Tuesday, March 30, 2010 ;
11:58 PM
19 Mar
Fri
It was my mom's birthday. We planned to celebrate it with a dinner at Zhou's kitchen (yup, my dad's last name/ surname actually) at JP and had also ordered a special Lavande cake from Bakerzin for her.
I didn't know Zhou's Kitchen was part of the Tung Lok group. The dishes were quite tasty, but I was surprised that it was one of the less crowded restaurants in JP on a Friday night. Maybe it was more expensive than most of the other Chinese eateries? Not so worth it?
Since ds2's birthday is only 3 days away from hers, we let his celebration with my side of the family ride on my mom's and they blew candles on the cake together.
We cut the cake at my place after the dinner at JP since everyone could just walk over to my place.
This is the extended family group pic.
My mom with her older grandkids. The Lavande cake has macarons on each side. Yummy. The cake itself is pure choc mousse, too light and airy for me. I like rich, dense cakes. Also, in the Sg heat, it "melted" very quickly!
Since it was my mom's birthday, I thought she should relax. Hence, in the morning, since I had to bake about a hundred cupcakes, I called my mil the day before and asked if she could bring the boys out. She gladly agreed.
She came over in the morning and brought them to my fil's factory, to IMM, to pick another uncle up and so on. They had an exciting time while I could bake in peace. Dd was much easier to handle since I could nurse her till she's full and sleepy, then bake. If she woke and could not be pacified, I slung her and continued the baking.
I managed to bake 2 batches. The reason I needed so many was due to ds2's birthday party on Sat in our house, then his celebration in church and then at my mil's place on Sunday and then in his school. I counted a total of more than a hundred.
In the end, there were a few that didn't rise properly, and at least a dozen that got eaten up in a hurry by people who were in my house that day - part time cleaner, the boys, Dh, my mom, my mil... Myself, I couldn't stop eating too, but at least I ate all the "spoilt" ones.
So the only celebration that can be sacrificed was the Sunday school one. I let him bring 3 for his teachers and his friends had gummies instead. Cos the birthday party at home overlapped with the Sunday school one somewhat, with the guests at our home his closer friends in Sunday school anyway.
Then, because his school was closed for HFMD and then it was yet again postponed, the bday celebration in his school became just a song and him giving out all the goody bags. We didn't bring the cupcakes to his classmates, which was a pity cos I even made a special cream cheese icing for it and bought ice cream cones.
I planned to place the cupcakes into the cones to "act" as choc ice cream and use the white icing as the "cream" and sprinkle some "hundreds and thousands" on top to make the whole thing look like ice cream cones.
ds2 was duely dejected but it turned out his teacher was the most disappointed. She sent me an sms saying she was so looking forward to it because it was seldom that the kids parents would do the celebration themselves. She said most of the kids had entertainers come in for the celebrations.
We told her we were planning to go and play games with the kids ourselves and Dh would bring his guitar, strum and sing the birthday song together, plus also play some music activities with the kids. And I would let the kids decorate their "ice cream cones". We had some fun things planned indeed, but there was no choice.
The principal was so apologetic towards us (because we couldn't hold the celebration properly) that she bought a Thomas Tank Engine toy and a lollipop for ds2 there and then. I knew cos he said Ms N walked with him to the 7-Eleven to buy the lollipop and let him choose the watermelon flavour.
His teacher gave him a fairytale treasury collection. A set of 4 books that are beautiful and very good for parent and child to read together.
ds2 didn't mind so much I think, since he had the home party already. He's after all closer to his church friends than his school mates.
rainbows every day, do not worry for the morrow
____________________________________________________________
