Bikes and birthdays and Bambooland.

Bambooland + german book + non-alcoholic beer  = happy birthday

What a weekend. In brief: we had lovely weather, we had a birthday, and Orla learned how to cycle. It was excellent. Stevie's birthday was a big event for all the family. The kids thought that he would really, really love to go to Bambooland to celebrate though they didn't really like when he said that they could sit in the cafe and drink coffee and watch while me and him went dashing about on the climbing things and down the slides. Still we went as planned even though it seemed to be the hottest day of the year so far with temperatures hitting around 30 degrees. Bambooland was kind of cosy, but at least it wasn't mobbed. It is a great place and the kids had a brilliant time there but both Bambooland's in Berlin (Spandau & Steglitz) are a bit out of the way, in industrial areas, so you'd probably need a car, though the one in Spandau is actually right beside a station just along a bit from Siemensstadt which reminded me a lot of the bit in Derby which is totally populated by Rolls-Royce buildings.

I didn't have a 7, but nobody noticed. Or else they probably assumed it's slipped under the copious white chocolate butter icing.

 The celebrations continued for most of the weekend. The cake as you can see above was a delightful concoction, reminding me once again of how much I miss British supermarkets. It's just a regular sponge with jam and fresh cream in the middle, and white chocolate cutter icing (practically ladled) on top (well, I made so much, and I wanted to use as much of it as I could. There's at least the same amount again in that bowl behind.). And then I stuck some strawberries on top. But it got me thinking of how nice it would be to just nip down to Sainsbury's in the car and pick something up in 10 minutes. You could say of course that it's much nicer to have a home made cake, but when the recipient doesn't really care either way, well...

In other news, the pedals for Orla's bike that she got on her birthday finally arrived. Stevie popped them on for her and off they went. Have I ever mentioned how amazing balance bikes are? Well, they are ULTRA AMAZING! I can't even get my head round the fact that Orla just got on a bike with no stabilisers for the first time and could just cycle off! I seem to remember when I was learning that I was probably a lot older and there seemed to be a lot of falling over involved and my dad running along holding on to the thing. Stevie took her out and I popped my head out of the window over-looking the street and there they were: Orla cycling happily away, and Stevie shouting "TURN!" repeatedly to stop her riding into parked cars. I was so proud. She reminded me a lot of myself learning to drive. I found it incredibly hard not to plow the car into anything I happened to look at. Still, in the time I watched her, she only nearly ran down a few pedestrians and just two dogs, which I thought was superb, as when I was learning to drive I did *actually* drive into a parked car and up on to the pavement and into a fence. Thankfully, the streets were dog-free.

That's my girl!

The only sad thing this weekend was that I went out without taking my phone with me, and missed the chance to meet up with Heather from Heather Goes To Deutschland when she was in Berlin this weekend too. bah!