Traditions (cupcakes and fireworks)

Tonight's the family birthday party for M.  We always have the family party for her the night of "the" fireworks, riding the train into the town and enjoying some smaller-town charm, fireflies, and the surprise of a cool breeze for a summers evening.  It's fun, really:)

My mother verified what birthday dinner M really wants.  "Robin, does she really want goulash?"  It was to be Bob's lasagne, and Grandma's goulash last we visited.  (That girl loves her pasta, asking me to please make her shells and white cheese sauce last night, which I added two veggies to.)  Yesterday's call, I could hear M,  "With corn.  And mashed potatos.  Oh, and some cranberry sauce.  Two cranberry sauces."   After she got off, I asked her about it.  NOW we'll be having a mini-Thanksgiving dinner with a "little bit of goulash."  "M, don't you realize that means Grandma has to make goulash, also?"  "She said I could have whatever I wanted."  My mother is happy to do this, I know, but two dinners, M?

 

Many of this train's traditional rides, M has dropped off, no longer doing Bunny Trains nor Santa Trains (though she helped served hot chocolate and cookies for a couple extra years for the Santa Train).  Mom and mostly Bob have spent hours upon hours of volunteer work there.  I've put in a few here and there, along with M.  M had a birthday party there one young year, in the red caboose which was several degrees hotter than we'd thought on a day much hotter than the surrounding ones.  Still, memories.  Have to laugh in a way, a couple of the party guests dads got more into the train ride than some of the guests:)   One mother said she'd skip the ride, and could I just please point her in the direction of the town's Starbuck's?  LOL, um, no, sorry, no such thing in that town.

 

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he night before her birthday this year, M tells me that she does want cupcakes afterall.  I hadn't pushed it.  What teenager wants her mom to just show up at camp bearing anything?  Secretly, I'm glad she still wants this tradition.  Had to go get the mix (she chose Funfetti, which seems to be the theme lately), and bake them into the night.  The birth-day itself, I frosted them and added various sprinkles on my lunchbreak, and took them by.  Apparently she only has about a half hour lunch during camp.  Oh.  I'd just missed her, enroute to a rehabilitation clinic (she's in a horse back riding camp this week and next).  That's okay.  Everyone seemed excited to see me arrive.  A counselor put them in the office after I pointed out the special big one with yellow stars and confetti sprinkles for M.  "I wish I was 13 years old again."  She rethought that statement, "Wait, no I wouldn't" said in unison with my response, "Oh, I wouldn't."  It's not easy to be a young teenager.  I'll try to remember that.  I don't dread it, though.  I do like teenagers.

M even had to have the wires trimmed on her braces.  We usually stop for ice cream after, but it was way too early in the morning for an ice cream store to be open, early appiontment so that she wouldn't miss a moment of camp.  (C had gotten her there 1 hour late one day sigh, so she got put with a group 2 levels lower for a day.)  M chose Starbuck's instead of ice cream, and, was the one who had to order mine.  Somehow those fancy stupid names for sizes that have no relevance to their actual sizes, well, she translated for me.  lol   She got a strawberry lemonade, with a promise of caffeine another time that she insists she's holding me to.

Some traditions last, some are outgrown, some are replaced with new ones.  And, well, maybe we never really get too old for cupcakes, birthday dinners, and fireworks:)

ENTRY UPDATED TO ADD PHOTOS TAKEN THE EVENING OF THIS POST (Yes, we rode in the red caboose, that just happened to have up a happy birthday banner!  very packed evening as it'd been written up in the local newspapers, and Independence Day itself was too rainy for many who chose instead to come to this one.)

Tags: birthday traditions, teenager