Tobias is 9!

Oh my… this is cliché but time, indeed, has flown by!

My little boy is 9 today! As a good friend said, we are at the halfway mark; another 9 years and he would venture out into the world on his own. Or at least that’s what people tell me will happen… i don’t know if i will be ready by then, or ever ready for that moment at all. But that’s not what this post is about. This is about celebrations, celebrating 9 wonderful, funny, frustrating, amazing, confusing, loving, scary, heartwarming years of having him in our lives!

This year he asked for cake-pops as his birthday cake. So off i went to research and make these little lollipop-looking cakes which are oh-so-adorable but time-consuming to make. (Last year’s cake was cake-in-a-cone.)

Here’s the process and final results in picture summary:

Basically i baked a cake (i cheated and made one with out-of-the-box mix), crumbled it, mixed in icing, rolled the mixture into equal sized-balls, refrigerate it, dipped into chocolate and decorated it. i followed this recipe and this recipe. It took time but it was quite fun to make. i will make them again if an occasion calls for them.

Then there was the birthday party with his friends. This year we had it at the Armoury Museum in Solothurn (Altes Zeughaus). i was a little anxious as to how the kids would react as not all are interested in suits of metal and swords. But it went well.

We had to move our party from the Wednesday to the Friday cos there was another party which half the kids Tobias invited (and Tobias himself) were also going to on that same Wednesday. It turns out the Friday before a long weekend isn’t a good idea either, we only had 6 out of 10 guests make it. It was ok. The smaller group worked out well.

The kids got to listen to some interesting stories and facts about armour and how they came about and what they were like at the beginning. They asked questions and voiced some of their own ideas about armour. Then they all took turns to try on an actual suit of armour. All of them complained of how heavy it was and could not imagine how knights could walk in those, let alone fight.

Of course, we saw lots of different types of armour and weapons.

Then the kids set about making their own cardboard armour. They worked really hard on it.

They weren’t quite finished but it was time for cake and presents.

The wonderful museum lady read us a knight story (Tobias got to pick 1 of 3 stories) while we ate the cake the museum made (a simple chocolate sponge cake with a thick layer of chocolate cream on top).

Then they got to put finishing touches to their armour and here they are, knights battle-ready 😉

All in all, it was a nice little party.

We also had our little celebration at home, just eating the cake-pops and taking our annual birthday shot:

syc