Kurt Family Birthday Tradition

Today is my birthday. I'm 37. I've received a ton of e-mails, text messages and phone calls already. What a cool thing to have so many people take the time to think of me like that. If you haven't heard of the Kurt family tradition of phone calls, the rules go something like this:

1. Every person in the family (that includes people connected in to the family like Wilaca, but apparently not Sherry because she does not consider herself family) must call the individual on the actual day of the birthday according to the time zone that person is in. Family specific friends are included in this, for instance Brad and the Schultz's must participate, and it must be reciprocated.
   
2. Multiple people can participate in a single call to the birthday person.
   
3. Leaving a message counts, as long as the date/time stamp on that message is within the actual birthday.
4. The words "Happy Birthday" must be either spoke or sung to the person.
5. There are bonus points and bragging rights for being the first person on the day of the birthday to wish a happy birthday. Dan/Kris family were first today. Bob wished me a happy birthday on Sunday, Brad and three others wished me a happy birthday yesterday.
6. If you do not call on the the day of the birthday, you will be shamed to no end by the family.
   

I got a call from my sister and the kids (Kevin still owes me a call) this morning and we started talking about how tradition of birthday phone calls in the Kurt Family begun. Here's the best we can figure:

My Mom used to wake us up on our birthdays reciting lines from a children's book she used to read to us. (My Mom had this uncanny way of memorizing children's books and reciting them verbatim. I guess having 4 kids will do that to you). the line went like this, "Good Morning Birthday Boy. Today is your special day! Your birthday is full of fun and surprises...." She would then tell us what the weather was like on the day she went into the hospital to have us. Somehow the weather was always the same as it was on that exact day.

When we went to college, she and my Dad would call us on our birthday and recite the same thing to us. From there, as we had kids, the tradition grew as we would call our nieces and nephews, we added in singing happy birthday in the most awful way possible. We have honed and refined this to be one of the best parts of our birthdays, even though there are a whole lot of us now.