaghetti. My tastes have become a little more refined since then, but I always loved that special attention. I felt especially loved and grateful on my 16th birthday when my dad came home with a banana-nut cake from Dick's, all the way from Centerville (over an hour away from our house), since my grandfather had passed away the year before and my Nana's health was declining, so the celebrations I had known in my younger years gradually stopped. I loved getting that special cake and what the extra effort meant.

Since my days at home as a child and teenager, I've all kinds of birthdays -- birthdays in a college dorm, birthdays on my mission (my 23rd celebrated just days before I flew home from Spain), birthdays as a newlywed, birthdays with my in-laws and learning their traditions (the army men and melted-legged ballerina that seemed to appear on almost every cake for years, and the "singing" cake knife, for instance), and now quiet birthdays with my two boys while we're away from family. Mine is the only birthday we've had to/been able to celebrate in Oregon since Grant's and Eliot's are in the summer and we've been with family for theirs. We've gotten to find new favorite restaurants here in Salem, try new recipes for scrumptious cakes and cupcakes, have Oregon specialties like Marionberry ice cream or enormous slices of cake from "The Konditerrei" -- things that will help me to remember these special birthdays during this time of my life.

This year there were more special things to celebrate my birthday -- a gorgeous bunch of hydrangeas from Grant, a homemade "Cafe Rio" meal that left us stuffed and happy, beautiful cards from friends and family, thoughtful gifts and treats, Facebook wishes, a scrumptious, quiet dinner out at one of our new-found favorite restaurants. Thanks to everyone who helped to make my day special and contributed to many wonderful new birthday memories!