Today was a great day – Zen’s seventh birthday! It’s the day he’s been looking forward to it for at least 11 months now. He woke up early, like around 7:15 or so. We gave him his presents right away – it was a picture book of warplanes, also a Bionicle creature. He also opened his present from uncle Ralph, auntie Nicole, Evan and Lauren in Japan, that was another (different) Bionicle creature, great. He got to work putting it together in the morning and I went off to work. It was only a half day, so I got my work done, jumped in a cab, and was back home at 12:30 or so. Ate lunch of Naoko’s awesome scones (see picture below), then went off to Zen’s 1:30 performance. We were five minutes late, and dismayed to see that it started on time and Zen had a song at the beginning! Later on he had his performance (see below) so we didn’t miss the main thing. The whole day of performances was quite bad – they are performing the same songs that kids do in nursery school, and not as well – Zen’s performance three years ago at Kismis Montessori Playhouse was top notch – so we were quite embarrassed for the teachers who announced that the kids have been working hard for three months. It looked more like three hours work. Zen’s class’ performance was pretty good, but some of the kids’ performance consisted of one child making an announcement, then the kids would wiggle through a lacklustre dance performance to some recording of a kids song. I wonder if the kids knew what the song’s lyrics were talking about?
Went home, did some tidying and birthday party prep, then Zen came home at 6:45, then the kids slowly came, then we ate and played and the adults chilled out and talked. The kids started going home at 9:00, and by 10:00 it was just us. Talked to Oma and Opa, then Zen wanted to build another Bionicle he’d received as a present from Kai, but later he felt too tired and just went to bed. Poor exhausted kid…
Naoko cooked some great and yummy buns for our lunch today!!! Scones-like, but with sun-dried tomatoes and olives in them. Awesome!!!
Zen had an awesome Cars birthday cake!
Here’s Peter cutting the cake:
Here’s some video from Zen’s Chinese drama day. He did quite well:
Zen’s birthday song: