Tipton's Birthday Party

Tipton had a joint birthday party with his friend, Samantha. Samantha's birthday is April 13th (same day as Lilli's!) Her father works for Alfa Laval. He rented/reserved the gymnasium on the Alfa Laval campus in Lund. It is a great place for a party. We had the entire gym to oursleves. We had the kids play lots of party games, and they also got to just run around (and play soccer, basketball, tag, etc.) For one of the party games they had to break into pairs, and each pair got a balloon. They had to keep the balloon from hitting the ground, and they couldn't touch it with their hands. Tipton and Samantha were a pair:

I love that picture. I wish it were clearer.

In Denmark they don't sing happy birthday. And they don't have what Americans think of as traditional birthday cakes. The birthday cake is actually a pastry, and is in the shape of a person. It is usually decorated with candies (or goodis as they call them over here.) Then, instead of singing happy birthday they count "1 -- 2 -- 3!" and then all the children scream while the father cuts off the head with a large knife. A little disturbing, but great fun for the kids.

Tipton's cake was more "traditional." I made him a chocolate cake (from scratch) with cream cheese frosting, tinted ocean blue. The party invitations were sort of an ocean creatures theme, so we carried that over into his cake... Used brown sugar for the 'beach' and found some sea creature turtles. The "happy birthday" and the number "7" are actually made out of chocolate. Sadly, there weren't enough Ts or Ps in the package to spell his name in chocolate letters, too.

Before we had the cake, we fed them hot dogs, grapes and apples. One boy ate FIVE hot dogs!

Keisuke, Nicolas and Tipton

Samantha, Tipton and Nicolas. I think Tipton looks very young in this picture. Makes me want to just give him a big hug.

Grandma Suzie sent Lilli this shirt. "What's not to Love"

The birthday couple. Tipton and Samantha are going to marry each other. They decided this when they were both still four. They are now seven.

Action photo! You can see that Tipton has already blown out the first three candles.

Daddy and Lilli.

I wish we'd gotten more photos of the kids playing in the gym, but the pictures we did take didn't turn out very well. That's the problem with gyms - they just aren't very photogenic. But it was a good party. Everybody had fun.