Thursday, October 28, 2010
Emily's 1st Birthday!
29-OCT-2010:
Okay, I have finally uploaded all the birthday photos and there's no training today at work, which means I'm free to blog. What a nice Friday! :-) Anyway, I'm not that late. It's only been about 2 weeks since her birthday (12 Oct).
We celebarated Em's birthday on Saturday, 9 Oct since her actual birthday fell on a week day. We contemplated doing a "full blown" party with catering but quickly dismissed the idea because:
(1) We don't really like big crowds and I personally don't like having different groups of friends / relatives who don't know each other coming together. We figured with a huge crowd, we don't actually get to enjoy the party and spend "quality" time with our guests.
(2) It seemed such a hassle. We didn't know any reputable caterers and we had no time for food tasting
(3) We don't fancy a lot of cars coming into our road. Parking is horrible here and we don't want to cause our neighbours any inconveniences
Therefore, we said we'll do several small ones instead. The first one (on 9th Oct) was for Saimun's family and relatives. There were 15 adults and 5 children (including ourselves). Two weeks before the event, MIL had been informed about it and she was excited. However, she was rather worried that I would not be able to handle cooking for 20 people. In her effort to help, she offered to look after Emily that day - asked me to send her over in the morning and pick her up in the evening. But we didn't take up the offer because sending her there and then picking her up would cost me 30-45 minutes and Saimun also refused to do it because he said there was no need, we could handle it.
So on the said day, in the morning, I took Dom grocery shopping as we normally do every Saturday. When we got back, I started working and boy, I can't remember when was the last time I've been so busy! Towards late afternoon, Dom actually said to me, "Mummy, why are you so busy? Are you tired or not?". My boy is so sweet. I really believe he genuinely was concerned for me. :-) Anyway, I made red eggs (Dom painted the eggs), a birthday cake (Dom did the decorations), curry chicken, fish fritters, sausages & cucumbers on skewers (for the kids), and 2 vegetables (one spicy and one normal). And rice. I had planned for enough food for 20 people. However, everyone seems to have this lack of confidence in me, so what happened was at around 5pm, Saimun went to pick up his parents and when he came back, he had bought satay and fried chicken. On top of that, MIL had cooked a pot of pork meat stew and brought it over. The first thing she did when she arrived was to open up my rice cooker and exclaimed, "What a small pot of rice. This is not enough!". So I proceeded to cook another pot. And then, Saimun's aunt arrived and she had with her some jelly that she made and about a dozen buns, which she also made herself. Later, MIL's very close friend (who we consider relatives) arrived and she too had cooked something. Did I ever mention to them that it was a pot luck??? So you know what happened in the end ... we had so much leftover food. The 2nd pot of rice that I cooked was totally untouched as we couldn't even finish the first pot. The following week, I used the leftover curry chicken to make buns and MIL's pork stew for 'pau's. And we ate satay for breakfast. Haha! We also asked the guests to ta pau the food home.
I only remembered to take photos of the food when the party was over, so here are photos of the leftover food. :p
By about 5:30pm, we were all prepared. The food was ready and Saimun together with Dom had rearranged the living room and decorated it with baloons. He also bought a few kiddie tables from Ikea and brought extra chairs from his parents' home. Just in case you're wondering what took me so long to cook to food, my "work" actually also includes tidying, vacuuming and mopping the whole house. And also in case you're wondering what Saimun did, well, like I said, he decorated the room, went out to get party hats, baloons, plastic cutleries, went to Ikea to buy tables and took care of Emily when she wasn't taking a nap. After everything was done, I took a shower with Emily and we both got dressed and went down to wait for our guests.
Emily enjoyed herself very much that night but I have a feeling not as much as Dom. It was clearly Dom's party. Haha! He got a present (from me) because of good behaviour a few days prior and he waited until this day to open the present. It was as if it was his birthday. He played and laughed and at the end of the day, he had lost his voice. Emily was very busy walking around and I was very glad that she didn't seem to realize the house was full of "strangers". She loved her presents (toys) and she roamed around the house just like any of us. She was completely at ease.
The following Saturday, there was another small do with my family (actually just my brother's family). We just had a quiet dinner and the kids played. We had wanted to do one for friends but didn't got round to doing it because it was Dom's school concert and I guess the novelty of Em's first birthday has worn off. Besides, I'm feeling rather tired and lazy. Perhaps I'll get friends to come for Dom's birthday instead. :-) Or maybe a Christmas party. I'll think about it.
The other day, I asked Dom who he would like to invite for his birthday party. He said, "I only want Joe, Wing Sern, Hui Shaynne, mama, yeh-yeh and auntie". "How about your friends?" I asked. He replied, "I only want three friends - Joe, Wing Sern and Hui Shaynne". I asked again if he's sure he doesn't want any other friends, he said no, he only wants 3 friends.
