The everlasting birthday

Leo's thirteenth birthday has been such a milestone that we seem to have been celebrating it for weeks. We have a "family birthday" and a "friends birthday" tradition. Usually the family birthday is on the actual birthday with just family present, followed sometime later by a hooley for friends. We have ended up having three celebrations over several weeks. First we had Leo's family birthday a bit early while Geoff was here, which was very special. We then had another birthday celebration on his actual birthday. The other day we had his friends around for yet another birthday party. The friends he invited come from Australia, Italy, UK, South Africa and Lebanon.

It can be a bit of a dilemma here, the form that a birthday party takes. It would be possible to get into keeping up with the Joneses. For instance, the most recent birthday party that Leo went to involved going down to a resort, staying overnight in a villa by the sea, and included activities such as quadbike riding around the dunes. We settled on an "at home" celebration, using the perfectly wonderful facilities we have at our compound. The programme for the day was 3.00 start then games by the pool (Blondes vs Brunettes - kids divided randomly no matter what their actual hair colour), swimming, dinner by the pool, DVD in the compound cinema, back to our house for birthday cake then pick-up at 9pm.



The Skittles were duly transferred between cups. The Blondes won by a long shot.


Robbie's chocolate eating prowess was frightening to behold. You roll a six with a dice, put on a hat and eat as much chocolate as you can with a knife and fork before someone else throws the next six.

Here's the birthday boy, starting to look very grown up all of a sudden.

I got carried away with the birthday cake - it was nearly as big as our table (slight exaggeration) - Leo's favourite "puffy-up cake" (sponge cake) with strawberries. I ordered it from a bakery and it weighed four kilograms. We sang Happy Birthday, cut the cake and I raced some huge chunks of it off to neighbours to share.

It went well. Three friends stayed over. They are all lovely kids. Leo got given lots of money. He thinks he will buy a new mobile. I think the teenage years have started.