Hellobee

For their birthdays last year, both kids had two of their close friends over for a very small party. This year we’ve been much stricter about quarantining, so it was just our family for Olive’s 10th birthday. We had planned for the kids to go on a 4-hour horseback riding lesson, but a big storm forced us to reschedule. I wanted to do something special since our initial plans were canceled, so I came up with the idea to give Olive her first bouquet of flowers. Amazingly the first and only floral shop that opened just before the pandemic was still open. The only flowers available were lilies, roses and carnations, but I think they did a lovely job. Olive absolutely loved it and it was a great start to her birthday.

Afterwards it was time for presents. We got Olive a bunch of small things including candy, chocolate, slime, and art supplies. She loves all things tiny and loved having so many little surprises to open. We can’t get any of these things locally, so even jelly beans and Airheads are a special treat.

I was planning on making some cute animal themed pancakes for breakfast, but the morning was chaotic with our foster kitten that I’m still bottle feeding five times a day, and a new rescue cat we just brought home the night before.

Chili Bean our current foster kitten. We rescued him at 3-weeks-old and now he’s 5-weeks-old.

Chili Bean with Wolfie, who I rescued right after he was born with his umbilical cord still attached. Wolfie is now 6-months-old.

I quickly threw together a typical breakfast, with 10 olives for Olive’s 10th birthday. It’s actually very hard to get bagels here, but someone just started baking them last week. As former New Yorkers, my kids love bagels with cream cheese!

We rescued a 3-month-old kitten we named Cake in July of last year, and fostered her for a little while until we found her a furever home. Cake has had three different owners over the past year as people continue to move away due to lack of work, which is completely dependent on the tourism industry here. Even though we only fostered Cake for a short while, she was one of the sweetest kittens we ever rescued. When we found out Cake’s owner had left the country a couple days prior and she didn’t have a home, we immediately agreed to take her back. She looks just like our other rescue Wolfie. That was a great birthday gift for Olive, who adores cats, and Cake is still as sweet as her name.

Cake when I found her in July 2020

Cake one month later in August 2020

Whenever it’s one of our birthdays or a staff member’s birthday, I always order our staff a bilao, which is a large tray of food. In the Philippines, a noodle dish called pancit is typically eaten on your birthday. This bilao has squid adobo, garlic butter shrimp, lumpia (fried spring rolls), and pancit.

Afterwards the kids had a Spelunky tournament, a video game both Charlie and Olive love. Charlie has memorized the Spelunky wiki, and read books and watched development blogs on it too. We’re quite strict about screentime, so they were happy to have the day off from online homeschool and be able to play video games. They were able to pass levels they never could before so they were quite excited about that.

We had planned on going to an all-you-can-eat Korean barbecue, but alas rain foiled our plans once again as our library started flooding and we had to keep an eye on it. Luckily I had already made seaweed soup, which is what you traditionally eat on your birthday in Korea.

We had an oreo cheesecake that was delivered in the pouring rain. I just added a happy birthday banner and candles to it.

We ate some of Olive’s birthday chocolate and candy, played family card games, and when the power went out at 10pm, there was nothing to do but sleep. It was a simple birthday, but Olive was happy and said, “Thank you for a wonderful birthday.”