How do you celebrate birthdays for 73 children in one Orphanage in one year? You declare one big Birthday Day and have a rollicking party, with cake, elephant ear cookies, oranges and apples, and even soda, an almost never given treat! The cake is immense and very fancy, with lots of sugar flowers the nannies love. This year, Rith Srey Touch, as oldest girl [age 8] got to blow out the candles.

At our January 1st party, each child got a real Birthday present, and not a balloon, as we’ve given in previous years. Shirley Weinberg and Pat Clark at Newbury Court retirement home in Concord knitted 26 dolls over the last many months, one for each of our 26 girls. Every tan-skinned doll is unique, with a hat or clothing different from every other doll!

Concord Cub Scout Troop #149, under Jennifer and Andrew Clarke [not related to Pat] collected new Matchbox cars for each of our 47 boys, and the Cubs also made many Birthday cards for the children. Our kids raced around asking us to translate the English words “ Happy Birthday”. Later they made pictures to send back to the Cubs, with “Happy Birthday “ carefully written too.

We all sang "Happy Birthday Roteang," appropriate too in that the Orphanage turned 8 years on December 14. The afternoon ended with multiple heats of rubber reindeer races on our wide orphanage verandah, until [as usually happens] Chan Piseth was declared the winner. There were lots of laughs and lots of spills onto the floor, but the reindeer are soft and low, so races are great entertainment for watchers as well as riders.

Our children at Roteang were completely thrilled. Orphanage children do not have many private possessions, and the girls clutched their dollies, as the boys raced their cars with glee. The next day, on a field trip to the wildlife rescue center with our 25 oldest kids, many dolls and cars accompanied their new owners.