Adventures with four girls: Meredith turns 8!

Sunday, October 26, 2014

Meredith turns 8!

Happy 8th Birthday, Meredith!

Due to some calendar conflicts we ended up having Meredith's birthday the weekend prior to her birthday weekend. Much fun was had at a swim party at our school for the girls in her class plus a few more of her friends. They swam for about an hour and a half, had some snacks and cake and then had a blast on the school playground - truly one of these kids' favorite spots. The weather in mid-October was still a little warm (mid-90s) but these Abu Dhabi kids don't let the heat slow them down much.

This sweet girl knew she was inviting a lot of friends to her party and said she wanted to do something like what Jane did in Charlotte when she had friends bring a teddy bear for kids in the children's hospital. We talked about a few options and we have a friend at church who has friends who run an orphanage in Nepal. So we contacted them to find out if they were interested in whether we could do something and if so what would be most helpful (books, toys, etc.). They came back and said that they had a need for SHOES for the kids there. So off we go to make that happen. We got a list of the kids' names as well as shoe sizes and everyone who came to the party brought a pair of shoes instead of a gift for Meredith - a couple of kids felt bad for Meredith about not getting gifts and talked their parents into getting something small for Meredith as well so she did have a couple of things to open. She got a lot of enjoyment out of how everyone rallied to help provide for kids who don't have what they have.

Unfortunately our memory card (or camera) is acting up again like it did last year. Reformatting my memory card seemed to fix the issue for a while so I've now reformatted again but to be safe will get a new memory card and hope that fixes it for good. The downside is that we lost about a third of her birthday party photos... The great news is that we got the important shot of all the girls with the shoes that they brought for the orphanage in Nepal and we got a picture of the candle blowing. Whew...


Ack! Just realized that of the photos we lost, we lost the ones of the adorable cookies Fatima made for the goodie bag takeaway. These were the tags we attached to the cookies (from a print yourself shop on Etsy called Print Your Heart Out - the Laura there does adorable work and did the above invitation, too!).

My friend and neighbor, Fatima (also known as The Eccentric Chef) outdid herself once again with an ocean-themed cake. Eight legs on the octopus and eight sting rays for Meredith's eighth year.

Regan helped make some other ocean-themed snacks. This is octopus hummus dip. The octopus is a yellow pepper with sliced yellow pepper legs. We lost the photos of the other foods but we had a "Bucket O'Fish" of goldfish crackers and a bucket of "Twisted Eels" (pretzels) - both served in beach buckets with shovels for spoons. Regan and two of her friends made a beautiful platter of fruit in the pattern of a beach ball.