Andrea Dekker

32 Comments

Nora is 7! Happy Thanksgiving!

This post may contain affiliate links. Read my disclosure here.

Tomorrow, our family will celebrate Thanksgiving Day AND Nora’s 7th birthday!

Seriously… SEVEN!!

Since I’m stepping away from my blog over the long holiday weekend (and since we’re actually celebrating her birthday with our immediate family today), I decided to share Nora’s birthday post a day early!

.

Nora had her very first friends’ birthday party this past weekend.

We invited all 10 girls from her class and it was very fun (and very loud)!

We decorated (and ate) cookies, made this fun spinner craft, opened gifts, played a “getting to know Nora” game, and more — nothing expensive, time-consuming, or difficult to prepare for, but I know Nora had a good time.

I was originally hesitant to do the cookie decorating, but it went over SO well!

It occupied the girls for a solid 45 minutes, it served as the snack, AND it was their party favor as we packaged up their leftover cookies to take home!

Our “plan” moving forward is to let the kids each have a “friends party” for their 7th birthday (with the same-gendered children from their class at school). After that, we don’t plan to do any formal birthday parties for our kids (even with relatives).

We will probably have grandparents over for dinner at some point, and keep the rest of the birthday celebrations to our immediate family.

  • A fun breakfast on the morning of their birthday (they like tie-dye pancakes, cinnamon rolls, or donuts!)
  • Special lunches and snacks throughout the day
  • Their choice of dinner, or potentially ordering pizza or going to Culver’s
  • I’ll decorate a cake or cupcakes in the way they request
  • They get to pick the books we read, the games we play, the TV shows we watch, etc.
  • They get a few gifts from us and their siblings
  • They get to stay up a little later than their siblings to play with their gifts, read with mom and dad, or whatever

At the end of the day, the birthday child still feels very special and loved, and I don’t need to plan, prepare for, or host a big party, AND we don’t end up with a pile of unnecessary gifts! Win-win!

Hopefully this works well for us — of course, I’ll keep you posted if we change our tune in a couple of years.

As I mentioned above, we’ve chosen to celebrate her birthday today since everyone has the day off from school, and it’s a little less busy than trying to pack everything into an already very full day tomorrow.

I made cinnamon rolls with pink frosting to go with breakfast this morning and she’ll open a few gifts after that. She has requested mac and cheese (from the box) for lunch, pink lemonade (with special, color-changing straws), and chicken cordon bleu with rice for dinner.

One of her gifts was delayed in the mail and is supposed to arrive later today — so that might actually be an extra fun surprise too as our kids LOVE getting mail!

p.s. a note to all the grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. if you want to do something extra-special for the little people in your life, MAIL THEM a birthday card or special  note on their birthday. Kids LOVE getting mail!

And that’s it!

She’ll go to bed for the last time as a 6 year old, and wake up tomorrow morning another year older… probably with more wiggly teeth (she has 3 loose teeth right now!)

The rest of our Thanksgiving Weekend plans…

We will hopefully enjoy a relaxing Thanksgiving weekend at home this year.

We have ZERO plans of any shopping over the weekend (I won’t even get groceries!) We will most likely use the extra time away from work to set up our Christmas tree, do some crafts I have ready for the kids, enjoy Nora’s new birthday gifts, do some baking, and rake the leaves out of our planting beds!

Whatever the case, it will be a welcome break from our normal school-year routine. 

.

And now… here’s a look back at Nora’s past birthday parties!

Click on the links for details on each party.

SEVEN: (No “theme” — just a fun party with friends)

SIX: (Little Mermaid Theme)

FIVE: (Frozen Theme)

FOUR: (Cinderella Theme)

THREE: (Curious George Theme)

TWO: (Daniel Tiger Theme)

ONE: (Owl Theme) Her birthday was also on Thanksgiving this year!

Happy Thanksgiving to my U.S. Readers!

I am so thankful for all of you — seriously, I know many of you have been reading since the VERY beginning; and so many new readers contact me each week with kind words and encouragement.

I feel like I have the best “job” ever! 

And Happy Birthday to our sweet seven year old!!

You are so loved, my dear.

Reader Interactions

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

subscribe without commenting

Comments

  2. Holly says

    I’ve been reading since before Nora was born! Wow…7 years! Happy Birthday sweet girl! Also, I can’t get over the resemblance between she and Simon in the first picture with the lavender hat. I’ve never really seen any resemblance between them before. Anyway, I hope you guys had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

    Reply

    • Andrea says

      yeah, the kids all look similar at times — but they totally different at times!
      Thanks for your long-time readership Holly!!

      Reply

    • Andrea says

      we get this a lot — however, Dave and I actually think she looks a lot like his sister too (you obviously don’t know what she looks like though!)

      Reply

  4. Shirley says

    Happy Birthday Nora! My youngest son also shares a birthday the same day as her. He’ll be 25 tomorrow. Yay for a double reason to be thankful.

    Reply

  5. calliope says

    Happy Birthday Nora!!
    You have grown to such a lovely, interesting and beautiful girl!
    I live very very very far from you, in Kalamata a city in southern Greece, but it’s always a treat to watch you and your siblings grow up together!
    Happy Thanksgiving to the Dekker family!

    Reply

  7. Debbie says

    So amazing to see how she’s grown as I look at each of her birthday pictures! What great ideas on making the birthday child feel loved without all the parties and things that usually go along with kids’ birthdays.

    Reply

    • Andrea says

      yes, we bypassed LOTS of extra gifts this year –especially since the grandparents gave her money and we went out and purchased one item she really wanted. It was fantastic!

      Reply

  8. ShellyL says

    She’s gorgeous!! Happy, happy birthday, sweet girl!! A big Happy Thanksgiving to the Dekkers!! I guess that’s how long I’ve been reading… You had just changed the blog name and Nora was a baby, I think. I’ve wnjoyed watching her become a “big kid” along with watching mine. I have a daughter who’s almost 13, a son who is 10 and a daughter who is 5. Enjoy your much deserved break and I will look forward to catching up on the past four or five days and look forward to your next post.

    Reply

  10. Karen S. says

    Your precious beautiful girl….7 already? I’m sending Nora birthday wishes all the way from Nevada!! Happy Thanksgiving to your family! I hope your holiday is blessed and restful….. I’m so very thankful for your tireless work on this blog ~ I do better because of you See you next week!!!

    Reply

  12. Anne says

    I love your birthday party plan. I agree that the goal is for the birthday child to feel special and loved. And hooray to no piles of unnecessary gifts!

    Reply

  13. Samantha says

    Happy Birthday Nora!
    Love the home party pics…so glad you open the gifts at the party…so many parties we go to they pack up all the gifts unopened into the car, and I feel it’s important for the kids to see the birthday child open their gift. We did this for my sons first friends birthday (6/grade1) and sat each child next to my son on a chair for a great photo op with their gift. Then I sent this pic to the parents in a thank you text later that evening.
    One question…did the siblings (particularly the boys) take part in the party or did they do a separate activity outside of the house?
    You are rockin’ the pink scarf & pants in the last picture! Amazing color on you and your short hair is perfection! (Also a long time member of the short hair club!)
    Happy Thanksgiving from Canada!
    We watch the Macy’s Day parade every year on TV…definitely starts the holiday season in our house too!

    Reply

    • Andrea says

      That’s a great idea — to take a picture together and text it to the parents. I did have Nora write out thank-you notes to the girls from her class, but a picture to the parents would be nice too!
      And yes, pink all the way — half my closet is bright pink and the other half is grey and black 🙂
      I think I’m now a life-long member of the “short hair club” as I don’t see myself every going back to long hair again — although I do think it would be fun to get professional extensions some day — just to have long hair for a couple days again. I wonder if my kids would even recognize me!?!

      Reply

  14. Amy says

    What a beautiful girl 🙂 Yep I’ve been following since just before she was born so it’s been fun to see her grow! Enjoy your long weekend

    Reply

  15. LEANNE HEERN says

    happy birthday, Nora! this also means I’ve been reading your blog for SEVEN years! crazy! have a blessed thanksgiving!!

    Reply

  16. Annette Silveira says

    Cookie decorating sounds like a great way to keep seven year old girls happy and that it served three purposes for the party is even better. One year we had a make your own mini-pizza bar at my daughter’s party. That was a pretty big hit.

    Reply

  18. Ann says

    Thank You for the note to Grandparents. I still send lots of cards and notes. Most seem to appreciate it, we love it when we get a call of Thanks. Keep up the great blog, even as older seniors can still learn from each other.

    Reply

  19. Maria says

    Happy 7th birthday to Nora! She certainly is growing up fast and so pretty! Loved the cookie decorating idea – both frugal and practical, not to mention environmentally friendly as it cuts down on having to buy gift bags and clutter creating stuff. Thanks for sharing and Happy Thanksgiving!. We (Canadians) had ours in October.

    Reply

Footer

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.