post birthday thoughts

it seems it was a good decision to write something ahead of my birthday because now i see myself just writing something about it 11 days later.

if it weren't for the impasse I found myself in my sermon preparation, I probably would not have thought to write something down.

it really is much easier to be a consumer than a producer of things.. but i digress..

my birthday started of much earlier than i expected. i think i woke up in the middle of the night thinking of all the preparations that was necessary for the picnic that day. my main focus at that time was preparing myself for the long drive and taking mental pictures of the map going to blaxland.

thankfully we woke up early enough and packed up all of the necessary toys for Vianca and food for the barbecue. We arrived just in time to be in the convoy going to the venue.

it was a good morning. the weather was cold enough for me to think of bringing my jacket.

we(technically they) started the barbecue around 8am. and the meat just came in until 11am. the outdoor oven was basically on that whole morning. the smell and sound of the meat cooking was great. we particularly appreciated that we had brought in the lamb and chicken skewers. they really smelled good.

we planned for a short morning service. instead we had a shorter prayer and singing time with tokens being distributed to the dads somewhere in the middle.

i got a surprise toblerone from the manly church and an unknown care package (it was really more like a christmas package) as a result of my birthday.

the picnic ended earlier than i expected. we left the venue around 1pm and we were back at blacktown roughly 30 minutes later.

even though part of me was tired and another part was sleepy, i still wanted to go out of the house. but the rest of the family needed to rest so we did.

later that afternoon (after some research and deliberations with myself) we decided to go to westpoint and check out the restaurants. we decided to finally try the chinese restaurant that we deemed too expensive two years ago to try out. of all the places that i could have connected it to, i thought of ho chai lai. (why i thought of this restaurant that was conveniently located in front of my church in muntinlupa is still a mystery to me).

having spent significant money already i thought i would be happy to just take some tea at home. But Lea graciously offered to have dessert at Max Brenner. That was literally a sweet way to end that day.