Any Excuse For a Party

As a kid, I began the tradition of celebrating half-birthdays in my family. My parents and sister never really caught on, so I was kind of the lone celebrator. I remember sewing gifts for my little sister and walking to the corner store to buy her a frozen Pepperidge Farm cake (which I then cut in half). And I'd do the same thing for myself on my own half-birthday. When Lena and I got together, I began celebrating her half-birthday, and for the first time ever, someone started celebrating mine! Eventually we branched out from the frozen Pepperidge Farm cake, and started frequenting the local bakeries for some sort of decadent treat. Any excuse for a party.

Luke and Jasper's half-birthday is August 18th, which this year meant that it fell right in the middle of our crazy, prolonged, living-out-of boxes experience. I was leaning towards not celebrating, but the kids were, of course, of a different opinion. I realized that I'm definitely no longer alone in this half-birthday thing, and no longer able to blow it off if I'm not in the mood. So, we actually unpacked some boxes to unearth the muffin pans and baking ingredients, and the boys made carrot cupcakes (in both gluten-free and gluten-full versions). We decided that a new part of the tradition will be that they get to do the baking for all of the half-birthdays in our family.

I gave instructions from the other side of the counter, and Luke and Jaz did all of the measuring, dumping, and stirring.

Jaz's favorite ingredient was the crushed pineapple.

The cupcakes turned out really well!
Even the gluten-free version (on the left below) were quite tasty.
Here are the half-birthday boys, decked out in their half-birthday crowns (which were the pure genius of the boys' baby-sitter, I had nothing to do with them!):

At the end of the day, I was glad that the kids hadn't let me cop out of this family tradition. And I loved overhearing the start of their conversation with a five-year-old neighbor the next day:

"Well, I remember that when we were five, we liked that book too. But now that we're five-and-a-half we like different sorts of things . . ."