Erica had a great 9th Birthday and a great Birthday party (one month later).
Cupcakes ready to go to school.
Breakfast made and ready for the birthday girl. Erica requested pancakes with cream, muffins, fruit and apple juice.
Opening presents. Erica loved her presents. Clara LOVED Erica's presents. David on Skype in the bottom of the second picture. He was away on business somewhere but got up very early (different time zone, but I can't remember where?) to wish Erica a Happy Birthday. That first picture is a moneybox. You place a coin on a plate. The box opens and a panda pops it's head out. The panda then reaches out with it's arm and takes the coin into the moneybox and says 'thank you'.
Erica's choice for dinner - BBQ chicken pizza with pineapple and mashed potato!
The birthday cake. During that day I tried four times to make a sponge cake and it kept failing - I have no idea but they all tasted terrible too so I think I might have messed up one or more of the ingredients (given some of them are labelled in Mandarin that is a definite possibility). Luckily, this being China, I placed an order online for a cake and it arrived right after we had finished dinner. Erica said this cake was much better than the one I was attempting to make anyway.
This is an awesome birthday candle. It start like a closed lotus flower. You light a sparkler in the middle. When the sparkler burns down it light candles on all of the petals. As the petals open up the candle plays Happy Birthday.
At Erica's Birthday party. I didn't get a lot of pictures because I was busy running around getting everything organised, but Erica had a fantastic time. We did a traditional backyard Birthday party. I discovered that many children are not familiar with pass-the-parcel or the chocolate game. Maybe those are popular in Australia, but not elsewhere? They liked them anyway (with a couple of comments from American children about it being unfair that only one child would get the big prize in the middle of the parcel ha!). I also discovered that balloons purchased online in China can be very poor quality. We tried to play balloon stomp and everybody's balloons kept popping before we could even start the game - which was amusing in and of itself to the children.
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