Three Kids and A Dog: SURPRISE!

You can tell a child is growing up when he stops asking where he came from and starts refusing to tell where he is going. ~Author Unknown

Rachel is turning thirteen in three days’ time. That makes me a proud mother of a teenager!

The pace of life is getting too fast and furious that we seldom have time to sit down and reminisce over a cup of tea. There are more things to accomplish now within the same limited time. Funny how it applies to our economy now; there are more costs now despite the same miserly income.

However, my kids always surprise me in their own wonderful ways. Through good times and bad times, their unconditional love for me never wavers and ceases to grow. I can’t imagine how I would be able to pull through without their utmost understanding and sensitivity to my needs. Recently, they have a new growth in faith which I believe will strengthen their characters and direct them to a more meaningful life. No matter the steps they make are micro-steps or leaps and bounds, it’s definitely a step towards the right direction. There’s nothing more comforting to a mother’s heart than knowing that the seeds that were sowed are budding and growing healthily. The process may not be easy at times but that doesn’t diminish the joy of watching them happy and contented.

To repay them for the wonders they are doing for me, I have a few up my sleeves whenever the opportunity allows. Hence, Rachel’s birthday should never be let to slip away quietly.

The idea of throwing a surprise party for Rachel popped up when I discovered that Mervin and Angel will not have to attend school for these two days due to PSLE marking days. As Rachel is no longer under the privilege of Primary class, she still had to sit for a paper in the morning and will reach home slightly after 11am. The cogs and wheels in my brain started turning as I disclosed to Mervin and Angel of my holy plan. Both of them could not pass on the idea of a swinging good time. Even when there’s only less than a week for the preparation, nothing could deter our determination to literally give Rachel a SHOCK of her life.

In spite of having only a couple hours of sleep due to my diligence the previous night, I had to wake up a few minutes before eight with the incessant naggings from the two agitated chimps. For every five minutes I laze in my bed, they would give me a ten-minute lecture on the scarcity of time available for us to carry out our mission. I would have love to remind them that they had retired to bed exactly eight hours ahead of me to have the abundance of energy. But a look on their enthusiastic faces; not that I could see much with my three-quarter-closed eyes; I decided not to shower their excitement with cold water.

The layout for the plot was carefully arranged. Mervin and Angel meticulously cleared the living room table of any excessive ornaments save for the cordless phone as the centerpiece on the table. I vacuumed the place, wash the over-night dishes and unearthed the loot of party favours from the big box in Mervin’s room. We had bought the snacks and drinks two days before and kept them hidden from the unaware victim till this day. We spread the table in Mervin’s room, the place where Rachel will be assassinated.

Two hours had passed and we barely had time left to gather the last few necessities for the party. The tubs of ice-cream, which we didn’t manage to get with the snack as we were extremely overloaded; and the most important thing of all, the Birthday Cake. Mervin and I set out for the race against time while Angel stayed on the base to report us of any mishaps.

Getting the ice-cream was a breeze since we already had on mind which flavours we would be getting. Although there was some last minute struggle with the brands and prices, we finally settled for two tubs of Häagen-Dazs ice-cream – Chocolate and Cookies’n Cream. Forget about the recent melamine scare. We, the Yap family, are not easily intimidated. We are prepared to lay our lives before the tubs of incredulous ice-cream.

Next was the cake. Mervin and I chose an all-time-favourite black forest cake and I flashed my NETS card to make payment.

“Erm… I’m sorry but we don’t accept NETS here,” came the apologetic response from the cashier.
What? With minutes but no cash on me to spare, I had to look for an ATM machine to resolve the situation. The nearest one just outside the mall had just flashed me a “This machine does not dispense cash” message a while ago. That means, I would have to venture further down past the interchange, across a couple roads, to make a withdrawal. Dumping Mervin at the counter there as hostage, I made way to the ATM machine and back in a record less-than-ten minutes’ time. I swore I’m going to make the cake worth the extra trouble it took me.

“Mum, we’d got to hurry! I just saw a few of Sis’ schoolmates entering the mall just now!” exclaimed an exasperate Mervin when I reached the store to redeem him, I mean, the cake.

“Are you sure? That means she must be on her way home already!” I gasped.

We made payment and rushed to the taxi stand in lightning speed and hopped into a cab, only to find that the journey back was a crawl.

“Do you think we can ask the driver to speed up?” Mervin whispered.

“I don’t think so,” I replied. It was not as if we were in a life-or-death situation.

“But that was what I always saw in the movie,” Mervin mused.

I could barely contain my laughter and wondered if the driver had overheard us. If he did, he certainly didn’t do anything to speed things up. Even when we reached base, he took his own sweet time to dig out loose coins for my change! Most of the time, I would happily tip the cabbie by asking them to keep the change. But this cabbie was really not in my good books today. I sat in the cab patiently while watching him reached into his pocket for his sweet little purse and fished out the two coins for me. His rheumatism must be acting up real bad since it was almost a full minute before I could step down from the cab.

The moment we stepped into the house, we had to tie things up in whirlwind speed. Angel locked all the other bedrooms’ doors so as to lure Rachel to her execution ground. Mervin popped the ice-cream into the freezer. I set up the DVD player for showtime later on and proceeded to get the cake ready. I had just managed to lay the cake on the table when we heard keys turning at the front door.

“Mummy, faster! The candles!”

I shoved the candles into the cake carelessly and lit them up as fast as I could. Thank goodness there were only four instead of the initial thirteen I had in mind. We could hear her attempting to open my bedroom’s door outside. We each held a popper aiming at our door’s entrance. She could be approaching any moment now!

A couple of minutes passed and we got worried. There was no sign that she was coming to our door. Mervin, Angel and I eyed one another nervously and I made the decision to bang a fist on the door. That attracted her attention, though she told us later on that she had thought that it was the dog accidentally knocking something over!

She opened the door, with the intention of convincing the dog to stop pacing outside, only to be surprised by a prematured popping (by me) and subsequent poppings and streamers by Mervin and Angel.

Mission accomplished!

The rest of the day ended in fun and laughter and songs and cheers and burps and excitement and serenity and fatigue. Let the pictures speak for themselves.

Let us help you with cutting the cake!