Helen's third birthday

My small friend Helen 'adopted' me as a special friend when she was about six or seven months old, and has remained constant. A few weeks ago, we were at her home playing on the floor, when she suddenly said, 'Aimee is my friend, and I want her to come to my birthday party, but you are my BEST friend!'

Helen's birthday comes after four other birthdays amongst her siblings - three in June, and one in July. So she knew what birthdays were about, and was looking forward very much to her third birthday. Aimee was in fact the only child of Helen's age who was invited, but with Helen's family, and Aimee's, and us, and someone staying in the guest flat there were 17 of us in all. Quite a gathering.

Present-opening started about half an hour or so after we had arrived. Helen was very patient, taking one gift at a time, and carefully tearing them open:

She seemed to be happy with everything she received, which included a fishing game, some marker pens, some playdough and cutters, some books, some soft toys, a small bear backpack, a doll, and an ingenious table/'microphone' constructed by her brother Lukas.

By the time Helen had opened all her gifts, and played somewhat with most of them, it was time to eat. A leisurely and enjoyable meal, followed by the traditional family singing accompanied by Marie on violin:

Here's a view of the cake the right way up, which was - at Helen's request - a 'hippo-hopamus' on a roof, eating special cake, made by her clever mother. (Inspired by the classic children's book, now sadly out of print, 'There's a Hippopotamus on our Roof Eating Cake'by Hazel Edwards.)

Then Helen was presented with another cake, bought from the local Zorpas bakery, by their guest flat visitor:

She immediately ate one of the roses, and gave a second to her sister Katie. Then she requested a piece of the hippo-hopamus cake, AND some chocolate cake, AND two kinds of ice cream, and then added the final two sugar roses to her plate as well:

I was not surprised that she managed to eat all her dessert, despite having eaten a fairly hearty main course. Helen has a very good appetite. I was, however, surprised at how little chocolate ended up spread around Helen herself. Her mouth and fingers were a little messy, but she didn't seem to spill anything at all on her clothes:

Helen had taken a nap earlier in the day, so she was still wide awake after all her siblings had gone to bed. A nice way to end her special day, cuddling up to her parents:

Then she borrowed my camera, and took this photo herself, of her new blue cat. It was crocheted by Marie - made without using a pattern:

Busy times for Tim

We've got so used to having Tim here for the past seven weeks that it's going to feel like having an empty nest all over again when he flies back to the UK next week. Still, he's been managing to ease us slowly into this state. Last week he was out every morning from 7.45am until nearly 1.00pm. He was a group leader at the local church SU-produced holiday club, 'Mission Rescue' which featured spies, and secret codes, and amazing rescue efforts.

Tim disguised himself as James Bond for the week - he was still smiling on Friday, though his bow tie seemed to have gone a little lop-sided:


(Photo kindly taken by my friend Sheila who had three children attending the club).

Note the secret code symbols in the background. They were pasted all around the walls of the church building for children to de-code.

Some of our small friends locally were able to attend the holiday club, which clearly caught their imagination; Lukas was wearing a different kind of disguise when we saw him on Friday evening:


Tim was pretty tired on Saturday, but there was no time to rest because the inter-church youth group had their variety night in the evening, to raise funds for their forthcoming camping trip to Troodos. Tim was part of the youth group for many years and is going to camp as a team leader, and co-ordinator of the music.

The variety night went well, with a mixture of items, from a skit about 'Veggie Tales'...


... to a newly formed choir, singing with aplomb:


I set up our video camera on a tripod to record the entire thing, but it takes time and effort to transfer that to the computer. So Tim had also asked me to film one item on my regular camera, since it's so much easier to upload. Holding it steady wasn't easy with several small people around me! Elina and Marie are singing 'Phantom of the Opera', with Tim accompanying; they only had a couple of rehearsals but I thought it went very well:

(The little girl doing her hair in front of the camera is my small friend Katie, Marie's six-year-old sister. )

Since I'd deleted almost all the photos from my camera to make room for these videos, I discovered that I still had room for more. So when Tim got up for his solo item, 'These are the things you don't say to your wife':


..I recorded that too:

(For anyone who didn't catch them all, the lyrics are here)

Since that was so short, I also had room to record Tim's third musical item, accompanying Marie in 'The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy'. They had only rehearsed this once, at our house, and perhaps once more at youth group; it's a pity nobody was doing the solo dance, but it seemed to go pretty well:

On Sunday morning there was a holiday club service at the Community Church, for which Tim was playing keyboard... in the afternoon he had a final camp leaders meeting, and then a good night's sleep, which is rather important before youth camp as he's unlikely to get much while there.

On Monday morning, he set off with around fifty teenagers and a few other adults for the Troodos mountains, thus moving us into the next adjustment stage before our nest is once again empty:


- and no, I didn't actually wait around to see them off, or even go with Richard to take Tim to the coach. My friend Sheila who was seeing off two of her children took that photo for me.