New Zealand Adventure: July 2014

The day before my birthday the three year old and I made my birthday cake. We made a funfetti cookie cake (http://sallysbakingaddiction.com/2014/05/12/funfetti-sugar-cookie-cake/). If you look at the link you may notice that the cake has typical sprinkles in it but because I was making cake with a three year old ours had love hearts and butterflies in it. We also made Fourth of July hair ties for the girls and myself.
On my birthday I woke up not feeling super great. All of the kids had been sick and I was lucky enough to get it. I was hoping that it wouldn't be too bad though. It is important to note that the Sharps are big celebrators of birthdays. On my birthday Tanya took me and our neighbor into the city for lunch. She had to stop by the architects first so I went to a nearby cafe and got some coffee and a slice of almond and lavender cake (yummy!!!). We had dropped our neighbor off for a hair cut but picked him back up on our way into town. Then we went to lunch at Miss Clawdy (http://www.missclawdy.co.nz/). Miss Clawdy is a southern food restaurant. Tanya got champagne for the table and we shared gumbo and a quinoa salad. I also got a cuban pork belly po' boy. It was so tasty!
When we got home I made a valid attempt at making icing for the cake but it turned into an enormous failure. I essentially made a pot of solid sugar/butter stuff. Generally gross and not edible. I also made the fastest sugar cookies ever. Tanya has used instant sweet crust for sugar cookies before. It is genis! I made stars and rectangles (to become American flags for the Fourth of July). Then I took a nap as I was feeling a bit yuck.

Me and my cake.

When I woke up from my nap I felt even worse than before so we canceled dinner out. The kids got fish and chips and I made some Mexican style soup for the adults. The cake went over really well with the kids. Each kid made me a card which was super awesome! Tanya got me chocolate/peanut butter themed gifts. She some how managed to find Nutter Butters here. They also got me some beautiful black boots!!!!!
On the Fourth of July Tanya let me sleep in instead of getting up and working which was good because I felt awful but also bad because I didn't get to encourage the kids to be super patriotic (do I have to qualify that as American patriotic being as they are Kiwi's?). I had planned on theming their lunch boxes for the Fourth of July but due to being sick they had normal lunches and not awesome themed lunches.
The evening of the Fourth I went to a party through the America Club here. They had a dinner, music and quiz thing. I went with two other American au pairs, a German au pair and a Swedish au pair. It was nice to get out of the house and see people. The music was very American. I hadn't realized how many songs I don't hear here until I heard them. The dinner was really good as well. I had a BBQ pulled pork sandwich. The dessert on the other had was not up to par. We had apple pie which came with chocolate ice cream (what?) and it didn't have cinnamon in it. What was that crazyness!! I left pretty early because I didn't feel well but I had a great time.