Ashley’s Birthday Weekend

Ashley celebrated her 4 year old birthday last Friday (22 Jan) and the first thing we did that morning was to stand side-by-side in front of the mirror to see how much she had grown over the year. She’s only an eighth of my age but turns out that she is over half my height already. I remember that when I was around 12, and about a foot taller than my mum, people used to mistake me as her brother. Not sure if my mum felt flattered (for looking so young) or insulted (for being short), but I imagine the same thing happening between us and Ashley one day. Zhiyi, on the other hand, is trying to delay the inevitable by constantly reminding me to control her food intake.

But back to last Friday, and the weekend for that matter, it was cake and food all the way. On Friday morning, the teachers were kind enough to let us celebrate her birthday at school with her classmates during recess. Ashley had a “princess cake” from Bengawan Solo which, as expected, was pink in colour.

Ashley and the girls in her class, looking very eager for me to get the photo taking over and done with.

And, another with the boys. Didn’t realize that there were two of them hiding behind!

After the cake (and more photos), the kids were allowed half an hour of playtime in the school gym. The school gym was pretty awesome compared to what I had when I was a kid with all manner of slides, see-saws, a foam-rubber-ish running track and other contraptions for the kids to flex their legs and get into fights over (some things never change). And when gym was over, Ashley did another thing that I couldn’t do at my age, wear her own socks and shoes. If her shoes had shoelaces, I bet that she would know how to tie those herself too!

To continue our fun filed Friday, we then brought Ashley to Wild Wild Wet at Pasir Ris, a water-based theme park. Wasn’t expecting much to be honest, but to our pleasant surprise, the park was pretty huge and there were tons of slides for us to try out.

The attraction in the background is called the Professor’s Playground. We spent most of our time there.

That was until we discovered this humongous slide, starting from about 50m off the ground, the Ular-lah, which turned out in the end to be Ashley’s favourite!

Simply looking up at it makes me weak in the knees. That kid really knows no fear!

On Saturday, we had a family lunch at Swensen’s at Vivo City. This time, Ashley had a nice ice cream cake from Angie The Choice. We didn’t realize when we arrived that Swensen’s doesn’t normally allow you to bring in cakes from elsewhere as they sell cakes too, but kudos to the manager for being flexible and making an exception for us!

Whoosh!

To distract Alicia from the cake, Zhiyi resorted to letting her play with her sunglasses.

After the lunch, Ashley opened her presents and received 2 new dresses from her grandparents and Zaccheus’ family. You should see her wardrobe now – I think she has more dresses than her mum!

Nothing like some exercise after a big lunch!

Check out the rest of the photos here.