So Jay’s turned 8. Which seems strange to say because he’s exactly the same as he was when he was 7. Okay, he’s changed a lot in the last few years. How could he not? He’s getting bigger and learning more and maturing. But on a daily basis, we don’t really notice those changes. It’s only when we look at how our kids are different than they were a year or two earlier that we really notice how they’ve changed and grown.
Not that that is what I’m writing about today, but it seemed the right way to start. What I am going to write about is Jay’s birthday. And more specifically, how we celebrated it.
He decided he didn’t want to invite a lot of friends for a party, just his 1 best friend (who we’ll refer to as R for simplicity sake). As his birthday fell on a Monday, which was a school day, we (as a family) decided to have his friend over on the Saturday before. Since they both have lessons on Saturday morning, the boys and their Mummies (that’s the English English spelling I’m using cause that’s how we always spell it) met after their classes at a nearby mall and came home together.
Once they got home, the ladies set up camp in the kitchen, and I got locked in the bedroom (not literally but Jay did tell me to go in there and not come out) and the boys proceeded to demolish the house. Or at least did there best. Fortunately the walls were stronger than them, but not by much.
For afternoon tea, they had Indonesian fried bananas, and Jay delivered a plate of them to me in the bedroom (he seriously didn’t want me to come out). I’m going to mention the other foods they had here because if I don’t I won’t be able to concentrate on anything else until I do. As well as the fried banana, we also had a banana cake that Jay made the night before, which stood in for his birthday cake. They made pizzas for dinner, completely from scratch (meaning they actually made the dough and everything), which is one of Jay’s favourite things to do. Jay likes pepperoni and R likes Hawaiian, so they made one of each, which turned out to be more than enough for the 5 of us. For dessert they made a massive chocolate chip cookie. It was from a packet and supposed to make a dozen or more smaller cookies, but someone (aka SO) decided having one big cookie would be better. It didn’t turn out the best, but it still tasted good, and we had it with ice cream.
Okay, enough about the food, although I am strangely hungry now. And yes, that was all the food we had. There were no sweets/lollies/candies, whatever you want to call them. Jay didn’t want them and Asians don’t seem to do that as much as us Westerners do. Or maybe that’s just my wife and her family. Either was Jay isn’t a big sweet eater anyway, so he wouldn’t have enjoyed any more sweet stuff, and I would’ve been the one to eat it in the end.
Anyway, the rest of the time Jay and R spent running around playing games, playing with the PS4. And one of SO’s nieces is staying with us, so she got stuck playing hide and seek with them for an hour or so. I don’t think she’s read the article I wrote about playing hide and seek with Jay.
And that was it for his big 8th birthday party, but we couldn’t do nothing on the actual day. So we secretly ordered KFC for Monday dinner, and actually had it delivered and sneaked it onto the table without him even noticing. Which was a feat in itself since he was sitting on the couch playing his new PS4 game (one of his presents) with me. which is right in front of the door, and he was well aware when the door bell rang. I’m still not sure how SO got the food past him without him seeing.
For dessert we had Kueh Lapis Sagu as can be seen here, which is an Indonesian cake and one of Jay’s favourites. Unfortunately the Kueh Lapis I like is this one, but it was Jay’s day so we had what he likes.
The important part is that Jay had a good time, and I’m pretty sure we made it special for him.
