A half birthday

A day that would normally pass un noticed but, when you're a December 23rd baby, is wholly significant. This is my as-near-to-six-as-five year old, excitedly trying out her new light up Moshi Monsters scooter, which was presented to her yesterday evening after school, because she's at her Daddy's today, her *real* half birthday. She's got her big sister's 3 wheeled Barbie scooter, but has been coveting a big girl scooter for a couple of months now, and regularly comments on which of her friends have graduated to 2 wheels. She picked this one from The Entertainer website and it arrived on Thursday. On collecting her from school yesterday I did try to convince her that she the big surprise that was waiting for her at home was *actually* that she'd have to clean the whole house, weed the garden and muck out the chickens, but she didn't fall for it for a second.

The half birthday has become a really important event in our house. When I realised that I was going to be having a Christmas baby (well, she wasn't supposed to make an appearence until just after the New Year, but she had other ideas), I worried a lot about what that would mean for her birthday. I remember the excitement of childhood birthdays and - let's face it - adult ones aren't too bad either. Mine is at the end of August, and it used to be the last big, positive event before the doom and gloom that comes from the start of the new academic year. I've always loved planning for my own children's birthdays, baking their cakes and organising parties and buying lovely presents. I was worried that her birthday would disappear amongst the Christmas chaos and would become a disappointment of joint presents and birthday gifts in Santa wrapping paper.

I think we've pulled it off so far, though. A December 23rd birthday girl is actually an excellent excuse to get the grandparents together, exchange birthday and Christmas gifts, and have a bit of a double celebration. So far nobody has given her a joint birthday and Christmas present. I set a budget for Christmas and birthday presents, and make a point of buying her 1 decent gift from this budget to give her in June. This year was the scooter, last year was a Playmobil paddling pool, and the year before that was a lovely Silver Cross doll's pram. Her birthday is still a huge deal with presents and cards and cake and a party food theme of her choosing (last year she opted for an afternoon tea, with lots of little cakes and sandwiches), but this way she doesn't get completely overwhelmed with toys over the space of 2 days. Throwing a party with school friends has been more of a challenge. She had her first one last year and I booked it for 12 days before her birthday, but people were still busy at Christmas parties and visits to see Santa and so on. This year her birthday treat is a trip to Disneyland Paris for the first weekend of December. Funnily enough she doesn't seem to mind doing this instead of having a party AT ALL :)

So there she is, my lovely, cuddly, temperamental, bright, imaginative, hard working, stubborn, expressive little girl. It's all downhill to SIX now!

Sorry for the rubbish photo, but I had to post it because it was all I had and.. today I went to my first ever Clandestine Cake Club meeting. It was amazing! We were only a small group today (this is the third ever time my local branch has met), with 5 cakes and 8 people. But that's still an *awful* lot of cake :)  The theme was Flower Power, but I took an Eton Mess cake. The plan had been to make flower shaped meringues for the top, but I ran out of motivation so I just bought some meringue nests from Tesco in the end. I also at 2 types of chocolate cake, cheesecake, and cherry bakewell cake. 5 slices of cake in less than an hour! Not bad for an afternoon snack! I'm definitely going to go again (armed with proper camera next time) and am looking forward to trying lots more cakes in future. The best bit of the group is that at the end, the leftovers get divided up, and you can take a load home. Not just your own leftovers but a bit of as many other cakes as you desire. It was like a grown up party bag! Brilliant. My girls are going to be in cake heaven tomorrow when they get home from their Daddy's.

We've been very busy lately, with a week's holiday at Camping Ca Savio on the Venetian coast in Italy. It was our first Eurocamp holiday and I'm certain that it won't be our last. I quite fancy going somewhere near Barcelona next time, having never been to Spain before. The weather and temperature were perfect and coming home to wet and dreary England was a real shock to the system. Although all this rain has encouraged my broad bean pods to swell, and on Thursday night we ate our very first homegrown broad beans (and the first produce from our allotment, not counting the raspberries last Autumn). All of us loved them! I do have a LOT of weeding and planting out to do now, though..