Happy Birthday Singapore! And to Little Edward! And to Sarah!

In patriotic colours.
K's collar was in tiny red and white stripes!

Gosh we haven't had such a busy Saturday in ages!  We had 3 parties to go to, two of which started at the same time at 2pm, and finally a National Day gathering at Noelle's in the evening.  Ken and Yiling had arranged to celebrate Edward's second birthday on National Day since it's a Saturday.  And 9th August is Sarah's birthday which she had boldly decided to do a street party (in true spirit of Sisterhood at church, no less).  Initially we decided to go to two of them but K wanted to see Noelle and friends since it has been sometime since we last saw that group of friends.  I guess it's a good problem to have; an active social life.  Whilst we still can I guess.

First things first.  9th August is Singapore's 49th birthday.  I woke up feeling all patriotic.  It's quite strange cos I haven't felt like that in ages!  I attribute it to Cindy's influence after spending 2 weeks with her.  She is one true patriot.  Last week I made a mental note to order a Singapore flag from Amazon but then forgot to do so.  I searched the house wondering if I could find something with the flag on it.  Something.  Anything.  Guess what I found - a packet of wet tissues which was part of the goodie bag at Singapore Day.  Lol.  Better than nothing, right?

Happy Birthday Singapore!!  No flag but we have wet tissues!

And then proceeded to paint my nails.  I bought a set of dotting tools from Amazon and was very pleased with how it turned out.  Even matched my table mat!

Love this sage green colour

Before the craziness started, we ran some errands on our high street; K needed a haircut and we needed to get some food to contribute to Sarah's birthday party.

Finally we were on our way to Lewisham where the Sohs live.  They had invited quite a lot of guests, including neighbours and friends from Edward's playgroup.  Meaning there were many kids running and jumping about.  Yiling had set to cook loads of food for everyone.  No mean feat.  All Singaporean fare too.  Felt bad that we had to rush off right after the cake cutting and the shot below, because we had to rush off to Sarah's birthday party!

Us with Yiling, Ken and their boy Edward
Looking a lil cross, probably cos we had to leave his party early

I couldn't believe it took us an hour to drive from Lewisham to Canary Wharf.  Seriously the jam on the motorway leading to the Blackwall Tunnel was unbelievable.  In case you didn't know, if we took the DLR, it would take about 15min from one station to the other.  When we arrived at 5pm, there were still people milling about and some guys BBQ'ing.  We had lunch already, so we had a glass of wine each, and some popcorn.  It was nice to see the peeps from Sarah's other group of friends.  Friends whom we know but don't hang out often with, like her housemates for example.

They had tied rows of bunting right to the neighbour's balconies which definitely added some party atmosphere.  The area outside their townhouse, they had tables with food, and neighbours contributed chairs.  Music was playing in the background.  It was pretty cool and kudos to Sarah for being so brave.  She did waver and we kept asking her to "just do it!".  Before this she barely knew her neighbours!  I'm so glad to hear that one of the girls living opposite starting chatting to Kathy and asked about church.  They connected her with Silvia who agreed to bring her to church the next day.  Awesome!

There was no coordination involved here, honest!
So happy to see that we are all in red and white!
Birthday girl Sarah is in the red dress.

With my fav Ecuadorian girl Gabby

So this was quite funny.  It was a very windy day and standing outdoors for a prolonged period of time got us all feeling cold, with goosebumps all over.  And K decided to squeeze into my denim jacket!  I couldn't believe it kinda fit him, only that he couldn't button it up.  Well if he could I would be flabbergasted!  We teased him asking him to strike a pose.  Which he did!  Against Sarah's convertible!

Return me my jacket!

At 7pm we said we had to leave for West Hampstead for our 3rd and final party.  I actually asked K if we can go home instead but he was like "too late!".  We decided to be smart though, by parking our car at Canary Wharf and then taking the Jubilee line directly to West Hampstead.  Which was a smart choice and we were at Noelle's within an hour.  The group had started with the steamboat dinner, again loads of food on the table.  Patriotic Noelle even played some old school National Day songs in the background with mixed reviews; some thought she had gone mad, whereas some thought it's pretty nice to hear them old school songs again after so many years.

We left about 1130pm and finally we reached home close to 1am where we both just slumped on the bed, ready for dreamland.

No doubt 9th August is a good day for celebrations!

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Sunday morning we woke up and decided to have a lie in… and I suddenly remembered Cindy's bottle of kaya in our fridge.

Kaya toast for breakfast