British Birthdays

Last week, we celebrated my 34th birthday. Ethan was kind enough to take the day off from work, and we drove down to a city on the East coast called Hull. We had heard that there was an aquarium there called "The Deep," and thought that might be a fun way to spend the day.

"The Deep" was pretty cool. It is more modern than the aquarium in Baltimore, although it is also much smaller, and didn't have quite as much to look at. Still, we enjoyed seeing a good variety of fish, an active octopus, and a shark & stingray feeding. My favorite was seeing the life stages of jellyfish. The baby jellyfish were kinda cute!

After the aquarium, we enjoyed a nice stroll through the city center of Hull. It's always fun walking along the pedestrian walkways and seeing what kinds of shops they have. Ethan found a pub with a kind of beer that he hadn't tried yet, so the kids and I waited outside and played. Here they are playing on a monument outside of an old church.
When we got home, Ethan grilled a delightful steak dinner. It was the best steak I had had in a really long time.... just delicious! We then celebrated my birthday with some thoughtful gifts and cards, including a rechargeable battery for my new camera! Hooray!!

Since I am on the topic of birthdays, I thought I would also mention a few differences that we have either seen or heard about for British birthdays. Tim has already been to a bunch of birthday parties for friends at school. The general outline for a kids' party seems to be the same: food, games, and cake. However, the children don't eat the cake at the party. Their slice gets wrapped into a napkin and put into their goody bag to be eaten at home. (I asked one mother about this, and she said that it is a British tradition. The children are usually too stuffed by cake time to actually eat it!) They also don't open the presents during the party. The games seem to be similar. At one party, Tim played "Pass the Parcel" (parcel means present), which is that game where you unwrap a present until you get the gift in the middle. The last party Tim went to even had a moon-bounce (I think they called it a "bouncy house.")

We've also heard that British children unwrap their presents and eat birthday cake as soon as they wake up in the morning (almost like a Christmas morning kind of thing). I don't think we will start that tradition in our family, although it is tempting.