Birthday Girl

It's hard to believe, but Olivia turned 6 this week.

Her Party week kicked on on her official Birthday on Wednesday when Olivia got to choose where we went for dinner. Luckily for us all, she chose our favourite Thai Restaurant - and we all enjoyed the Chicken Satay, Curry Puffs and Panang Curry. We got home from dinner just in time for Chocolate Log birthday cake - see photo above.

Saturday was quite a day. James had two parties and a sleepover. Olivia had her joint party with Tess and a sleepover. The Adults also had a birthday party followed by a hangover.

Olivia and Tess had a joint "Gymnastics" party. This involved 14 girls (plus Tess's brother Tom) doing Gymnastic type activities for 90 minutes and then eat cake and chips. They all had a great time and even the adults joined in (or at least Emma did when she got the change to dive into a huge pit filled with foam balls). You can see a few photos above - our daughter has surprising skills on the balance beam - must be her fathers genes as Emma struggles to walk on smooth surfaces without tripping up. You'll also see above that once again Emma did a stunning job on the Birthday Cake - this years theme was fairy castles - and the cake was a huge success.

The Adults had a friends 48th (yes, our friends are getting old) party on Saturday night. Everyone had to attend dressed in a typical outfit from the favourite holiday destination, and bring a plate of food from that destination. By Saturday afternoon we still had not thought of anything inventive so we hastily decided that Scotland was our favourite destination (when the sun shines, the midges are not there) so I got out the kilt (which needed two safety pins as I seem to have put on a few kg's since our wedding) and Emma found the most indecently short tartan mini skirt to wear (which I suspect she has not worn since before the wedding). I got creative in the kitchen and decided that Potato Pancakes topped with Wasabi Cream, Cured Ocean Trout and chives was a typical Scottish dish.........if it's not it should be because they were excellent. A great night was had by all....but sore heads were in evidence this morning.

To recover we decided to get out on the water. We spent the day dashing up and down the harbour in the speed boat with Nigel/Helen and Jules/Lenka and all the kids. It cured the hangovers - which Nigel & I decided was due to the lack of water rather than the Beer, Cocktails, Champagne, White Wine, Red Wine and Butterscotch Schnaps. The photo above sees the ladies slumming it on the back of the boat at Balmoral Beach.

So a busy weekend - will be glad to get back to work to have a rest. For anyone in London this week - see you there, I'll be there from Wednesday to Sunday morning.

Ken