My child's 6th birthday is coming up... in September... but the translating and mailing process takes so long I had to time the birthday card 3 months in advance. I'm pretty proud of myself for remembering! Also patting myself on the back for that pop-up rainbow. There's this pesky requirement that items being sent through the mail be no thicker than 1/4 inch; otherwise the rainbow would have been fuller. I had so much fun making it; love little creative challenges like that. Anyway, I think it's a very bright, cheerful (hopefully not too babyish) birthday card without references to cake and presents and western, material motifs like that, which I try to avoid. It even says "Happy Birthday" on the front of the card in Bengali. At least I sincerely hope that's what it says. I didn't want translation and all that messy stuff done on her beautiful card, so I started with the Bengali version right off the bat.
I put a message on the back:
Dear....,
Happy 6th birthday! I pray that the next year of your life will bring you lots of new experiences and opportunities to grow more into the young lady that God created you to be!
You are a jewel and a treasure, and you're worth more than you can imagine.
With love in Christ,
Miss Emily
As a present, I'm sending her a sticker sheet and play scene that I cut out of a Mickey Mouse sticker book. (Appropriate and small sticker activity books are so hard to find! I've searched high and low. Even Dover didn't have anything I really felt was right. When my sister was 5 or 6 years old, she got a Little House on the Prairie sticker book, which I loved even more than my sister did! I wish there were more innocent, unique options out there such as that.) I thought the outdoor garden scene in this one was something my little girl could recognize and relate to easily enough. Of course, being Disney, they had to put an amusement park scene on the reverse side. Oh well. Even if she has no idea what it is, at least it's not a pink Barbie castle filled with big screen TVs and four poster beds. I've decided one little present is enough, even for her birthday, so that's it for this package.
I wanted to put confetti in the envelope, but I've since thought the better of that. The people in the mail room at Compassion would get a nice surprise, but the confetti would end up inside a trash can or a vacuum cleaner before making it to Bangladesh.
Even though I didn't blog about it, I did send her a letter last month. In fact, I wrote her a note using Compassion's online letter writing tool. It was a breeze, and the letter is saved in my account online if I ever want to reference it again. There was space to include three photographs on the bottom of the letter, which I did of course. I told her about my job and what I do in very simple terms, the picnic I had for my birthday, and about my upcoming trip to Colorado. There are lots of templates (although many of them are clearly for Christmas or birthdays), but since I don't have any pretty stationery, I'm definitely going to use the online writing tool again.
