Birthday hijinks

So last week I turned 34. Already! Aren't I only about 24 or so? It was a lovely birthday week - I feel so privileged to have such lovely family, wonderful kids and such nice friends. No surprise party this year, but plenty of other good stuff, mostly just people making me feel all special :)
My actual birthday was on Friday, which was a nice day, Karena stayed over and we spent a fun morning taking photos of me for her to draw or paint (so artistic!) then lunch out as well. Dinner was... Indian of course. What else would I choose? The usual fun and chaos of dinner with all of us out. I had an awesome cake (subtly requested by me to the children many times as we looked through the cake book), an echidna, made of choc chip icecream with choc biscuit fingers stuck in all over it to be the spikes. Yum!
On the Saturday morning, I had heard a whisper that the kids were organising something, which I figured to be breakfast in bed. I was looking forward to the usual soggy cereal and cold toast. My favourite. But it took the kids way longer than usual to make me breakfast. I'd say they started at about 6.45 and it wasn't until 8.30 that breakfast came in. And it was PANCAKES! An amazing stack of 15 fat pancakes, layered with bananas and strawberries and topped with maple syrup and icecream, as well as a banana and strawberry smoothie. Do my kids know me well or what? I was so excited and delighted. They (especially Ryan, whose idea it all was) had worked so hard together. Ryan had organised my mum to buy shaker pancake mix (which he had wisely decided was much easier than to make from scratch as we usually do it), bananas and maple syrup. They had got the electric frypan set up, and Ryan had cooked all these pancakes. He burned his fingers a bit in a few spots, but nothing major. We sat in the bedroom and ate these tasty pancakes, the kids always double-checking and saying thank you every time I offered them a bite. After we finished the pancakes, we went out and faced the kitchen, which wasn't actually too bad. Ryan cooked the rest of the pancake mix (the 15 pancake stack was meant to be all for me, they'd saved some mix to make their own later) and we cleaned up together. It really topped off a lovely few days.
Oh wait, another birthday related thing after that - amongst other things, Paul and the kids bought me a fondue set. So on Saturday after dinner we had caramel toffee fondue, with marshmallows and fruit. YUM! But I forgot to take photos of that. Too busy stuffing my face.
The presents I got were all winners, as usual. I didn't want anything much because I'm in such a non-consumerist mindset at the moment, but the things I got were all welcome. Especially the flights to Melbourne complete with childminding arrangements. Yay! Thank you so much to mum and dad and Nicole and Raff who will take the hard grind of four extra kids while I'm off playing irresponsible single mother in Melbourne. Like I said, I'm privileged to have such fantastic family.



Yay for echidna icecream cake.



Children happily eating curry.



Everyone's favourite nana.



Sibling rivalry is never pretty.



The fabulous pile of pancakes topped with icecream, with the smoothie in its elegant serving jug in the background.



Me eating pancakes. Yes, I am wearing a jumper in bed. It's cold!



The cooks.