Birthday Shenanigans

We had a great time celebrating our birthday! This was the first year that Evangeline really seemed to "get" that her birthday was coming and all that it entailed. We'll probably look back on this year as the sweet spot:  old enough to appreciate what is happening, but still young enough to not be greedy about presents. Don't get me wrong, she very much enjoyed her presents, but I don't think she would have missed them if they weren't there. If only it could always stay like this...

Since it was a Friday and school is still in session here, I brought cupcakes over to her school in the morning at the designated time. We did cheery little yellow sun cupcakes:

A container all ready to go!

Evangeline getting a gift from her teacher

The birthday girls

Blowing out her cupcake

I didn't really get what this was. Some of the girls came up for a picture...

...and then some of the boys

I feel silly because it honestly never occurred to me that it would be unusual to bring cupcakes to school in China. But home ovens are rare, and cupcakes only exist at bakeries in expat-heavy areas on HK Island. So imagine my surprise when all the other kids ate their cupcakes with a fork! Eating with your hands is traditionally frowned upon--Joseph has even seen students at CUHK eat sandwiches with chopsticks! Evangeline was the only kid who picked up her cupcake, took off the wrapper, and ate it in the traditional way. I apologized to one of the teachers for not thinking about it, but he said it was a good cultural experience for the kids and for most of them, probably their very first cupcake.

This kid went with the spear technique--smart

Two of Evangeline's besties, Man Ching and Bella

In the afternoon, we had a small party at our place for non-school friends. We didn't really have any other reasonable venue choices--the rooms in our estate's clubhouse are closed due to a burst water pipe, and an outdoor party would have been too risky. Incidentally, it ended up pouring all day, so I was very glad that we didn't try for an outdoor space! So although I hate to be exclusionary, we just invited the friends that Evangeline sees on a regular basis. I did a watermelon theme, which was a lot of fun to put together and made for easy goody bags. Besides cake, we ate watermelon salsa, watermelon wedges, and punch served out of a hollowed-out watermelon--the perfect disposable punch bowl for a small apartment with little storage!

The crew!

Blowing out candles for the second time in one day

It actually tasted like watermelon, thanks to watermelon puree and watermelon Jello

And the kids kept it together for the most part, so us moms could have a good chat!

My favorite thing was hearing the kids explain their homemade cards. So creative and hilarious!

After the party, we were totally drained, so we headed to the local Thai restaurant in the village for dinner. All in all, a great day! We are going to re-celebrate my half of the birthday in a few weeks when we're in Arkansas, because I am too lazy to want to do anything else on my birthday except to make a cake! :)