Picking up flowers for Crystel’s 13^th birthday I realized how true it is for me that I live my past through my kids.

I don’t remember my 13^th birthday.

I don’t remember my mother ever buying me flowers.

Of course, she had 12 children and buying flowers wasn’t on the top of her grocery list. Even remembering all of the birthdays was challenging for her.

That’s why Antonio and Crystel get a birthday week with a gift each day. It’s my do-over.

Two years ago, Crystel traded in her birthday week for an Amazing Race birthday party complete with clues, drivers, and unknown destinations.

All of us had so much fun that I didn’t even wait for her to ask this year.

I started planning an Amazing Race birthday weekend nine months ahead of time at Briggs Farm in Winona for both Antonio and Crystel. Their birthdays are only six weeks apart. The surprise Mankato Mud Run the next day was declared the highlight of the race by the participants.

This upping the ante started when their first tooth came out. It wasn’t a quarter under a pillow. It was a treasure hunt with clues written by the tooth fairy that led to a final gift. Some people warned Jody and I that once you start big you have to keep it going. That never bothered me. I didn’t want to stop. Perhaps I was doing a do-over for the tooth I lost on Christmas Eve one year. I figured that the stuff under my pillow was the same stuff that was in the other kids Christmas sock.

Not to say my mom didn’t try she did.

My favorite birthday was when I was 4 and I got a gun. It wasn’t a real gun but still my four older brothers wanted it and took turns shooting at the target across the room. Finally when they went to school I got to use it. Probably good it wasn’t real because when I did get my hands on a BB gun I shot one of my brothers just above the eye. Later when I was 12 and received a 20 gauge shotgun, I shot the pickup two brothers were sitting in. Accidentally, of course.

As I carry the flower bouquet to the car I think of how some things don’t require a do-over. Guns, for example. I’ll take them to a shooting range for that.