Birthday “Do-Whatevers”
Last weekend we went to Nashville. Just me, Brandon, and our about-to-be-16-year-old daughter. This trip was special to her because she got to see one of her all-time favorite singers in concert. This trip was special to us because we got to spend one-on-one time with our teenager. This surprise trip to Nashville was her “birthday experience,” or as our youngest son likes to call it, her “birthday do-whatever.”
Let me explain.
Giving an experience as a birthday gift started about seven years ago. At the time, we were madly purging our home and had given away, thrown away, or sold mounds of clothes and toys. As we continued to unearth things from the bottoms of toy boxes and the backs of closets, we came across items that at one time had been received as a gift. We held each barely played-with toy, each outgrown pair of shoes, each hardly worn shirt and thought “we paid good money for this.” While each gift had been given with the best of intention, we realized it had a shelf life—literally and figuratively. It had at one time taken money to purchase and over time took space to keep it. We wanted instead to give gifts that would hold meaning long after the cake and streamers were gone.
This was also at a time that our oldest was in middle school. We could literally count the number of birthdays and vacations we had left while he was still a kid in our home. We could feel time slipping through our fingers and there was no way to stop it or slow it down. We wanted to capitalize on every moment we could with each one of our kids.
As we thought about our kids growing up, there was still so much we wanted to do with them and so much we wanted to show them. We really wanted to honor their interests and to introduce them to as many things as possible. But with five kids, many things were impossible financially for us to do as a family. We also realized it didn’t make much sense for us all to do something that was maybe an interest to only one kid.
It was Brandon’s idea. He was the one who came up with giving a gift of something to do rather than just something to have. He wanted to gift the birthday boy or girl with something of their interests and something that would allow us to have time with just that kid.
I’ll never forget the first birthday we introduced this type of gift-giving. There was no new toy, no new electronic device, no new gaming system. But our then 13-year-old son opened his gift, dug around in the tissue paper, then looked up and exclaimed, “Tickets to a Rockets game???”
Now let me be very honest here, we do budget-friendly and we do nose bleed. We search Groupon and we buy in advance. If the experience involves travel, it may be on a Tuesday or during the coldest weekend in January. But we do it. We make it happen.
Since putting this in place, we have taken our kids to concerts and sporting events, we have taken a sushi class and a pottery wheel lesson, we have been to Monster Jam and the Van Gogh Experience, we have been “glamping” on the beach and have taken trips to New Orleans, Charlotte, Chicago, and now Nashville. These experiences are always a surprise we plan, and includes only us and the birthday kid.
Of all of the things we have done, nothing comes close to the memories we have made. We are always amazed how each of our kids can recite what experience gift we gave and at what age—they remember every single one.
For us, it all comes down to time and money and how we can use them both in alignment with our values. Because we value how we spend time as a family, this has become a cornerstone to how we celebrate birthdays. We realized we don’t value technology or trends, so this works best for us in how we gift give. Several years ago, as we were tossing out things that “cost good money” and wishing we had more quality time with our kids, we knew there had to be a better way. The truth is, we can’t think of a better way to spend time or money than making long-lasting memories with our kids!
