Yesterday we celebrated our January Birthdays –

Isebelle – January 7th turned 4 years old
Rosie – January 8th turned 12 years old
Malaya – January 20th will turn 11 years old tomorrow.

Isebelle and Rosie wanted to have a cupcake birthday party! Malaya wasn’t too keen on it but was out-voted! So even though we celebrated Malaya’s birthday – she wanted to make sure everyone knew this wasn’t her party!! LOL! She’s still thinking about what special thing she wants to do for her birthday! 🙂

Rosie & Isebelle invited 9 girls from our orphanage and 1 friend from children’s church. Then of course there was the rest of the Castillo kids! The girls arrived at 1pm and the party ended at 4pm. It could have easily gone longer! This was the smoothest party we’ve thrown so far.

1. We started the party off with a coloring competition & face-painting! Susan is a rock-star at painting! Even the adults wanted their faced painted! 🙂 Hannah won the coloring competition! They colored cupcakes and she added sprinkles to hers – was very unique! 🙂

2. Then we played our version of musical chairs. I had printed papers out with cupcakes on them. The children hold hands and walk in a circle. When the music stops they have to find a cupcake picture and stand on it. Whoever doesn’t have a paper to stand on is out. The kids LOVE this game. Rosie slipped and slid all over the floor but she was the ultimate winner!!

3. Then we played a game called Pie in the Face. You have to stick your face through this little opening and you roll dice. Whatever number you roll is how many times you have to spin the knob. You never know when it will happen but at some point after a certain # of spins – a hand comes up and plops you in the head! We put icing on that hand.  Almost every kid rolled a 5 or a 6 and got the “pie in the face”.

4. After that game we split up into 3 groups and played spoons. This was a harder game for them to catch-on to but we had a lot of people to help them!

5. After Spoons they played pin the cherry on the cupcake. Isebelle won this game!

6. Then it was time to eat! They ate Haitian Spaghetti. And BOY did they enjoy that! They had two big plate-fulls of it.

7. After we ate we played cupcake bingo! The children really loved this game! We played until we had 6 winners.

8. The girls really wanted to line dance so we played Love Shack, Cupid Shuffle, Chicken Dance, Whip/Nae Nae, & Cotton Eye Joe! They totally could have danced all afternoon!

9. We had a cupcake piñata full of candy. This piñata was the kind where you pull a string and then it falls. Mikela pulled the lucky string and the candy went everywhere!

10. We started with 140 cupcakes on Sunday but “magically” by Monday afternoon we counted only 129! The children LOVED this activity. They made a cupcake for themselves and put it on the table.

11. We then placed all of their cupcakes together and put a lollipop candle on each one. We sang Happy Birthday to Rosie & Isebelle and they blew out their candles! Then everyone got to eat their own cupcake!

12. Then they finished decorated the rest of cupcakes and put them on a tray. We wanted to deliver cupcakes all over campus! We gave to all the staff homes & their children, the orphans and their workers, the kitchen staff, and our Women’s Bible Study!

The party ended and was a great success!

After all the children left, the girls opened up their birthday presents!

It was so much fun to watch Rosie & Isebelle during their party. Rosie especially. She’s still a little kid at heart even though she’s 12 years old now. Watching her giggle and be COMPLETELY engaged in all the activities made Jose/Me & my parents teary-eyed. She’s been talking about this party all week long and how excited she is that her friends get to be a part of it. Such a beautiful thing to see….