My baby girl turned 5 today - oh my goodness.
So with much planning - almost military grade, we organised a party for her and and her school mates, along with Ollie and a couple of his 'keep him company' pals.
I think it went very very well.
Thanks to my Mary and Ollie for helping with organising and planning, invitations, etc. and to Glenda for being food collector and deliverer. It went very well. What did we do? Well it was such a mixed bag of 4-5 year olds from English to Japanese, to Chinese, to Singaporean, to Indian, to Australian and beyond - a complete mixed bag.
Almost sounds like the start of a joke - there was an Australian, Englishman, Japanese etc that walked in to a party ...
Anyways the common theme was that they were 4-5 years old, and therefore would also likely have parents stopping over not doing drop off. How to entertain them all, what could we do that's different to previous birthdays, how do we keep 4-5 year olds entertained for 3 hours.
'PING' - goes the lightbulb!
I know - LONGKANG.
Now you would have seen previous blogs for the trips we have already had there. What a great idea thinks me and Mary - EVERYONE will be entertained from 4-5 to 45.
Yes we were right.
Armed with;
- plates,
- cups,
- cutlery,
- goodie bags,
- towels,
- change clothes,
- crisps,
- snacks,
- eski,
- drinks for kids,
- wine for Mums,
- beer for Dads,
- etc. etc.
Woo Hoo we are set - we're ready to go go go. Party is sorted and we're looking forward to it - a relaxing Friday night ahead of the party - ahhhh, sigh.
0600 - what does the 0 stand for; "Oh My God!"
Thunder, lightening, rain, same at 0700, same at 0800, off to shops in the rain at 0900 to get few final bits and party starts at 1000. From about 0800 I start getting SMS from the Longkang owners and party attendees - is it still on? What's the back-up.
Er back-up is bring an umbrella and a towel. Yes I views of the above in my head. Oh dear.
But luckily we ignored it all. Nothing will deter us and even some encouraging messages came from Amy's school friends Mums and Dads - "we are undeterred", "we're coming still", "see you there anyway" - WE"RE ON STILL!!!!
As luck would have it - Amy decided to wear her rainbow dress and guess what happened, yep the sun came out, the clouds dispersed leaving a beautiful Singaporean afternoon of about 35 degrees and 90% humidity. Ha Ha! Yep it was SO hot and sticky at the start when we were getting things ready - table layouts, chairs, food etc.
So yours truly looked like he had jumped in the longkang pools (yes a clip below from the classic film, Airplane. At one point it was so hot I was sweating from my elbows - is that normal???
Once the fans had dried out (yep it had rained so so much they had got sodden with water and could not be switched on) - and got swinging away it cooled right down massively and everyone was in chilled environment. So drama gone, let's concentrate on the party party party.
We'd booked from 10-1300 so we could have the kids lunched as well as having fishing fun. What was really nice about this was we had people coming throughout the 3 hours and even extending beyond that - I think we finally left at 1500 - yes 5 hours there. Shows you how easy it is to entertain. So how did we do that;
LongKang - for the 4-5 year olds. For those of you that don't remember, or have not seen the blog before - LonKang is Malay word for drain. When storms happened in Malaysia the drains would fill up and the kids would go armed with nets to catch the little fish and keep them in jars. Well that is now here in Singapore but a little more "staged" with little ponds full of guppies and the like as you'll see below. I tell you what, you want to keep 25 five year olds entertained for 3 hours - this is one way to guarantee it. Not once did we have any crying, moaning, complaining, boredom, requests for iPADS. We had about 40-50 kids/adults of different cultures all playing and chatting together - enjoying family time - truly amazing. I kid you not - not one request for an iPAD/Game/Mobile in 3 hours! That is saying something. The kids just loved to run around.
Now it is called Prawn Fishing.
Telsla did sneak in front with 5 prawns to my 4.
We then think some kidlet came and had a look in his net when his back was turned, had a 'Greenpeace Moment' and did a release of them all bar one.
So that put me 4-1 in the lead, ha ha! Championee!
All up though we ended up with double digits and beyond, even catching a couple of mini lobsters. All went on the BBQ.
OK OK I know it's not exactly the above is it!
But still very exciting and yummy - a quick rinse, skewer up the bum, sprinkle some salt and jump on the BBQ - done!
And to cook the prawns we did the following ..... (he he)
Mine and Telsa's 'Great White Prawns' (cough cough).
Starting to get busier now, kids and fish everywhere. Plus what was real nice, most if not all the parents stayed on too. Helping the kids catch their fish, having a go at prawn fish, chatting, having a drink. Real nice. We even extended to spa and other activities - carry on reading.
Can see you rainbow girl below? She was having such fun with her mates.
Ollie was allowed 2 mates to come keep him company - so along came Dev and Brendan. Here's me with Dev with a nice sized prawnie for the BBQ. Getting to be a bit of a pro at this now. Even down to using worms for bait not just chicken heart and now ground shrimp powder to add smell to the bait. Wow! We did well on the prawns but read on for some more very exciting developments.
Here she is. Beautiful rainbow girl.
Happy Birthday my darling.
Hope you had a lovely day Amy - it sure looked like you and your friends did!
Now to full capacity - I think at this point Amy had 25 friends knee deep in Lonkang ponds and fish. But look - again they are all 100% engrossed and were for three hours apart from cake cutting, drink breaks, food break - apart from that they spent three hours bent over, net in hand. I bet there were a lot of sleepy 5 year olds yesterday evening!
You know us by now - never ones to conform, adapting the usual, usually late for everything etc.
So in Eurovision Song Contest style we started in reverse order. Yep the cake arrived and was too big from the fridge so we had to cut the cake and sing happy birthday at the start of the party not the end - or the beautiful horse cake, would have ended up looking melted and flat, like horse road-kill not the wonderful creation below.
Hey it worked. Food arrived an hour or so later and kids were ready to stock up again then. So MUCH green food colouring everywhere, beheading and decapitation later we had eaten 'My Little Pony".
Many jokes from the parents;
"any horse meat in that cake?"
"hope no one get's a sore throat from it, as it is a little hoarse!"
"it's like a Xmas turkey cake - we all want a leg"
"just the way I like my horse cake - unbridled!"
etc. etc.
Happy Birthday Amy-Boo
Happy 5th Pumpakinee
Mwah - nice family shot - thanks for snapping this one.
My little family and my little pony he he!
Remember the famous scene from "The Godfather" film. The horses head in the bed.
Well here's our version below.
"Where shall we cut the cake Amy?"
"I want to cut it's head off Daddy" says Amy Corleone!
And she did! Ha Ha!
Beautiful cake, it really was and we absolutely needed it this big as every single last piece was consumed. Food colouring everywhere, at times almost felt like the Indian festival of Holi. Well mostly on me - I was covered!
Cake over kids - back to it, you have a job to do!!!!
Catch those fish.
Not exactly this ...
But once I did get quite a nasty splash of water on my shorts from one 4 year old who was swinging his net around with no consideration. Shocking behaviour!
Ha Ha Ha Ha.
Everyone just having fun!
Nice work boys.
Yes this is all in same place. It's just great!
Check the faces of the boys!
Then in comes Number 1 son with two monsters of his own - each about 2kg - great work Ollie.
Although he was a little scared to hold it by the tail as above he actually decided to use an ex-girlfriend instead. Yes he used Annette (get it a net - dear me why do I bother?)
One of Ollie's was cooked later that afternoon - steamed with some ginger, garlic, spring onion, soy, rice vinegar and stuffed with some lime slices. Very yummy according to the girls and Ollie.
Mary could not wait to grab hold though.
No that is not Mary, she is below.
No I am not saying there is any resemblance at all to Mary, only in the potential the spoken word;
You can almost see the word bubble from Mary's mouth - "mmmmmm, my precious..."
(do you think I got away with that...? Phew)
Sorry hun!
Well when I say relaxation, all you could hear were screams and giggles - as I assume the fish were a munching and were a tickling too!
A little more relaxed than this scene I think you'll agree, but...
I'm pretty certain though that Kenneth and Faith were 1-2 inches taller before they went in the spa!
The morning after.
It's the 28th.
It's official, she is now FIVE.
And look how dark it is in the condo - She was FIVE and what felt like FIVE. Ahhhhhh! Well not quite that early but near enough! Yet more presents from the huge pile everyone gave yesterday!
I am thinking of getting shares in Duracell due to the amount of batteries I am buying, ha ha! I am certain their share price must have gone up 10-20% yesterday - well my bank account certainly went down 10-20%.
Happy Birthday Beautiful!
So my final words.
A massive thank you to everyone who made this weekend so very special for Amy. Thanks for coming and having fun with us, and thanks for the generosity of the presents - she truly loves them all.
So very sorry for those we could not invite, but we had to limit to school friends and 4-5 year old's only.
She had a wonderful weekend turning 5 - as usual the face says it all!
