After seven years of raising twins, I’ve learned three lessons about celebrating their birthday: they relish their shared birthday because of the double attention; they also need individual celebrating; the party is really important.
One day in the not-so-distant future the twins will want separate birthday parties, but since they aren’t asking for that yet, we threw them a 7th birthday party that followed the lessons we’ve learned about twin birthdays.
For the past couple years, their parties have been boy themes. Last year they had a superhero-themed party. Sam got to celebrate as Captain America at a wild inflatable party, and Elisabeth hosted a sleepover after-party. The year before, we did a superhero party in the pool. Sam loved the pool part, and Elisabeth liked helping me turn six million IKEA towels into superhero capes.
This year was all about elephants. Thanks to Elephantopia, a non-profit the music director at our church started, Sam and Elisabeth want to help save elephants from extinction.
As far as birthday party themes go, it’s much easier to find superhero-themed plates than it is to find streamers announcing, “Elephants Could Be Extinct by 2025!” I checked with the twins dozens of times, “Are you SURE about the elephants? How about a Star Wars Theme?”
But they are passionate about the elephants. Or, at least, Elisabeth is REALLY passionate, and her enthusiasm is contagious. Both twins insisted on raising awareness about elephant poaching. So, going with Rule #3, we went to work planning a big party.
The twins were in separate Kindergarten classes last year, so we invited two classes of kids. With siblings, our guest list was quickly over 50 kids. We would have to do the party at our house, and we would have to open up the pool, get a water slide, and have other activities for all these kids. We did an Evite since Party City didn’t have any elephant-conservation-pool-party-themed invitations.
For the three weeks leading up to the party, we researched elephant facts to use as party decorations. We also looked for festive elephants that didn’t look like circus performers. Our party table began to come together….
The twins chose an elephant cake pan and decided they wanted to make it themselves. Using a Blue Velvet Cake Mix, they baked the cake into an elephant pan and decorated it with lots of blue frosting. It didn’t look exactly like the guide for the elephant cake pan we had bought.
The day before the BIG TWIN PARTY, we had festive decorations about the dying elephant population, a questionable cake, and lots of kids coming. We had some work to do.
We borrowed a water slide, set out tons of shaving cream and water balloons, and brainstormed a new cake plan. We stopped at Shipley’s for three dozen donuts, swirled leftover frosting from the elephant cake all over the tier of donuts, bought three dozen more to feed the party guests, and picked up a cookie cake.
The party was chaotic fun. Catie helped make Nutella elephants by cutting a pan of Nutella brownies up with this elephant cookie cutter. Ditto for a huge cheese platter. We named all the food cute elephant names and labeled it with signs and elephant facts.
Right before we sang Happy Birthday, the twins each called dibs on a cake and we sang Happy Birthday to them. A good time (and lots of donuts and cookie cakes) were had by all.
The next day, the twins opened their gifts and wrote their thank-you-notes. The whole process took about four hours, and the stress of it shaved a few years off my life.
But in the end, we had celebrated half our kids’ birthday in one day. They loved celebrating together, they each felt special, and they had a great time at the elephant-conservation-pool-party.
Huzzah for seven!
Wow mama. You rock! Happy day to the awesome two-some!