My 19th Birthday!

4.22.10

My last blog was written in such a hurry that I left out tons of things that have been happening.

During March and April we had a lot of great volunteers come. For spring break a group of three boys from Missouri came to help on the farm. They were awesome. The three of them quickly became big brothers to me. My older brother will be happy to hear that they took the liberty of beating me up regularly. After two weeks with them I was sad to see them go but relived that my arms would get a break. And the McGraw family came to visit Ryan and see Musana. It was a lot of fun to have them all around! Before Matt came I asked him to bring white tee shirt so we could tie dye with our kids. It took two day and was complete chaos. But the shirts are awesome and the kids love them. THANK YOU MATT!

The night before my birthday I slept at Musana in the dorms. Our older girls and I spent all night talking and dancing. While we were sitting on the beds talking the girls were braiding my hair and eventually I fell asleep on them. They tucked me into bed and told me they loved me. It was a great way to fall asleep. More than anything these girls have become my friends. I had only told a few kids that the following day was my birthday but word got around. When I woke up the kids were standing around my bed telling me “happy birthday” and “we love you auntie Annie”. It was the best start to my 19^th birthday! We made our way over to the kitchen for breakfast and found out that early that morning one of our goats gave birth to a baby girl. Andrea named my birthday goat Annie. After having tea with the kids, Ryan and I went home to shower and then to the café for lunch. When we got back to Musana a group of kids greeted us excitedly telling us that a goat had been born. We weren’t that excited because we had already seen the new goat. The kids were so excited they dragged me over to the goat shelter and sure enough we had another baby goat. Two new goats from two separate mothers on my birthday. I spent the rest of the day hanging out with the kids at Musana. That night we had a huge party at our café and went out dancing. Two of our volunteers, Brittany and Erina, baked me a delicious birthday cake! Andrea and kids all made me tons of birthday cards. I was sad to be away from my family but everyone made it an awesome birthday.