Daniel's fourth birthday happened to coincide with the
first of a series of four consecutive total lunar eclipses with no partial eclipses between, each separated by six full moons. Some religious leaders see the tetrad of eclipses as a sign of end times or the second coming of Christ and have started calling this phenomenon
The Blood Moons.
The fact that our part of the world was in complete eclipse and the moon was shining red at Daniel's exact birth time doesn't disturb me at all. I'm sure lots of defiant, strong-willed, born-to-be-leader boys were celebrating their fourth birthday at that exact moment in time.
(Please don't let it be Daniel, oh please! Unless he's the good guy...then that would be okay I guess.)
Since we try to have a little fun around here every once in awhile, the
older kids and I decided that a Blood Moon birthday theme was just the
ticket for Daniel's special day. Only instead of calling it Blood Moon
('cause who wants to hear little kids talking about wild prophecies?),
we called it a Red Moon Party.
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| "Are we done yet?" |
We took a quick, last minute trip to the Dollar Store and Walmart and
found treasures! Red plates, "moonstones," red food things, all sorts of good junk!
Ian, Shane, and I really wanted to stay up to see the moon, but the
clouds rolled in just in time for us to miss it. I checked on the moon
periodically throughout the night; the clouds were gone by the time the
eclipse was over. And then morning came and it was time to celebrate! Daniel came streaming out of bed that morning, so excited that he was four! (Although the night before he wanted to be a baby forever and didn't want any presents at all-only a lump of coal-and he was planning on throwing his birthday cake on the floor.)
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| Before the Red Moon theme, we had a Bubble theme planned. I like Red Moon better. |
The good part about not throwing birthday parties is being able to celebrate slowly all day long. Cramming a bunch of 3 and 4 year olds in two hours of fun is way too stressful for me. The first present I had for Daniel was new things to dig for in his bean bins. I buried some glow-in-the-dark and clear glass "moonstones" and he dug them out with his new scoopers and tongs from the dollar store. He did this while his older siblings did their schoolwork.
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| Mina loves bubbles too! |
Then he got to help make his birthday cake! I gambled on making the cake moon-shaped by baking the cake batter in a Pyrex bowl. It didn't work too great, but I think my kids would happily eat meatloaf or a rock if it were slathered in frosting.
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| We found frosting spray paint-I've never heard of this before and IT IS AWESOME! |
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| If all other methods fail, smiling by force might work...or not! |
While we were waiting to see if Mark would make it home in time for presents and cake before he had to leave again for scouts, we played with bubbles in the back yard. It was pretty windy, so our idea for bubble competitions had to be postponed. I'll stash my dollar store medals and trophy cups away for another day...
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| I love this face! I love this boy! |
Mark did get home in time! And Daniel was such a great sport about his presents!
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| Super presents for a super boy |
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| A Bubble Gun! All right! |
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| "An airplane! All right!" |
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| "Dinosaurs! All right!" |
I think the Bubble Gun was the favorite toy of the hour....
And of course the food deserves special mention... Ian insisted on cheese puffs because they looked like round, red moons. We had red soda to go with our Blood Moon cake.
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| Red 40... gosh, I can't even remember if we had behavior issues that evening...I must have blacked out... |
But special mention is needed for my dairy-free, soy-free, egg-free, gluten-free coconut ice cream! How awesome is it that I found LUNA and Larry ice cream? And also Blood Orange sorbet that I happily consumed the night before for the blood moon eclipse.
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| My coconut ice cream even matched the theme! |
All that was left was making a wish and blowing out the candles...
Happy 4th Birthday Daniel!!!
