{"id":3176,"date":"2014-11-13T17:45:54","date_gmt":"2014-11-13T17:45:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gospelwater.net\/?p=3176"},"modified":"2014-11-13T17:52:02","modified_gmt":"2014-11-13T17:52:02","slug":"how-we-celebrated-three-and-five-years-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gospelwater.net\/?p=3176","title":{"rendered":"How we celebrated three and five years here"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our boys turned five (W-man) and three this past week (D-man) and we thought we’d show you a tour of pictures as to how we celebrated here in North Africa.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Poor W-mans birthday began the night before when I burned the cakes for school and his party to a crisp in the oven. Naturally I had used the last of my flour,\u00a0 sugar and butter to make said cake and it was bedtime for me when this happened. North Africa has a wonderful variety of restaurants so at 11pm our doorbell wrung and the local restaurant delivered a non-burnt cake to our house (oops!)<\/p>\n

\"This<\/a>
This little sweetie ran into the corner of a glass table the night before and so is sporting a nasty cut above his eye. He chose cereal for breakfast.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"He<\/a>
He wore a super-hero cape to school so everyone would know it was his birthday<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"W-man<\/a>
W-man and his best bud here getting ready to enjoy cake at school.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"W-man's<\/a>
W-man’s classmates all sang him happy birthday.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"D-man<\/a>
D-man and W-man got a special treat from our cab driver that day. An apple! They loved it so much they left the tiny stem and consumed everything else!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"The<\/a>
The girls decorated with some balloons and hats and we prepared for guests to arrive that evening to help us celebrate W-man<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"W-mans<\/a>
W-mans Uncle Chris and Aunty Bev came to celebrate (he was so excited!)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"His<\/a>
His best buds here came to celebrate too. The favorite party activity was jumping on the bed.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"W-<\/a>
W- picked out his favorite foods for dinner, he had picked a little bit of something from here in North Africa, America and South Sudan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Blowing<\/a>
Blowing out candles from on his second cake.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"One<\/a>
One of his favorite gifts – bubble wrap of course!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Then less then a week later we were able to celebrate D-man turning three years old. This was a very busy day for us so we are doing his family party later next week but we made sure to pack the day with lots of fun!<\/p>\n

\"I<\/a>
I asked D-man where he wanted to eat breakfast. he announced in the bathroom (not what I was expecting) and I didn’t burn the cake!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Little<\/a>
Little man was able to enjoy cake with his schoolmates<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"...and<\/a>
…and his big sisters even helped him blow out the candles.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"After<\/a>
After school we went to a local park to finish our school while we waited for the girls ballet class. The boys loved sliding on the slide.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"We<\/a>
We got D-mans favorite quick dinner (McDonalds) and a mini cupcake and we sang to him that evening at Dad’s work where we set up a movie while we taught a seminar.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"The<\/a>
The small business seminary for refugee youth. D-man didn’t mind sharing his special day – especially when everyone sang to him.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So grateful for these two boys. They are full of life, and personality and it was such fun celebrating them back to back! Birthdays are rather low key events here as in Mslm culture it is customary to only celebrate the two Eids and not birthday or anniversaries. One of the funnest moments was when my parents called and woke D-man up to sing to him. He opened his sleepy eyes to the skype call and when they had finished singing he smiled up at them and then started singing the arabic version of happy birthday. When they didn’t pick up the chorus he became very disturbed…in his mind the english and arabic singing of happy birthday ought to always come back to back and it didn’t make sense that Grandma and Grandpa didn’t know this simple “fact” of birthday life.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I love how much birthdays are the same <\/a>wherever we find ourselves, all about reflecting on the blessing of that person and so special just because we are doing it together. Happy birthday sweet boys!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our boys turned five (W-man) and three this past week (D-man) and we thought we’d show you a tour of pictures as to how we celebrated here in North Africa.   Poor W-mans birthday began the night before when I<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3196,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gospelwater.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gospelwater.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gospelwater.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gospelwater.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gospelwater.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3176"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gospelwater.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3209,"href":"https:\/\/gospelwater.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3176\/revisions\/3209"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gospelwater.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gospelwater.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gospelwater.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gospelwater.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}