I recently turned 40, still feeling a lot like I’m twelve, or as Margaret Atwood said, “I believe everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.”

One of the benefits to being self-employed is that I have a lot of freedom over how I spend my birthday. A few years ago, I gave myself permission to create my ULTIMATE DAY. Now, with rare exception, here is what a perfect birthday looks like in my life.

I spend a big chunk of it…alone. I start the day in prayer, journaling and thinking about the years that have flown by and the ones around the corner. I often buy some new music for myself, a little soundtrack for my day as I travel about. (This year: Brand New by Ben Rector. So good.) I visit an art museum to get inspired. I eat lunch by myself, accompanied by my favorite magazine. (Mental_Floss) I’ll spend a few hours in a bookstore, perusing tomes on art, business, faith and Star Wars. Throughout the day, I check in on birthday messages that have come in through various channels. I like the acknowledgement, but I don’t want to spend the day talking to people.

It’s not that I’m anti-people. Since I’m the type of person who likes saving the best for last, I end the day with Kim and the kids. I head home for supper, where Kim has made the dinner and dessert of my choice (usually beef stroganoff and cherry pie). After dinner, we often watch a movie together. (This year I was hoping for The Good Dinosaur or the Peanuts movie, but they weren’t out yet, so we settled on the Lego Movie, which I hadn’t seen in a while and is just fantastic.) These days, highlights are always the little gifts made for me by my kids.

This year, since it was my 40th, Kim added a few neat surprises. She snuck 40 red balloons into my office, and each one had a note from a good friend or family member. I was not expecting that, and it was easily the best part of the day, reading all the ways I have impacted people throughout the years. Kim also booked me an hour-long hot stone massage, which I’ve decided will henceforth be added to the regular routine!

So here’s the confession: I sometimes feel embarrassed sharing my ideal birthday. It looks kind of weird compared to what most people might expect or want. I assume people will think it’s depressing to spend most of your day alone. And I worry that I’ll disappoint the people who imagine me engaged in epic water balloon fights, whacking a piñata, or eating ice cream all day.

But whatever.

I do think it’s worth sharing, not to suggest that THIS is the way you should celebrate YOUR birthday, but simply to remind you that you should celebrate your birthday the way you want to.

Come to think of it, the same is true of your life.

Neither birthdays nor lives should be wasted conforming to someone else’s expectation of what they “should” look like.

You, my friend, are a one of a kind. Choose your own adventure.

What’s your favorite weird birthday tradition?

Our nephew Caden was a big fan of going “Barbarian.”

A few months ago, as our son Ben’s first birthday was approaching, Kim and I wondered how we could make his party special. We were well aware of the fact that he would remember precisely none of it, so our focus was actually about making it memorable for the guests.

I joked to Kim that it would be fun to have everyone eat like Ben. Thoughts of adults eating with their hands and ending up with food in their hair was a fun mental picture, but also a pretty easy way to make sure our family and friends never talked to us again.

So we settled on a mashup of Barbarian Spaghetti and Spatula City, two ideas that we’ve shared with thousands of people over the years. In short, Barbarian Spaghetti is a spaghetti dinner, sans plates. And with Spatula City, everybody selects an unusual kitchen utensil (think spatulas, salad tongs, soup ladles, etc.) and then has to eat their entire dinner with that single utensil. (For best results, make sure no one knows what’s on the menu when they make their selection.)

As guests arrived at our home on the day of the party, we had them choose a utensil and place it at their assigned spot. When it was time for dinner, we announced that our guests would not be getting plates or silverware, aside from the utensils they had pre-selected. I revealed the menu of spaghetti, meatballs, fresh veggies, and garlic cheese bread.

Then I waited for an outright revolt.

Instead, everyone dove in with gusto. Well, not as much gusto as my six-year-old nephew displayed, but everyone played along.

There weren’t any complaints of protest (I think they were in shock) but there were plenty of smiles and laughs as everyone clumsily tried to cut meatballs and shovel spaghetti into their mouth. In fact, Ben may have been most suspicious participant of all involved.

Here are a few more pics of our fun party, which definitely qualified as memorable. I’d highly recommend you think about going Barbarian for the next party you host!

Here’s a cool idea for celebrating birthdays in a fun and meaningful way. If the birthday boy or girl is turning 30, fill that many balloons with helium and attach a ribbon for each year of the person’s life at the end of the balloon. Be sure to number each photo. (An optional step would be to add a message on the back of each one.) Then hide them somewhere and wait for the birthday surprise!

Of course, the older your special someone is, the more work you have cut out for you. But then again, that just makes the end result all the more spectacular!

Hat tip: Sarah-Lyn of Lovely Green Lifestyle

For instance, I decided not to give Kim one card for her birthday a few weeks ago but four. I put a different message in each one and strategically hid them so she’d find them one at a time throughout the day. Sure, it cost a little more to buy four cards, but the magic that was created far exceeded the cost. As I’ve often said in promoting The Kim & Jason Guide to Cheap Family Fun, just about everybody wants to create more memories with their families, but sometimes we need reminders and ideas.

I’ve got both for you this week.

I recently had lunch with Scott Meier who is the purveyor of the awesome Daddy Daughter Date blog. He told me about his family’s recent trip to Disney World, in which he and his wife waited to tell their daughters where they were going until they got to the airport. Then, a few days later, at a conference I was speaking at in Michigan, a woman told me that her son-in-law did the same thing with his kids for a trip to New York City. He arranged everything in advance, down to booking the tour of the Statue of Liberty and securing Broadway tickets, as well as the secret finagling with the kids’ teachers to notify them of their absence from school. Then one day, with the car fully packed, the parents picked up the kids at school. The kids were under the impression that they were simply driving Dad to the airport for a business trip. Once they arrived at the airport, the surprise was revealed. How awesome is that?

Come to think of it, you could make every vacation with children a surprise. After all, you don’t often need their permission, their help in planning, or for them pony up a credit card number. Plus you’d be free from having to deal with the endless daily barrage from younger children asking, “Are we going today?”

Here’s the thing: everybody loves surprises (the happy ones, not the we-have-to-let-you-go-effective-immediately kind), and this is a simple (albeit not always easy) one to implement. Now some of you may be thinking, “Well I don’t have the money to spring for a trip to Disney World or New York.” Not the point. You can accomplish the same thing with a surprise day of hooky from school, an out-of-the-blue visit to a special restaurant, or an unexpected Barbarian Spaghetti feast.

Oh, and another woman in Michigan reminded me that you don’t even have to have kids, either. She retold a surprise weekend getaway her husband planned for the two of them. “He even took the liberty to pack my suitcase,” she said. “And although he did a less-than-stellar job, the sentiment and the surprise more than made up for it.”

Start making plans today to surprise someone special in your life with a secret trip or evening out. It’s a great way to add magic to life!

Young children, of course, have no such concerns. They dance openly with reckless abandon, would happily wear princess dresses to the supermarket, and wouldn’t think twice about picking their nose right in front of you.

While not always appealing, their actions underscore — quite dramatically — this fact: they really don’t care what you think.

As we grow up, it’s super hard to keep that mindset. I often try to remind myself of John Maxwell’s 18/40/60 rule, which states: “When you’re 18, you worry about what everybody is thinking about you. When you’re 40, you don’t give a darn what anybody else thinks of you. When you’re 60, you realize that nobody has been thinking about you at all!”

Adultitis thrives when we wrap ourselves in cocoons of inhibition. It’s happy when we are overly cautious, timid, and obedient to the rules that don’t exist. Especially when there is no reason to be.

I often share a simple idea during my speaking programs, and I invite you to try it as well. Next time you have spaghetti…don’t use plates. Just plop the spaghetti in the middle of the table, and have the meal participants pull their portions toward themselves. (An audience member once dubbed this “Barbarian Spaghetti,” which I love.) Few ideas have the power to divide a room in an instant like this one does. The moment I mention it, some people’s eyes light up with eager anticipation. Most recoil in the horror of the mess that’s sure to be made. (And what the neighbors might think!) Even my suggestion of using a plastic tablecloth to make clean-up a breeze does little to convince them.

But every once in a while, someone runs with it, and I get photos like the one above, with stories like this, from Lisa Johnson of Minnesota. She wrote:

“My daughter and I enjoyed your visit to Mankato’s St. Joseph the Worker church. We had to surprise the other two members of the family with a Spaghetti dinner for my daughter Amber’s birthday. She had so much fun dumping the noodles on the table and spreading the sauce all over. I think it has inspired many others on my Facebook page to try the same thing! Great idea!”

It IS a great idea, but all I can take credit for is sharing it, just like Lisa did. Because an audience member once shared it with me.

Sometimes we attribute courage with fighting cancer, leaving an abuser, or taking a bullet for someone else. And indeed, these are courageous acts of the highest level. But sometimes being courageous simply means being willing to do something a little unconventional regardless of what others might think of us.

Would the idea of Barbarian Spaghetti make Miss Manners hyperventilate and possibly slip into a coma? Probably.

Is it messy and cheap and simple and silly and childlike and fun?

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.

And what are the odds that the participants will have created a scene they will not soon forget?

Exactly.

People seem to either LOVE ’em or dread ’em.

But dreading your birthday is the epitome of Adultitis, isn’t it?!

Through our work with The Make-A-Wish Foundation, Jason and I have met and gotten to know dozens of families whose children are fighting for their lives each and every day. Consider the length a person with a potentially terminal illness will go to be able to add just one more candle to their next birthday cake. This puts things in perspective real quick.

Birthdays are a gift.

Recently, we were celebrating birthdays with my family, and my soon-to-be 90-year-old Grandma chimed in with a wise observation.

“Age is a state of mind.”

Amen, Grandma!!

Is it any wonder that she has lived 89 healthy, happy and spunky years serving others — with 7 kids, 21 grandkids, and 28 great-grandkids (with 3 in the oven!) With this kind of Adultitis-free attitude, she’s been able to stay young at heart and continues to be as playful as always.

Need a birthday attitude adjustment (or know someone who does)? Adultitis-free living takes effort! So, here are a few ideas to help make birthdays in your world more meaningful and memorable.

1. Candle Crazy
Don’t chump out with the ‘ol numeral candles. Or the trick where you put four candles on one side and three on the other side, representing “43.” Be sure to fill the birthday cake with a candle for EVERY SINGLE year of your life. Take the batteries out of the smoke detectors if you need to. You wouldn’t be you without every moment of your experiences, so be sure to celebrate and represent each and every year.

2. Go Big or Go Home
Do not let the big ones pass you by. Any birthday ending in a five or a zero should have a bigger flare. Surround yourself with your favorite people, eat your favorite foods, collect memories as if they were hidden treasures. Show the younger generations that life is worth celebrating!

3. Pass the Hat
As an extended family, pick out a silly hat that gets rotated to each person in time for his/her birthday. The birthday guy/gal has to take a picture of themselves enjoying something on their birthday donning the playful hat and the picture can get emailed around to the others in the family. It’s a neat way to stay connected while everyone is busy doing their own thing.

4. Have a Card Party
Organize a surprise birthday card party for your loved one. Snail mail is so rare these days and yet STILL so much fun. Email or Facebook all of his/her friends and family and ask them to send a birthday card as close to the exact birthday date as possible. The mailbox and your loved one’s heart will be FILLED with warmth and childlike excitement.

5. Take Back Your Day
Spend your birthday JUST for you. Do not go to work. Do not do chores. Heck, don’t even get out of your pajamas if you don’t want to. Fill your day with whatever makes you the happiest. No one will begrudge you this. All you have to do is to take it.

What are YOUR favorite ways to make birthdays more memorable?

Share Your Thoughts…
What do you think about this week’s prescription? We’d love to hear from you — and might even feature you in an upcoming show (we’ve even been known to give out prizes as well!) Leave a comment below or in the video itself by clicking the little plus sign in the player. Got photos or videos? Send ’em to eashow@kimandjason.com
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News

• Save the date for Thursday, September 3rd at 8:00 p.m. CST. Tune in to watch our first LIVE show!
• Share your best birthday memory in the comments section for a chance to win the big prize we talked about during the show.

Linkety Links

• Pre-order your copy of There’s An Adult In My Soup
• Check out the nifty Adult In My Soup souvenir can you can only get when you pre-order the book.

We recently got a message from Terry and Terry Estness, a husband and wife from Wisconsin. Their family has a unique and very childlike baking tradition… they make ugly baked goods. Terry shared:

No one can beat my husband and son’s UGLY cookie recipe. Their goal, year after year, is to make the ugliest Christmas cookies around. Their hope is to disgust everyone’s gastric sensibilities so they have all the delicious morsels for themselves.

Although they look pretty bad – the cookies, not my husband and son who is now 27 BTW – (and yes, they have succeeded in making each year’s new batches of cookies more disgusting than prior years) they really are quite delicious.

Needless to say, the practice has morphed into ugly birthday cakes and cheese cakes, but that’s another story altogether!

We know the Terrys from the Wisconsin chapter of the National Speakers Association. At a meeting a few months ago their faces lit up as they shared with us about the countless ugly cakes and cookies they have created over the years with their son. Why? Why not? They are sure having fun with it!

So, if you’re dreading the final tasks of baking a few dozen cookies for the weeks ahead, add a bit of ugly fun. If nothing else, you’ll have a bunch of sweets that will create quite the conversation piece.

How do I Escape Adulthood?

I’ll tell you, family brings out the best of this in me. For my birthday this year, I happened to take a road trip with my sister, her husband, 3 nieces, and my parents to visit my oldest niece in college about 10 hours away. It wasn’t just my birthday, but I also share a birthday (1 day apart) with my now 17-year-old niece. In the spirit of a road trip, I wanted to help make her birthday extra fun and silly (like she would do with her friends). So, I decided to start a new family tradition and being that my birthday was the very next day, I knew I would have to follow in accord. So, the day before we left, I (on a whim) bought a Jester hat from the Lemonade Stand to have the birthday girl wear it on her special day. Needless to say, with that hat on, you couldn’t walk into a restaurant, gas station, store, hotel or anywhere without getting a smile from someone coupled with comments that ensued from strangers….’Nice hat!’….’Way cool’…..’Love the hat!’….’Way to go!’ People were smiling as they passed by – grinning from ear to ear, which as we know, smiling is quite contagious. So, the next day, any embarrassment my niece felt in wearing a jester hat in public was passed along graciously to me, which I have to say was a joy to see the smiles that occurred on other people’s faces.

What a blast!

So, from here on out, the hat will be passed along (shipped, delivered, whatever means necessary) to the next birthday in the family, and they will get to wear it for the day. Hopefully I can convince all ages in my family to wear it in public and let the joy and silliness of escaping adulthood be passed along to random strangers.

Club K&J members: share YOUR stories, strategies, victories and challenges in your quest to escape adulthood!

Adultitis always is.

Don’t forget to send this video on to all of the people you care about. And the test is just a click away.

‘Yesterday I turned 54. Just unbelievable. I’m not wise enough for my age. I’m not deep enough for my age. I’m not generous enough for my age. In conclusion therefore, I should go much further to make myself accomplished.’

I think Middle-Angel’s thoughts are pretty common. Especially when we move closer to landmark birthdays (the ones with the 0’s in the ones place), we start freaking out about our lives and what we’ve done with the time we’ve been given. What actually makes one ‘accomplished,’ anyway?

There is a book that I love called “Lists to Live By,” compiled by Alice Gray, Steve Stephens and John Van Diest. It is perfect for all of you who are like me and love ‘to do’ lists. Middle-Angel’s comments reminded me of one of the lists from the book: 15 Ways to Stay Young While Growing Old. The list was written by Tress Van Diest, 89 years young. You don’t need to be having a birthday to learn a thing or two from this list. Here they are (drum roll please)…

1. Applaud others’ successes.
2. Exercise daily.
3. Keep a positive attitude.
4. Read widely and often.
5. Play with children.
6. Enjoy nature.
7. Laugh heartily.
8. Take a class.
9. Plant a garden.
10. Count your blessings.
11. Take risks.
12. Sing from your heart.
13. Get a pet.
14. Eat healthy.
15. Give generously to others.

Join me in the challenge of picking one of these accomplishments from the list today. You have to start somewhere. It was neat to see that Middle-Angel got the children’s book “Where the Wild Things Are‘ for her 54th birthday. (That happens to be Jason’s favorite book from childhood.) She’s off to a great start.

But I digress.

I was exceptionally surprised by a gesture my parents made shortly after dinner. They said that they had been thinking about my book, which led them to think about the birthday parties of childhood. When a kid has a birthday party and invites his or her friends, they reasoned, usually the guests get some type of party favor. So they decided that in an effort to “return to childhood,” they would provide favors for all of their guests. (Originally, the party was supposed to be back home, so they had to lug the bags of goodies with them once plans changed.)

From a rather large cardboard box, my father began pulling out little Darth Vader bags jammed with colorful treasures: gummy candy in the shape of cafeteria food, a Star Wars Pez dispenser, Razzles, and long candy necklaces for the girls and foam disc guns for the boys. Everyone got one–me and Kim, my brothers and their wives, and my two nieces.

And I’ll tell you what: it was one of the funnest (I know, not a word) birthday parties I’ve been to in a long time. The gesture may seem cheesy to an outsider, but it was fun digging into the bags to survey the loot, trading Pez dispensers, and biting into gummy pizzas. It was a little thing, but it really added a lot to the evening. I highly recommend it for your next party, particularly if there aren’t any kids around. People may give you strange looks at first, but it won’t be long before the five-year-old inside them starts puffing excitedly on those cheap–but fun!–paper blowout thingys.

Way to go, Mom and Dad.