Today won’t be a crazy story but I put it up nevertheless as it was recently my mother’s 70th birthday. We celebrated on Good Friday however her birthday is on the 31st of March but as this public holiday was so close this year she decided to celebrate few days later with many of her friends.
In our apartment block we do not only have a swimming pool with sauna downstairs but also a room which can be used for “parties”. My mother invited twenty guests and as neither of our apartments would have been sufficient to house so many people we reserved this party room. Invited were a couple of neighbours but the rest were all Finnish women who came to Germany around the same time as my mother back in the 1960s-1970s. These women who came to the party stayed in Germany after the initial contract work contracts ran out and settled down here in this city or neighbouring towns and villages with their German partners.
As my mother wanted as less work on her birthday as possible my wife and I helped out to serve the drinks to the guests and clean all the dishes later. Especially carrying everything upstairs again took several runs as it was just too much hence I didn’t need any workout that day. The main food my parents had ordered weeks in advance from a catering service and all the cakes were prepared by my mother herself within two days before the celebration.
When the first batch of people arrived together (all having the same kind of rose for my mother) they gathered around her and sang a traditional Finnish song about old friends. After the first verse my mother just thanked them quickly and said it is enough as the whole song has about 10 verses, each taking several minutes! You see, my mom is not up for much celebrations, especially not for herself and she is not a big talker either so the only speech she held was “Thank you all for coming and enjoy the food.” Well, it was enough I would say.
Nathan did also his best to entertain the guests by running non-stop around and having very interesting conversations with everyone. The best for him was apparently the cake. I do not know why and how but he just loves it, even when we just give him a bit cake base with tiny amount of cream (no young man, no sugar for you yet).
Though the celebration only lasted for roughly four hours it was enough time to get everything more than filled up with all the food. I still felt a bit sick 12 hours later and couldn’t eat anything till next days lunch. Last but not least I have to mention that my days of freedom and happiness will end in 11 days as MIL will arrive then…
What do you usually do on birthday? Do you celebrate every year or only on significant ages?
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Crazy Chinese Family 
Wow! Your mother might be a picky eater, but her cakes look amazing! I feel like I am like her, not much for exploring food for lunch or dinner, but I love sweets and cakes *-*
She really is bad when it comes to try out new food but trying and making cakes that is something she loves. Especially the one cream cake with blueberries…
Nathan looks like he’s having a whale of a good time! Looks like a terrific celebration and hope your mom was pleased. 🙂
My partner and I have birthdays quite close to each other (well just 9 years apart). So we tend to throw a party on one or the other day which invariably is a combined celebration. All good fun!
I think my mom was happy with the celebration. The food was good, everyone was able to come and actually we had enough leftover food to eat it until today!
My wife and I have two months in between our birthdays, she is born in May and I am in March but both of us on the 14th 🙂
Birthdays are always a good excuse to get friends and family together. When the ‘birthday season’ comes around, I just start making plans with different groups of friends to catch up.
Your mothers cakes look amazing.
In Finland it is after the first 18-20 years more common to celebrate certain ages such as 30, 40 etc so there are often much less parties than I know from other countries.
Last time when my mother turned 60 we had several relatives also from Finland over 🙂
That is such an nice celebration..We are celebrating my dad’s birthday on Saturday as it is first time after many years all of us are together for his birthday…
How nice. For us it was similar as we lived abroad for so many years we could never meet as a family, not even on birthdays. So this year was the first time in at least eight years that we could celebrate together
I’m not sure if I will change in the future, but up till now, I never much like celebrating my own birthday. I alternate between forgetting when my own birthday is and getting out of town on my birthday when I remembers it to prevent people making a fuss over it.
I also haven’t really celebrated my birthday in many years. The last real celebration was when I was 14 or 15 and then I celebrated my 18th together with some friends as a LAN party for some rounds of counter-strike…
Sounds like an awesome party. Planting C4s and giving headshots is definitely a better way to celebrate birthdays than getting drunk! 😀
Looks like a fun party for your mother. She looks happy with Nathan, and very kind of her to tell you and the guests to stop singing all the verses. She might have gotten quite a few presents?
My birthday is coming up! Last year I wrote a blog post about it, so this year I will do the same but the week before. But this year I will be working on my birthday for the first time 😦 However, I’ve never celebrated it for a long time, nothing special except give some money to charity.
Well my mom got some presents but here you never get much on birthdays, just some small things.
I think this year was the first time I wasn’t busy on my own birthday as it was in a Saturday and I didn’t do any freelance work now.
Just try to do the best out of your birthday even when working 🙂
Man, Nathan is the cutest cheekiest baby I’ve ever seen! How do you refrain yourself from squeezing those puffy cheeks the whole time?
Anyway, your mom’s birthday looked very nice. I actually really like simple low-key parties when it comes about birthdays. I would usually just invite some friends over for dinner and cook for them. I just don’t like getting stressed out while organizing something big instead of enjoying my own birthday!
Lat month I actually organized a small surprise party for my boyfriend’s 30th birthday. He was so happy! Definitely one of my favorite parties ever!
Nathan has also his dark cranky sides so he wontbe fluffed all the time 🙂
I think I have never organized any big party. Sure attended few times but I am not big fan of them. Usually I just want my peace and go out eating with my family
First off, Happy belated birthday to your mom! I hope she had an awesome birthday! She looks fantastic for her age! She’s just two years older than my dad! 😛 lol. Nathan looks so happy in your arms! And those cheeks of his!! I want to squeeze them!
As for me with birthdays, being an only child and having hardly any friends, I don’t really celebrate it. I usually just grab dinner with my parents and obviously now, with my boyfriend. Since my boyfriend and I are born within six days from one another, I think in future, we will just celebrate it on one day with both sides of the family. I am on the 14th of December and he is on the 20th, so we were saying that we might as well have a Christmas party then too lol.
My parents usually do not celebrate either, just their big birthdays/)
During my last birthday I went only eating with my wife and this time also with the rest of my family, nothing more
It looks and sounds like your mom had an awesome birthday. She is very lucky to have had you and your wife to help out!! And Nathan seems to have enjoyed himself as well – I bet he got a lot of attention at the party. BTW, that is such a precious pic of you and him.
Without us my mother would have been working the entire time at the celebration as there were just so many plates to clean and bring away multiple times that she wouldn’t have been able to even sit down and eat.
Nathan was happy nearly the entire time except when he didn’t find any fruit in the fruit salad which he might like…
Happy birthday to your mother. I’m really bad at remembering dates and even tend to forget my own birthday. Usually my husband and I just go out for dinner. Really boring, and each year I’m thinking that I should throw a regular party:)
I usually prefer to just go out eating in a nice restaurant rather than having a bigger celebration 🙂
It happened for me more often than not that I actually forgot my own birthday
Your picture with Nathan is too cute!! BTW, every time I see a pic of you I think you look way too young to be a father, haha. You make me self conscious!!!
Thank you 🙂
I am actually one of the older guys who has a child from my circle of friends
Happy belated birthday to your mum! She looks good for 70! 🙂
I am also not much into celebration. My last big birthday party was on my 11th birthday.. After that, it’s just been with a couple of friends or family or boyfriends. But I do feel special and happy on my birthday and I don’t mind doing something special by myself alone either 🙂
How lovely and great memories for your mother. For birthdays in past few years, we have a nice meal either at a restaurant or at home. Last year I also recognized my own birthday for 55 on my blog. At that time, we went to Rocky Mountains where at a restaurant (actually it was German-Austrian cuisne) for a complete fondue meal: cheese fondue, bison fondue and chocolate fondue. Come to Canada to experience this.
I tried only once fondue and it is so long time ago that I don’t even remember anymore how it was!
Usually I prefer going out to eat in my birthday withmy wife or close family, nothing more 🙂
Those cakes look beautiful! Sounds like y’all had a nice time. 🙂
I’m not much for celebrations. I forget my own birthday and age at times…I have small get togethers with friends and have a Mexican cookout. Loud music, conversation, and good food.
When I was in the beginning of my twenties in right in the. Middle of them I always forgot my age. Now that I am steering towards the end of my twenties I am very sure of my age at all times (and about all the bodily pains which comes slowly with age…)
Okay! Now I get the Finnish German connection. 😀 Hmmm… from memory… Hyvaa… Hyvaa… geburtstag, okaasan! Ha ha! What a wonderful celebration and Nathan is adorable. I loved seeing the party room. The backgrounds of photos from different parts of the world is always fun for me to see.
Things like this german finnish connection I do not often write about and hence its gets lost easily. I actually should be working on dating the about me section, hasn’t been done for at least ten months….
At least you remembered a bit Finnish, ain’t the easiest language around 🙂
True, true! About Finnish that is. I studied it for the first half year and then gave up when I saw the 16 cases or whatever. That and I was more interested in my social life than in studying. 😀 I wish I had put in more effort though. I really like how it sounds and also the long words as well as the idea that a connected series of words can have feelings associated like sisu or this one that meant relaxing sauna in the woods or something like that. 😀
I also know few Finns who studied Japanese and for them it is easier to pronounciate most things right than for their other classmates. In finnish course the Japanese were always fairly good when it came to pronounciate finnish words. Really wonder why it was like that or they were just lucky ones
It’s interesting that you mention Japanese speakers learning Finnish and vice versa. I actually thought that Finnish and Japanese sounded very similar. I think part of the reason is the consonant-vowel combos that make up most of the sounds in Japanese being similar to the Finnish pairings. Many Finnish words sound like they could be Japanese and hubby thinks so, too!
Just think of “Inari”. A word both used in Finland and in Japanese. Wasn’t it that in Japanese it is some kind of god? In Finnish it is a little village and the name of a huge and very deep lake in the very north of Finland 🙂
Egads! Sorry for taking ages to reply! Ooo… that’s a great example… inari and inari. I wonder what other examples there are? One of my favorite words in Finnish is Jouni. It was one of the first that stuck in my head since I found it so unusual. I also really liked how it is pronounced and that it’s a name. I had a tough time in Finland with names at first – I couldn’t figure out which were for males or females!
Didn’t realize that names could be so difficult in Finland for foreigner but yeah, I grew up with Finnish names around me so that can be an explanation 🙂
I suppose the same could be true for names anywhere. Growing up, Jennifer, Alyson, Jason, Mike and John were heard over and over. My name was relatively rare, which was nice. My last name was horribly butchered though by most people, especially substitute teachers. Another favorite name that I think is unusual in Finland is Hilpi. I think my friend said it was pretty rare??
Oh, this is actually a name I never heard of before!
Really? How interesting! I think Hilpi said it was an older name that was popular before 1950… or I could be completely making that up. Ha ha! I do remember her saying that it was more traditional and had an interesting meaning… although that is forgotten too. Perhaps your mom knows??