On Friday we had Eliana's birthday party. It's our "day off" so we had our American friends over for a party. It was a princess party, so we found this cute princess dress for her to wear. She LOVED dressing up like a princess. We found a tiara too, but she isn't wearing it in this picture.
There are 5 kids on our team and two of them are babies, so I gathered a craft to have the kids make. I found these wooden wands at a craft store, so I bought glitter glue and stickers and rind stones to decorate them with.
Eliana wanted a chocolate cake for her party. So I baked this cake and decorated it with pink icing and a cute tiara. I even found some edible glitter, or shimmer dust, to sprinkle on the top of the cake.
Eliana is pretty shy. She wasn't so sure about everyone singing to her, but I was able to get this quick shot of a half smile while we sang to her with her candles lit.
She got lots of good toys and everyone stayed at our house for 3 1/2 hours talking and enjoying time together. It was a really good day. At the end of the day I realized how much Cinderella stuff she got. She really loves the movie Nana got her, and now she has the Cinderella barbie and the Leapfrog Tag book too!
Then on Saturday we had a "party" for her at school. Her teacher told me they only do birthday parties on Saturday instead of the other days. Not exactly sure why, but it was ok. We had a busy last couple of weeks, so it gave me a little more time to get things ready. I made strawberry cupcakes with vanilla icing.
Since living here we have come to realize how much flair and glitter that Arabs like to celebrate with. Their weddings and parties have fireworks and lots of music and dancing. The Christmas decorations are super glittery and sparkly. And the birthday candles and kinda like small "fountain" fireworks. When her teacher put this candle in her cake I was a little unsure if Eliana would start to cry, but her teacher ensured me that every child has this when they have a birthday, so she sees it a lot. They turned out the lights and played the loud Happy Birthday song, which you can listen to here.
I think the cupcakes were a little (okay, a lot!) sweeter than the kids were used to, but they seemed to like them. They don't have a lot of really sweet sweets here.
Here is Eliana and her best friend, our teammates little boy.
The kids ate pretty fast and it was done and over with in about 20 minutes, and the kids went back to playing.
When we came back to pick up Eliana at the end of the day all the cupcakes were gone, so I'd say it was a hit!
