Blog 14

    The best gift received is quality time. One of my best gifts was my surprise 17th birthday party. Birthdays as important as they are, I lost the special jittery feeling every child gets once I moved to Houston after 3rd grade. Since then, every year I would cut a cake with just family, eat dinner, and call that my birthday. I stopped caring about having friends over, a big birthday party, and putting attention on myself for a whole day. Especially with a summer birthday, it was difficult to have everyone in town, so I stopped trying to celebrate. For my 16th birthday, I had a surprise party the day before my birthday because I flew in on the 20th from a summer program, and had to leave on the 22nd which was my birthday. This was one of my best birthdays, but it did not have everyone I wanted and felt rushed which did not make it my favorite. 

    On my 17th birthday, I had been set on not throwing a party or going out since it would be difficult to convince everyone and make a plan. My sister and cousin had told me beforehand that we would go out and do a couple of activities, but they would not specify as they wanted to keep it a mystery. I bought a dress and got ready on the day not expecting much, yet still excited about being able to go out and do something rather than sitting at home. Our first stop was a photo experience shop in the Galleria Mall. We spent over an hour going around in over 10 rooms taking pictures, messing around, and just being the happiest I had been in a minute. I had thought this was all they had for me and we were going home, but they took me to the Galleria waterfall which was a tradition as a kid to go every time we were in Houston. This reminded me of my childhood bringing back so many good and happy memories I had forgotten about in the past couple of years. After this, we went to Buff City Soap where we created our own bath bombs. I had never gotten to have an experience like this, so I was excited. We started by picking out different scents and colors then we kneaded everything together and put it together in a mold. Due to my lack of artistic abilities, it took me 30 minutes and 100000 tries to put it in and take it out without breaking anything. After finishing there, we started to head home and I was content, and somehow like always my mom needed something from HEB so we made a quick pitstop there. When we got home I opened the door and all my friends and family were there. I was so happy and surprised I did not know how to react. I got to be with everyone after so long and all my friends showed up for me without me asking. They spent over 3 hours setting up and running back and forth just for me. This made me feel important and cared for which isn't something I generally feel like. We cut my cake and I got the cake smashed in my face to the point I had to shower mid-party to get everything off of me. I had to change and come back down and we all ate, talked for hours, and played games. This made me so happy and I had never felt so important and celebrated by my people.