This month we celebrate Becca’s 8th birthday! It’s always an exciting time of year and every year seems to get more involved. For this post I’m just going to focus on Becca’s party and a few of the other things we did to make the month special. In following post I’ll do more about our trip to Siem Reap and a blog about Becca’s accomplishments for the year.
We started out the celebrating with Becca’s Birthday Countdown Calendar which included a variety of things: a day swimming at a special pool in Ban Lung that had water slides, a trip to Siem Reap to ride horses, (Becca saved money all year to be able to do this more in a following post), gifts, snacks, and a few other things.
Becca’s big gift this year was a new bike: with a basket, bell, and seat to give people ride in the back. She is delighted to have a bike that is more her size now.
For Becca’s birthday, she wanted Cheerios for breakfast, hotdogs for lunch, and spaghetti for dinner. We had to move the hotdogs to dinner the night before her birthday, since it was too much to do everything on a Sunday.
We were delighted to have the Carson family join us. They work with the Tampuan and drive out our way every week to go to church, so it wasn’t too much farther for them to come to our house. They had lunch with us and then helped get ready for the party. It was nice to have some extra hands and Becca was delighted that Kathleen and Hannah could come to her party.
The big event was Becca’s neighborhood party. We had a party last year and our neighbor kids have been waiting all year long to do it again. This year Becca planned a horse themed party. She wanted to have a horse cake and make a horse piñata.
The horse piñata was a challenge since we’ve never made anything besides a balloon shaped piñata. We were pleased with the results. (We did have trouble with the rats eating the piñata after we did the first layer!!) Becca spent weeks making all her own horse decorations for the party.
We had about 40 kids at the party, ranging from 1.5 years to 16 years old, plus we had 4 other adults besides ourselves. We’re never sure how people many will show up, since it’s an open invitation. About 11 of those kids were Jarai from our church. I made 48 cupcakes and a small extra cake, not knowing how many people would be there.
We started out with playing kickball. We’ve taught our neighbors to play at Bible Club and it’s a favorite game of Becca. Then we moved on to pin the tail on the horse. Becca designed the game herself. It was really fun to watch everyone play.
Next we did the piñata – which is what everyone was looking forward to. After everyone, including some adults, had a chance at it, I whacked it open. Then I decided it would be safer and happier for all if I stood on our ladder and threw the candy out. Exciting times!
Before cake, we sang the Khmer songs we’ve written for Genesis 1:1, Exoduc 20:3 Romans 3:23, and another Khmer song I’ve written. It was so neat to see our Khmer neighbors and our Jarai friends from church singing together (we’ve taught the songs at our Bible Club and at our church).
After singing we
had cake and that was the end of the official party! Kids stayed around playing until dark.
Then we had our spaghetti supper, did family gifts for Becca and put everyone to bed….except Becca! It’s a tradition in our family to let the birthday child stay up late on their birthday. Becca, Josh, and I played Monopoly until 10:30!
I will admit that Becca’s birthday often comes at a very busy time of year. We were in Ban Lung overnight Friday for the expat Thanksgiving get together. We also had overnight guests in our home that Wednesday. I think I was so tried from doing everything – cooking, cleaning, prepping – that by the weekend I didn’t have much heart for running a party or going to one. Thankfully, I asked several close friends to pray for me and I woke up Sunday feeling more motivated. I was very thankful. The party went well and we were all very pleased. The best part was the Becca completely enjoyed her day and went on and on about how wonderful it was – everything. That made my day! Happy Birthday Becca! We love you!
Becca made a huge clown pinata. We were planning just to have a round balloon shaped pinata, but somehow it evolved into a clown and we were both very pleased with it. Becca requested a horse brownie cake.
We played pin the tail-on-the-horse, did the pinata, sang our Khmer Bible verse songs, and had cake. Our friends brought stuff to face paint and were kept busy the entire party painting kids’ faces or arms. We’re so thankful that the Hodgsons could come. They were a big help with the party and with Clara (Ezra slept through the entire party).
The pictures to the right and left are of our friends from our church.
The best part of the day was Becca’s delight at the end of the day. She was so happy with how everything turned out and that was the best present for me!
About a 20-minute walk from our guesthouse is a huge mall, Terminal 21. The mall is supposed to be a giant airport and each level is set up like a different famous world city: the Caribbean, Rome, London, Tokyo, Paris, Istanbul, and San Francisco (has two levels). The amazing thing is the bathrooms. They are beautiful and each patterned after the city.
