A Simple Birthday Celebration

I hate to disappoint, but this is not a recipe.  I did not make any of this from scratch.  I cheated.

My eldest son was born on New Years Day 2005.  This has made birthday celebrations a little tricky at times, but has also made me realize that simpler really is better.  The years that I have gone out of my way to make complicated (and expensive) birthday plans, it has only brought undue stress to all of us. 

This year we are keeping it old school.  I MADE him a birthday cake and let him help.  We made chocolate peppermint cookies, too.  (Mostly because grandpa loves chocolate and we didn't want to leave him out.)

I'm not about to get wild and tell you how I made all of this from scratch - because I didn't.  The cake and cookie mixes were on sale for $0.37 each because they were in holiday themed packaging.  (Man, I love bargains.)  Now, granted, the cake does have red and green flecks in the batter, but I asked him and he didn't care.  We decided that it looked like confetti anyway.

We've invited friends and family who were going to be in the area to meet us at a pizza place that has arcade games and go-karts.  They have an all-you-can-eat buffet and plenty of room.  I didn't make a big fuss with themed plates and napkins and cups and hats, because all a seven-year-old boy really wants to do is open presents and play games, anyway.  I have discovered that often, the "big fuss" is more important to the moms than it actually is to the kiddos.

So, next time you're stressing about making sure your child's birthday as special as possible, stop and think about which parts of it they are actually going to remember and just focus on those and let the other details fall to the wayside.  You'll be glad you did.

Our Oklahoma Heritage Runs Deep

The first and second Generation of Phillips Pioneers in Oklahoma.

In this day and age, folks are more likely to pack up and move every couple of years than they are to stay put, which makes the notion of "roots" a thing of the past.

Our story is a little different.  The Phillips family has been a group of proud Oklahoma land owners since just before the land run of 1889. That makes us Sooners rather than Boomers because we slipped in before we were supposed to - oops!


Today, our parents and our grandma live on the very same piece of dusty real estate that these amazing folks above traveled across the country to claim.  They started families here and planted their roots here.  They grew wheat and turned out cattle in the pastures.  They cultivated a lifestyle based on hard work and reliant on each other.


When helping my dad mend fence, I came across a fallen and half-burried row of old fence that was clearly comprised of large tree branches rather than iron T posts. It filled me with a warm feeling because I know that one of these pioneers sought out this branch and held it in their hands while building this fence so many years ago.  When they couldn't afford store-bought things, they made do with something else - and probably didn't complain about it, as we do today!


Someday I will make my own "homestead" on this land as well.  Instead of imparting in my children a love of a fast-paced and harried lifestyle, I hope to leave them the legacy of their heritage, which was "free for the taking," yet purchased with the blood sweat and tears of a generation who helped shape our family into who we are today.

Part of our property simply known as "The Old Thomas Place".