We spent most of the morning preparing for Sean’s birthday party.

The boys cleaned up the house and backyard. They tidied the patio. Pruned the vines. Swept the paving. Set up chairs in the garden. Blew up balloons. Strung up decorations.

I made food. Lots of it. I made chicken and eggplant curry, roasted turkey, sweet potato salad, an organic bean salad, a garden salad, and sausage cocktails. My dad made fresh satays and homemade peanut sauce, and my mum made an amazing platter of fried noodles.

I love implementing parties. But I’m not too keen on PLANNING them. Pirate theme or jungle theme? What kind of food should we have? What time should we have it? Should we have games? Can the Wong family make it? Maybe we should have it at a park this time? Which park? Will it have a lake? That might be dangerous for the little kids…. it can stress me out big time.

Haha. So in the end, it’s usually the same. Big family bash in the backyard, with lots of food. I don’t know why I bother to stress about it in the first place.

My roasted sweet potato salad with snow peas, sprouts, toasted pine nuts and sun flower seeds, tossed in creamy mild French dressing.

Also. In the afternoon, I brought our boys to another kid’s birthday party. I was considering to skip it, in case the boys got too hyped-up and sugared-up for our own party that evening, but it was for some good friends – and in our household, good friends are treasured.

The kid’s party was held at a warehouse sized, indoor play gym, with lots of screaming kids, party food and face painting.

You’d think that after an afternoon of running, jumping, swinging, climbing and sliding, that my boys would be tired? Not a chance.

My 5yo got his face painted like Spiderman. It COMPLETELY made his day.

I was slightly worried that he would look at himself in the mirror and freak out. But thankfully he loved it.

Then I got very worried that he would come home and throw himself face-first onto the couch and leave face-prints on the carpets. So the moment we got home, I made him wash it off. He looked as if he had a bad face rash for the rest of the day.

We made the kids take a short nap. Then the guests arrived.

We played an egg and spoon race - with these adorable plastic eggs and bean bag egg yolks. Sooo cute.

And we had bean bag races (Sean cheated).

And last of all, I made a pirate ship birthday cake!

It was actually supposed to be a TREASURE CHEST birthday cake. Bursting with gold coins, necklaces and yellow snakes. That’s what I planned anyway.

But as I pulled it out of the oven, I realised my mistake. Damn! I used the wrong cake tin! The cake turned out wide and flat, rather than slim and tall. It was 10pm at night. And after exhausting every possible solution to fix it – I decided to bake ANOTHER cake. But I looked at my egg carton. No more eggs. Damn! I can’t make another cake! Argh!
So the pirate ship was a last minute improvisation. I’m so pleased with it! No food colouring! And I even found a little toy pirate guy in the kid’s toy box.

Sean was very, very happy.

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