Well another year has come and gone in what seems like the blink of an eye! I’m a bit late with the official birthday post, but a certain Master Soren turned 11 in the middle of October and had a fabulous festival of celebration, as only he could. With a birthday party in the last week of school holidays, a lovely dinner out and of course plenty of presents.
He is growing up so fast – not a little kid any more and not a teenager yet. With one of those in the house already, we are somewhat grateful for that! As Soren likes to remind me often, he is my favourite son 😉
Still a lover of getting dressed up, and bright colours, he does look rather handsome in his new birthday shirt. He is often found wearing his suit, vest, bowties or a kilt, just for the hell of it!
Soren has way too much energy and in typcial Soren style, his birthday celebrations were rather hectic and loud!
A One Piece Birthday ….
Soren’s current obsession is with all things Japan and in particular ‘One Piece’, a Japanese anime TV series that premiered in 1999, and is based on a manga series of the same name. There are 21 series (and more than 1100 episodes) of the show, and Soren and many of his friends have been working their way through them.
I now know more about One Piece than I ever care to, but when it came to planning a One Piece birthday party (because that obviously had to be the theme – according to Soren!) it was mostly left to Soren to devise everything from the decorations, party favours, cake and party games. He was pretty pleased with his efforts!
The house was duly decorated with all things One Piece, and party bags assembled with plenty of One Piece themed, key rings, snapbands, stickers and of course plenty of lollies!
The posters got liberally spread all over the house, along with One Piece balloons. Soren’s favourite thing was the One Piece flag that got purchased, by Anto and Soren – and erected on our flag pole (which is used for our giant Christmas light supertree) without my knowledge or consent! Astrid and I were on the same page on this one and were insistent that it could only fly for the weekend of his party then needed to come down……
We did get quite a few weird looks and questions and people drove and walked past. There were a lot of questions about whether pirates lived here. Zinnia would respond with ‘No it’s for a One Piece birthday party of course’ as apparently people should know about this!
….. and the cake and food!
Soren had a few cakes in mind and settled on a fairly simple design with a One Piece Jolly Roger and copious amounts of black buttercream! It did come out well though and our whole kitchen avoided being black – somehow….
The food had to have a very Japanese edge. Homemade sushi rolls of course, with both smoked salmon, chicken and vegan versions. We were also required to make Inari Sushi, because who doesn’t like sweet rice inside deep fried tofu pockets – the only form of tofu Soren approves of!
There had to be the traditional party food of chocolate crackles and a fruit platter, which were of course a hit with the kids!
We also made some hot fried rice in little noodle boxes. These were a hit too, and actually had some nutritional value 😉
On the other hand Soren’s other choices from his ‘Sanji’s One Piece Cookbook’ – an early birthday present had arguably less nutritional value and more effort required. The ‘bread crusts’ which were fried bread coated in cinnamon sugar and served with condensed milk were a huge hit. The adults might have even taken a liking to them. They definitely were not on the healthy list though!
The ‘exploding apples’ were actually not too unhealthy – a chai spiced baked apple with butter and cinnamon sticks.
Soren’s most requested item was ‘Luffy’s meat on a bone’ which were like chicken drumstick/scotch egg arrangement that involved turning chicken wings inside out, stuffing them in various ways and about 4 hours of preparation from Anto. Soren insisted on having them as they were ‘so One Piece’. He was happy with the end result, although they ended up being enormous, in no short part due to our giant eggs from our chickens.
With the additional of some bowls of chips and the number 11 candles we were ready to go!
We’d also brought Soren a One Piece T Shirt as an early birthday present so the birthday outfit was sorted!
All the One Piece obsessed boys love Luffy straw hats, so we made sure we had plenty of them on hand for party games and the kids (and apparently Anto) to wear whenever they liked.
The great hat tossing challenge
After the kids had their first fill of calories it was time for the hats to feature in the first party game, a hat tossing frisbee challenge. Soren managed to get his hat all the way down 2 flights of stairs, but nowhere near the required mark. Some of the other kids got an awful lot closer. It was seemingly not a an easy challenge though……
Even Astrid, who had practiced did not win this one!
There did need to be official measuring though to determine the winner and place getters 🙂
The Build a Boat Challenge
The next game, was perhaps the quietest activity of the whole party. The kids divided into 3 teams and were given a box of items to construct a boat with. They could use whatever they liked, along with glue and sticky tape. The boat had to float in our pond and hold weight. The second part turned out to be the downfall of some teams!
There was some great collaboration between kids, some creative engineering and a lot less noise for 20 minutes than most of the rest of the party.
Each team had to give themselves a name and then their boat was tested. The winning team was the one whose boat held the most weight before sinking. The first boat from Soren’s team ‘The Awesome Swordsmen’ actually was pretty good and held well over 10kg before it sank. The second team (Team Bob) did not manage to float for very long once any weight was added. The girls team (Team Very Demures) was a very credible boat but had some balance issues once the weights were added.
The kids all enjoyed this one, and aside from Anto ending up very wet and a lot of our recycling being covered in tape and glue (and our poor goldfish wondering what was going on) this was a hit.
Pin the Hat on Luffy….
What’s a party without a version of this game. Soren made up his giant Luffy poster, and we printed up some hat stickers.
Older kids tend to be way too good at this game, so we made it more challenging by, only allowing 1 hand (so no feeling) and leading them all over the kitchen and family room with extra spins, before releasing them near the poster. This resulted in our door, curtains and often people getting a hat sticker rather than Luffy.
A winner was eventually declared and the next challenge was to draw a One Piece character. There were some pretty amazing entries. The kids and adults all got to vote and the kids even managed to not vote for themselves!
The cake……..
Finally it was time to get into that cake. Soren, lover of Caramel mud cake had again chosen this as his cake flavour. Although this year it was a ‘Caramilk mud cake’. We opted for buttercream icing because it tastes so much better than fondant.
As predicted the black icing did end up everywhere but we apparently couldn’t have any colour other than black!
It was definitely a loud (why are boys this age so loud?) and energetic party but they all had a great time, plenty of delicious food, with copious amounts of sugar, and lots of fun with all the games.
Plenty of presents
With some time at the end of his party, Soren was excited to share the gift opening with his friends. His party was the day before his actual birthday so these were his first lot of birthday presents, and he certainly got some awesome gifts and was one happy (almost) 11 year old!
All food of Japanese cuisine and too much sugar, we packed all the kids off and had to deal with the slightly epic amount of mess. A couple of hours later the only evidence of the One Piece extravaganza was the flag still flying out the front and some left over party food.
Soren had a great party and was just a tad excited about it being his actual birthday the next day.
….. and then the big day arrived
Despite the fact that it was a Sunday and we didn’t have anything on early, as predicted Soren was way too excited and he and Zinnia were up super early. They even insisted that Astrid, the teenage sleepy-bear, had to get up early.
Soren was pretty pleased with his loot from us. One Piece featured pretty heavily, as predicted, but he also got a lot of the things he wanted for his room – LEDs, a new keyboard and speakers (the gaming set-up is important when you are 11), and of course new clothes.
One of the hit presents though (and one he didn’t know about) was a lock-picking kit, Anto had decided to get him. The kids were all fascinated and spent most of the day training themselves to pick all the locks in our house. So watch out everyone, your locks aren’t safe anymore!
It was finally 8am the exact time of his birth, 11 years earlier. It seems like a lifetime ago but also just the other day!
For the second year in a row, Soren wanted ‘Belgian hot chocolate’ for his birthday breakfast. He is still very annoyed we aren’t going to Belgium on our upcoming European trip. I’m pretty sure we’ll still get some amazing hot chocolates though!
The rest of Soren’s birthday was spent chilling at home playing with all his new stuff (and picking locks). He also had a birthday party to go to for a friend at inflatable world (they had coordinated the parties as this friend had been at Soren’s the day before). This did work off plenty of the sugar high from the previous day, and was a fun way to spend your actual birthday.
Dinner at Lazy Su
As is tradition, we go out for dinner for birthdays. Soren had picked Lazy Su, an Asian fusion restaurant in the city he is quite fond of. We’d been there a bit this year, but it’s delicious so we weren’t complaining. Anto practiced for our Tokyo stop over with Japanese beer and the kids conned a mocktail out of us…..
Of course we all ate too much and with another birthday done and dusted rolled home. A great birthday celebration to round out the school holidays. Well almost, they had a pupil free day the next day, so 1 more chance for a sleep in!
This is 11…..
Between all the excitement of his birthday day, we did get out for some traditional birthday portraits. I do love that the kids still humour me with my requests to take their special birthday portraits. I love seeing how grown up they look every year. Although I know in a couple years I’ll look back at these photos and think how little he looks!
It’s been another adventurous year with Soren. How we haven’t been to hospital for a major injury is beyond us. We joke he should have been born with a box of bandaids. The number of calls I get from the school saying he has injured himself, or days he rides home bleeding from some incident is phenomenal! Again he managed to knock me off my bike this year but having a spectacular pole-related crash right in front of me. All the injuries are mostly caused by his inability to slow down or walk rather than run. Some things never change……
Soren is definitely a ball of energy. He never stops talking or asking questions. One of the great things about the kids getting older is being able to have interesting conversations about things we all enjoy – cycling, science, sport, politics, animals, music and photography are things Soren and I often chat about. I direct him to Anto for car and plane talk.
Soren still loves his pets. The chickens are loved to death and he still adores his Inti (and misses Chimu and our cats).
Soren is definitely all over technology. He knows he has to fix some of my tech related (and cable related) issues for me. We’ve even gotten messages from the school about his ability to get around the school IT security. A fact that doesn’t surprise us but Anto still has his measure, for now!
Soren is growing up in the blink of an eye. Next year will be the last year of primary school. It feels like the teenage years will be on us before we know it. He has a great group of friends and I always get reports of how polite, responsible and helpful he is when not at home. At home he can be pretty good too, although dragging him away from a screen or Lego is sometimes a challenge at this age!
Soren has always enjoyed our travel adventures and is thoroughly looking forward to our upcoming European adventure. He has been lucky to experience some amazing travel in his 11 years and I’m sure his 12th trip around the sun is going to be no exception. The trick will be keeping him uninjured with all the iceskating, sledding and open fire braziers at Christmas markets!
Happy 11th birthday Soren Augustus. Life with you is always an adventure. It’s been an amazing 11 years and watching you grow up and turn into a lovely young man is wonderful. Life without your endless questions (and opinions), smile and cuddles would not be the same!
