Happy Birthday Times Five

After baking cupcakes in the morning, the kids were really excited about celebrating the birthdays of five of the children.

In order to give each child their 'moment in the sun' we called them up one at a time to the front of the room and let them hold their own cupcake with a candle. After we sang Happy Birthday and they blew out their candle, they got a special present. 

First up, Chola! He was one of our very first children that came to live here, and in October he turned six!

Beauty turned four years old in October. 

She just couldn't wait to taste the delicious cupcake.

Sandra also turned four in November. I love her lopsided grin.

Nathan turned 3 in November. This is probably one of my favorite photos of him.

Your eyes do not  deceive you.....I didn't get a photo of Moriah yet from our photographer. I'll post her birthday photo when I can. 

Everyone knows icing tastes so much better when licked off your hands.

After eating, the kids had playtime with balloons. You haven't really seen crazy until you've seen sixteen children all running around batting balloons at once. 

One really wonderful thing was when inevitably a balloon would pop, the child would cry and immediately 3-4 children would run to their rescue, offering either their own balloon or getting a grown up to blow up a new one. It was so sweet.

Once the balloon game had wound down a bit, Esther and Christina set up face painting. The kids went outside to run off the sugar and two by two they came in to get their faces painted. 

The girls did a great job doing everything from giraffes, lions & dogs, to super heroes, to flowers and butterflies. It was a wonderful afternoon! 

Once again, many thanks to Gray for taking such beautiful photos.

Exactly One Year Ago: My Heart Just Broke a Little More

Guess the Secret Ingredient

We finally got our gas bottles delivered earlier this week so I was able to bake a cake for Troy who celebrated his birthday in the third week of August.

When I asked Troy what cake he wanted he was very specific: Chocolate with Darth Vader's face surrounded by all the colors.

Colors I could do. The Darth Vader head stumped me a bit. Eventually I came up with a solution. 

I posted a picture of the cake on Facebook and had my friends try to guess what the head was made of. I'll post their guesses (and the correct answer) and see what you think. I'll post the answer at the bottom of this post.

Was Darth Vader's face crafted from: 

a. fondant

b. sugar cookie

c. dirt

d. play-doh

e.cheese

f. melted sugar in a mold

g. licorice

h. jello

i. pie crust

j. gum drops

I will say that it was an edible shape.

Past birthday cake creations of varying success:

Green Lantern

Super hero Clayfist

Girl's cake

Oh, and I kinda messed up this cake. When Troy said multi-colored he was envisioning more aurora borealis. Oops.

By the way, when you're done here, why not hop over to Unknown Mami's and see what all the other ladies (& gents) are up to this lovely Sunday. 

And now for the correct answer!

Drum roll please.......

CHEESE

Did you guess correctly? Thanks for playing this episode of Guess That Ingredient!

SIMC: Birthdays, Birthdays, and more Birthdays!

With 21 kids in residence, it's bound to be someone's birthday nearly every week. We had a team of volunteers out here this week so I asked them to bring a few presents for four of the kids so we could hold a joint party for them. 

With all we had going on we didn't get to hold a proper party but we did serve cake after dinner one night. 

For reasons that I'll have to tell you about another time, our cake turned out lopsided. We began calling it a Dr. Suess cake. Then since we had some colored sprinkles provided by our visitors and it began looking better. Then we pulled out the birthday candles (also sweetly provided by our guests) and by happy coincidence they were perfect for the cake. Starburst candies (also provided by....yep, you got it!) gave the finishing touch.

 Peter was first up--he turns 2 on August 27. He was so excited he kept patting his cheeks and grinning from ear to ear. After I helped him blow out his candle (we lit one for each of the kids), he was presented with the little tow truck from the movie Cars. He loves cars and trucks (I'll have to tell you a story about that soon) and so he loves, loves, loves his new toy.

Denny was next. He turned two on August 11. He was quite uncertain about it all. I helped him blow out his candle and he also got a Cars character. He got the race car--Lightning McQueen, I think.... Afterward he went and sat down and let Nathan play with it. I think all the singing and excitement was a bit much for him.

Next, Elias had his birthday song. For his present, he got a supply of art things--markers and pads of paper to nurture his artistic side. Look at Johnny pursing his lips--practicing for his turn. :)

In the middle of singing 'Happy Birthday' to Johnny, the power went off but we lit his candle, sang to him and then lit more candles so we could see to cut and eat the cake. Just a normal day in Africa.

Now, hop over to Unknown Mami's blog and see what's happening in other cities around the world.

Cinderella's Report and a Winner

First, let's get business out of the way: For my birthday contest I had 18 entries. Random.org's number generator gave me #3 as the winning number. 

That means that Robin is the winner! Hooray! Robin, please send me your mailing address. Thanks!

Now, on to the story of the ball. 

Really, compared to last year the story is pretty tame. The event started on time. It was in the same room as last year (so, pictures were pretty much out of the question due to bad lighting) and there was no real drama.

We were a bit nervous about whether things were going to go ahead as planned (tickets were bought in advance) because the day before the Ball was supposed to take place, Tom received a call from the Police trying to reserve the room at the Lodge. Apparently they had jotted Tom's number down next to the Lodge's name on their papers and mistakenly called him. But this meant that the booking was being done the day before the event! We were sure there was going to be a problem but things must have worked out.

This year we managed to get food (last year the food ran out before we could get to the buffet line) and it was filling. Filling is really all I can say about it although Tom had the best comment: "This food would make the judges on Top Chef cry!" --and not in a good way....LOL

We had a really nice time though. Tom knows many more of the policemen now. He was fairly new to the reserve force last year so this year he did a lot more mingling and chatting. The guest of honor who was the former Provincial Commander for Luapula even called us up to dance with the members of the High Table.

Finally, at 12:30 AM the time came for us to perform our prepared dance. We weren't sure if we'd be able to do the dance at all as we'd forgotten to copy the MP3 file onto a CD and though we had it on my tiny computer and on a flash drive, the DJ had an old system and could only use CDs. Thankfully, he just happened to have that song on CD. 

We chose to dance to No Air by Jordin Sparks and Chris Brown. The second glitch came when the the DJ neglected to listen to our instructions and rather than starting the song at the beginning when we got to the stage he did that fade out/fade in thing so by the time the volume came up on our song it was several measures in already. This kinda messed with our choreography but we managed to pull it together anyway.

Everyone loved the song and cheered for it. I wish I could show you video of it but we had set our video camera up on a tripod--not trusting any guests to hold the camera as they can be pretty enthusiastic in using the zoom button no matter how many times you ask them to just point and let it run. :) Anyway, we had the camera all set up and then just after our dance started, a guest came up to the floor next to the stage wanting to film it on his camera. He even showed it to us when we got back to our table. He was so excited that he had managed to capture it. When I saw his footage my heart sunk. I just knew which angle he had shot from. Sure enough when we played back the footage on our camera this man had stood directly in front of our camera for 75% of the dance. Grrr!

Here is the only good photo we managed to take that evening. Despite the small hiccups we had a really good time. I loved having the chance to get dressed up on my birthday and have fun.

Two days later we had friends over to our house and Jasmine and Summer baked me a chocolate cake infused with an orange simple syrup and iced with orange buttercream frosting. So good! Then we watched The Sting. It was just as good as I remembered and knowing the twists and turns did not spoil my enjoyment at all. The whole evening was perfect. Thank you for all the birthday wishes! You make my life so much fun!

Exactly One Year Ago (yesterday):  The Reason for the Season

A Puzzle and a Prize

Today is my birthday!

To celebrate it the Luapula police force will be holding a ball in my honor tonight.

I'm just kidding. But, the annual Police Ball is happening tonight and Tom and I will be attending. Not only will we be attending but we have prepared a ballroom-esque dance to perform at some point in the evening. We've been practicing hard and long for this moment. Neither of us really have any training and so the choreography might be interesting. I promise to fill you in on all the details no matter how mortifying.

Now, since it's my special day, I want to play a little game with you. 

In April, I bought one of my all time favorite movies but decided to keep it tucked away until my birthday as a gift to myself. I've had it on my T-shirt shelf all these months and have been nearly tingling with anticipation as my day drew ever closer.

This movie stars Robert Redford and Paul Newman (can hardly get any better than that!). It won 7 Academy awards. It is over two hours long. It is also as old as I am.

So, can you guess the movie?

If you guess correctly you will be entered in my giveaway. I will send you a 2 yard piece of African cloth if your entry is randomly selected. 

You get extra entries if you are a follower of this blog or the Kazembe Orphanage Facebook page. Leave me a comment for either of those options. The contest ends on Monday 5 PM PST. I will announce the winner on Tuesday's blog post. You must leave an email address so I can contact you. This contest is open to any and all*. Have fun!

*Well, all but my children who know exactly what movie is sitting on my shelf right now....

Exactly One Year Ago: Happy Birthday to Me!

So Glad to Have a Daughter*

* I actually have 3 daughters, but only one still living with me.

After suffering through lovingly creating birthday cakes for my two sons in July and August, it was nice to have a girly birthday to look forward to.

As I've mentioned before, Jasmine is a budding baker. She is especially good at cupcakes. Our latest, long-term volunteer brought her a gift of several baking books. Jasmine looked through them and chose a White and Dark Chocolate Torte.

I'm not sure how tortes are supposed to taste but I found the cake to be a bit dry and bland. I may have left it to cool too long.... This will definitely be something I revisit.

We didn't have quite enough white or dark chocolate so I improvised. The dark chocolate filler actually had some hazelnut/chocolate spread mixed in. The white chocolate that was supposed to cover the outside of the cake didn't quite make it down the sides so I made a batch of buttercream frosting for the sides and to decorate with.

Here is the final result:

At dinner, the day we celebrated Jasmine's birthday, we played a guess-the-jellybean-flavor game. We are hard up for entertainment here! One of us would place a jellybean in the upturned palm of someone who had their eyes closed. They would eat the jellybean and try to guess the color. We had really cheapo jellybeans so it was HARD. When it was my turn, I closed my eyes and put my hand out. Feeling the jellybean in my palm I popped it in my mouth....and instantly knew something was wrong! Instead of a smooth, rounded morsel the thing in my mouth was dry, crusty and jagged. I spat that thing out right onto the table faster than you can say jellybean. Tom had thought it great fun to substitute a crust of bread in place of a jellybean. He laughed so loud and long that he completely freaked out baby Peter (who was sitting on his lap) who proceeded to sob and cry and needed to be cuddled. Good times!

After dinner we moved to the living room for Jasmine's birthday movie: New Moon

I have to give props to my husband who sat patiently through the entire movie asking questions like, "Is it a full moon?" "So how exactly are vampires killed?" and also making observations such as, "Bella's a little messed up isn't she?" Indeed!

When the movie was (thankfully) over, we went back to the dining room for cake. 

Overall, it was a really nice evening. 

Happy Birthday, Jasmine!

Exactly one year ago: What do Babies and Fish have in Common?

It's Their Party!

As promised yesterday, here are the pictures from Queenie and Theresa's birthday party. They both turned or are about to turn 4 years old.

Henry--2 years old

We started off the party with some fun balloon play. 

Elias--3 years old

Then the kids moved to the floor for cake and singing "Happy Birthday"

They did really well. I thought there would be jealousy about two out of fourteen kids being honored alone but there were no problems and the kids were just excited to be having a party. Even little baby Lizzie joined in. This was the first time I'd seen her sitting up by herself.

The Birthday Girls! Theresa (left) and Queenie (right)

Blowing out the candles was a new experience and took several tries.

It didn't help that Tom had picked out the kind that re-lit themselves over and over.

Moriah--20 months
Mmmm! Yummy cake!*

After cake we moved the party outside for playtime to help burn off the sugar high.

Silly string time!

Johnny (left)--3 years & Chola (right)--4 years

The kids tried their hands (and feet) at Twister but I think they need to grow a bit still.

After Twister they played Limbo (no pictures, sorry) and even the nannies joined in. 

It was a really fun afternoon and sure (definitely!) to be just the first of many.

*We do have tables and chairs for the kids but the dining room was being used that afternoon.