Early Birthday Celebrations.

It has been a day of celebration! Val will be travelling soon and the bigs wanted to celebrate their birthdays in advance with her.

They invited her to share a meal of one of their favourite things: 小笼包/soup dumplings. The big ones were thrilled to have a basket of dumplings each to themselves! 

We went for a swim after lunch, had a light dinner of DIY muffin split pizzas, and cut cake! 

"Cheese cake", quite literally. A wedge of creamy brie with 9 candles in it, and two wedges of blue with 7 candles in it. Crackers and a delicious and complementary pear paste on the side. 

Our big girl was overjoyed. After he got pranked with a pile of fresh fruit for a cake last year, our big boy warily asked if it was a prank before tucking into his brie. 

Next and final stop: Movie night and Val's sleepover. We watched the Sound of Music, which had us wrapped up in the feel-good-ness of the exuberant fraulein Maria and her adorable charges. Even our little man, who wasn't sold on the movie at the start, was eventually captivated. We didn't make it through all 2h55min of the movie but the older ones have permission to power through the last 30 minutes first thing tomorrow.

What a day it's been.