Elizabeth's birthday

Elizabeth turned five during April. It wasn't much of a birthday for her as it was during the school holiday but she had the obligatory cake and Sean and I "sang" to her.

I had come armed with a present from the UK for her from Nana and Grandad and she got a few cards in the post as well as a present from my friend Hannah. We weren't around when the postlady came so had to collect it. It took a while to work out where to go. In Parekklisia, as I expect in other villages, the postlady herself retains undelivered mail and we had to go to her house.

For some gifts from us I had success in the Early Learning Centre (home from home!) and Jumbo which is a cross between Toys r Us and The Range. Elizabeth's "main" present was a wonderfully cheap doll which came with a bath and shower (which works) and a small rubber duck, sponge (now ripped to shreds), pretend soap and soap dish and a couple of fake bottles for bubble-bath and shampoo.

I had a rather complicated brief for decorating her cake. It had to have a pond, a flower and a butterfly on it. Hmm. We found some icing and decorating paraphenalia although not such a wide selection as in UK supermarkets. The first snag was that I'd made a chocolate cake and I thought stark white icing would look a bit odd so I attempted a pale blue which could double as sky and pond, but as I spread it the top of the cake crumbled into the icing so it ended up a rather attractive, but unpractical, marbled blue and brown. I soldiered on and made a somewhat unconvincing pond and a not too bad flower, butterfly and sun. See for yourself ...

As some of you may know, Elizabeth has been diagnosed with an allergy to egg white. At her last hospital appointment and skin prick test this was downgraded to "borderline" so as she was keen to try her own cake we thought we'd risk it. Unfortunately the poor girl was sick on her own birthday. Still, she soon recovered and ate ice cream instead!