Kaity's 13th Birthday Party!

For Kaity's birthday this year, she wanted to have an Operation Christmas Child packing party. If you're not familiar with OCC, a brief synopsis is that shoeboxes are packed with a variety of items like candy, toys and toiletry items. The boxes are distributed all over the world with this purpose: "The mission of Operation Christmas Child is to demonstrate God’s love in a tangible way to needy children around the world, and together with the local church worldwide, to share the Good News of Jesus Christ."

Kaity invited a few friends to come and asked them to bring money to shop for items to fill shoeboxes instead of a gift for herself.

When the girls arrived, we headed out to our local dollar store to find everything we needed.

The girls decided to do 3 boxes - one for an older girl, one for a younger girl, and one for a boy in the middle.

They really enjoyed choosing different items for each box, carefully considering what each child would like and what would be appropriate no matter what country the box ended up in.

After shopping, we went back home and the girls wanted to open presents.

While I prepared the girls' pizzas, they took over the kitchen table to pack their boxes. They carefully divided out items we'd bought to match each child.

This is the older girl's box: candy, T-shirt, socks, bouncy balls, ponytail holders, deodorant, hairbrush, toothbrush/paste, soap, washcloth, chapstick, crayons, notebook and stickers.

For her birthday "cake", Kaity opted to have mini cheesecakes. I served them plain along with toppings like caramel sauce, oreo bits, mini chocolate chips and strawberries.