Celebrating Megan

A friend of mine gave birth to a daughter Thursday, April 15th, which brought back all the memories of my own experience 8 years ago (in the exact same room!). We're so thankful we've been blessed with this little girl! She is a tomboy who can spend hours playing with her stuffed animals, loves her friends, wrestles with her brother, is determined to be the best soccer player in the world, is growing in her confidence in front of others (but doesn't lack any with those she knows!), is our family clown, has a sweet, sensitive heart that longs to be connected to us, and is sharp as a whip when it comes to school.

For her 8th birthday, she wanted a soccer party. This was a great idea in theory. But in an effort to limit the mass number of children who could be invited to Megan's party, we chose only girls close to her age. Most of these girls didn't have a clue how to play soccer, and if they did, they weren't really interested in it. Megan had grand schemes to play a game of soccer. We started instead with some soccer drill games like "red light, green light" and "sharks and minnows." I could see most of the girls were losing interest, so we set them free to just play in the courtyard. Megan tried to engage her friends in a game of soccer, but when she told one of them, "You play defense" and her friend responded, "What's defense?" I think she knew enough to give up.

Still, a good time was had by all!

A Life in Cakes

We just celebrated Ethan's 10th birthday yesterday. Yes, 10!! We were reflecting on each year last night at dinner and got on the topic of Ethan's cakes. My mom set an example for me of having creative cakes for our parties. I can't say all of Ethan's have been amazing, but it's fun to look back through and see what he liked each year. Here they are:

1st year: He didn't care, so I just made a generic cake to the feed the masses of friends we invited (he didn't care who came at age 1 right?)



2nd birthday: Ethan loved Blue Clues. This is when I first discovered the awesome time and effort saving technique of using toys to decorate the cake, rather than actually drawing something. (I'm pregnant in this picture, by the way). It's fun to see that the two kids on the right, Jackson and Emma, were at his 10th birthday party too!


3rd birthday: I'm pretty proud of this one. You can't tell much, but I dug part of the cake out, throwing those M&M rocks into the hole (if only real rocks came in candy colors). Again, Ethan's toys to the rescue!


4th birthday: I didn't want to ruin Thomas by planting him in frosting, so I constructed this, probably from a picture.


5th birthday: This one was our first in Singapore. I realize it doesn't make sense that Spiderman would be laying on the web like this, but it looked better than him doing a face plant into the cake.


6th birthday: Dinosaur! I wish I had a closer picture of this one. This was my first shaped cake. Notice the "rocks" on the table - chocolate pieces I found at Mustafa! The palm branches are courtesy of the courtyard. Ah, the tropics!


7th birthday: I'm not sure why Ethan wanted a Superman cake. I think he requested superheroes in general and this was the easiest. That red frosting was so potent the kids' mouths and hands were stained for days!


8th birthday: What do you do when your son asks for a "Lego Star Wars" birthday. Not Legos, not Star Wars, but Lego Star Wars. Call in the toys! There's a stormtrooper riding that green animal, and some other figures scattered around.


9th birthday: Ah, possibly my biggest challenge yet: a Bakugan birthday. Thankfully, these little toys are round so I suggested cupcakes. I then spent a night creating frosting in the various colors of Bakugans. After all my work, I was informed by my son that they were not quite the right colors. Because it was his birthday, I let him live.


10th birthday: Camouflage! Good thing I stocked up on all those different food colorings at the baking store in Singapore. This required brown, black, and two shades of green. My fingernails are still stained. As are some of the boys.

There it is - a life in cakes.

Celebrating Singapore style

I was kind of relieved that Ethan wanted to have a birthday party this year with just his friends who are homeschooled. It meant we could have the party during the week, and invite fewer kids! He decided he wanted to have it at the zoo, specifically in the water zone part of the zoo. The zoo has always had a water play area, but last year they up sized it and we had yet to experience it.


Erik took the afternoon off to come celebrate with us (after all it might be our last time to the Singapore Zoo!). As we drove up to the zoo, we noticed that the huge dark cloud, the darkest one around, was hanging right over it! We met our friends and ate a quick lunch while waiting for the drizzling to subside a bit. It did, just long enough for us to get to the north end of the zoo where the play area is. Once we got there, forget the animals! Every four minutes a huge bucket of water dropped down on the kids. There were water slides and fountains, plus a dry area where they could do a zip line or pull themselves across a pond on a raft.


Ethan's passion these days is Bakugans, which are a Korean toy. He and his friends have them, and regularly have Bakugan battles. His heart's desire was to get Castle Legos and Bakugans for his birthday. He also wanted a Bakugan cake. I ended up making cupcakes and coloring the frosting the six colors of Bakugans. What a mother won't do . . .


We stayed at the zoo for 5 hours! It rained off and on the whole time, but the kids didn't notice since they were wet already. They would have stayed there longer if we'd let them.

We Have an Eight Year Old!

Ethan's willing to give me a smile while he waits for his cake



This picture's a bit blurry, but hey, it's an action shot! Truth be told, my photo skills were lacking this day. But do you see the red balloon about to hit the birthday boy? Way to hold him Aaron!


Seems like just yesterday I finished watching The Truman Show with friends, started doing dishes, and went into labor. (I don't believe either of those activities influenced me having contractions). But apparently it's been eight years since that night! Ethan requested a "Star Wars Lego" birthday party. We bought Star Wars party supplies in the States last summer and made do with sticking Star Wars Lego figures all over his cake. He was satisfied.

The great thing about an eight pack of party supplies is that it limits the number of guests. I'm all about small birthday parties with no games. Thankfully, this is what my son also enjoys. So he invited seven good friends over for a swim party, a water balloon fight, cake and ice cream, and gifts. His wish list - Mars Mission Legos and Transformers. He got both and some Star Wars figures to boot so he was mighty pleased.

A Princess Party

April 15th may mean tax day to the rest of you, but to us here in Asia, avoiding US taxes (just kidding, sort of) it's a much more joyous occasion. It's Megan's birthday! I was actually induced on the 15th, not realizing it was tax day. I was in China, and I was just glad I'd missed April 14th, because 14 in Chinese sounds like the words for "I want to die!" Anyway . . .

Megan wanted a princess party. I think what she really wanted was for me to inundate the house with Disney Princess party supplies, but our budget and my personal preferences forbid it. She had Cinderella napkins, but the rest was pink and ribbons, aside from the big blue castle door we made.

We went earlier in the week to choose a new princess dress for Megan. Of course she fell in love with the Disney Princesses dresses at Toys R Us for S$70 each. So I went to Mustafa and found they had Disney Princess dresses there for S$30! Score another point for Mustafa! Man, I love that store. So I took her on Saturday and she chose this one, which is Erica from Barbie's The Princess and the Pauper. She was thrilled.

We kept the party small because Erik and Ethan were off at another birthday party and I was on my own. I never plan enough activities, but the girls were happy playing. Megan had a great time and that's what counts.


Welcome ye to our humble kingdom
Princess Megan and her throne (she guided the decoration of that).


What a bunch of cuties! Princess Megan and her royal court.


After we played Pass the Parcel (a game we learned from our Australian friends) the girls wanted to do the actions to the song I'd played. The mom of three of the girls here taught them all the actions to Every Move I Make (the worship song, not the 80's hit).


I was in such a hurry at the last minute that I forgot the silver balls and pink sprinkles for the cake. Oh well, they probably would have broken their teeth on those little balls. I don't know who thought those should be edible.

Megan had quite a time trying to blow out her candles. As you can see, I had to help her a little (ok, a lot - I think I blew them all out).

Ethan's all-boy poolside dinosaur birthday!