Friday, September 12, 2008

Ellie's birthday

Last week, we celebrated Ellie's 3rd birthday. If you include the day she was born, Ellie has now had 4 birthdays on 4 continents. She was born in the US, celebrated her first birthday in Dohot, her second in Paris, and her third in Perth. Next year, we may fly to Thailand or Bali or somewhere fabulous in Asia just to keep up the trend. Of course, she will resent all this when she's 16, can't remember most of these places, and only stays in one place since by then we will have long since stopped moving around so much.

Since our things will not arrive and clear customs for quite some time yet (we're guessing mid-October), we ordered a cake from the local bakery--a first in our house because I'm such a baker myself. Ellie couldn't have been happier. The bakery made her a ladybug cake!


She woke up on her birthday to find balloons tied to her chair (and if you have been reading this blog for a while, you know all about Ellie's undying love for balloons) and three presents waiting for her to rip open.


It was a big day! The balloons alone would have done it, but presents are always fun and the cake....ooo, the cake! We are so lucky to have friends here already. We knew a family in New Orleans who moved here three years ago. They have two little girls too, and they shared cake and ice cream with us that afternoon.


To enjoy the birthday-in-Australia thing, we drove out of the city to Whiteman Park (about 30 minutes away). Whiteman Park is a large nature preserve, and there are signs warning about kangaroos in road. Inside the park is an animal park where you can meet indigenous animals up close. We thought Ellie would love to meet some kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, what-have-you, so off we went! We got a bit lost along the way due to a poor map, so our drive took longer than we'd hoped. By the time we parked the car, Ellie was desperate to get out. The car park was next to a playground, and she zeroed in on that with no intent of doing anything else. It was her birthday, so we let her choose. The playground had a bouncy castle and little cars she could "drive" with Papa's help. We didn't see any animals at all, but she had a blast!

4 comments:

Karly said...

Looks like so much fun for Ellie! I would love a ladybug cake too :) And yes, you should definitely keep up the trend of traveling somewhere fabulous each year...if she resents it later because she can't remember, it will just be incentive for her to travel a bit herself when she's old enough to do so! At least she'll have the pictures to prove that she's been to all of these fabulous places. And as for you mama, how does it feel to have a three year old?!

Anonymous said...

A Ladybug birthday, how fun! I know that I have a ladybug birthday in my future as the second niece has been affectionately nicknamed "Ladybug" by her father. Although these days we are calling her Rocky because she's an aggressive non-walking little cuss...

Only you could move to a place, and find people to have a birthday party for Ellie! I'm so impressed. I would be still be looking for housing at this point, if I were in a similar situation. You ability to get things done is amazing to me. I did think about her birthday! So Happy belated birthday Ellie! It sounds like you had a fun day.

Take care,
azure

P.S. Karly do you have a magnet or something that lets you know when Jennifer posts? You are so good with the comments!!

Karly said...

Oh, quick question for you...I was looking at your post again and noticed you said that you ordered the cake since your stuff hadn't arrived from customs yet and probably wouldn't for quite a while. So, what do you have there with you? Did you only leave stuff you couldn't live without to be shipped and have to clear customs? Or are you going without a lot of stuff? How does that work? Inquiring minds want to know!

Karly :)

P.S. Azure, you guessed my secret!! :) No, really I just check the blog every day, sometimes twice to see if something new has been posted (because there's such a time difference)...I'm slightly addicted to the Dipe Squad!

Anonymous said...

Happy Belated Birthday precious Ellie (and happy early birthday to wonderful mommy)!! I've got a package ready to go, but you know me - packages are always belated. All the more to look forward to right?! I would be super excited about my birthday with a fantastic Lady bug cake like that!

Love you guys!