Birthdays and birthdays

I will confess this right now but I write this a little bit tipsy. It was Eve's 2nd birthday last week, is the Boys tomorrow and his parents are in town (a WHOLE different post), so rather than having what I had intended would be a quiet birthday at home I did something a bit special today.

I have always been a bit scathing of the highly competitive mothers in HK who wheel out parties that doyens of Hollywood would be envious of. This has seen us at parties with entertainers (a rather surly teenage princess who looked as if she would be happier in a crack den than with a bunch of toddlers) and ones where the helpers seem to run the show. Not for me I thought. I would bake the cake, we would have something small scale at home, children would not be given any of those stupid party favours that seem to be given out in plastic bags at the end of parties. Oh no, not for me.

Except, my in-laws are in town and I would be an even more evil daughter-in-law (for this is the fate of most daughter-in-laws) if I didn't at least make a bit of an effort.

I think I may have overdone it.

Private room at the rather lovely private island retreat at the yacht club. Free flowing food and champagne and wine for everyone. Balloons everywhere. Lots and lots of children. A vastly expensive cake with a sleeping teddy bear on it and icing saying "Happy 2nd birthday Eve", incidentally which lasted about 5 minutes before an unsupervised Eve stuck her finger in it, leaving something saying "Happy irthday ve". And, of course, every child got a cupcake with an animal face on it. In fact, most adults got one too.

The issue comes that I don't know what came over me. I bargain hunt as a pastime and was debating yesterday with the Boy over ten Hong Kong dollars for some balloons. How, then, did I end up having the type of bash that I routinely criticised in the past?

Answers on a postcard please. Needless to say the in-laws thought it was great, so did Eve and the Boy, I had a great time and already have a hangover even before I have been to sleep.