Feliz Cumpleaños a Mi!

I had the good fortune of celebrating my birthday in Mexico this year and, I'm telling you what, there is no better place to celebrate! Although there were the obvious downsides of being thousands of miles away from half my family and not being able to redeem any of those sweet free birthday meal coupons... but, never fear, I persevered through the challenges.

If you're interested in more pictures and stories from our Mexico Mission Trip, check out our team blog!

The festivities began when I woke up to a very cheerily decorated room, and it just got better from there!

Mom got me surprise birthday donuts

The team let me take a mini afternoon nap

And the team gave me a whole basket full of super sweet gifts!

A few of the señoritas who recently entered university and got their own place invited us over show off their awesome new house and surprised me with a birthday dessert.

It was such a happy day that even Happy Taco bus wished me a happy birthday!

But the very best part was my fancy Mexican birthday party! Ok, technically the party wasn't really for me, but it was the day after my birthday, there were balloons, and it was a ton of fun, so we'll assume that it was secretly for me.

Here's where it got interesting...

After games and dinner, Naty, the Casa Famosa housemom very sweetly brought out a birthday cake for me! At this point, about 40 kids and houseparents started yelling for me to take a bite out of the cake and "promising" that they wouldn't push my head into the cake. Yeah. You can see where this is going.

Long story short, I ended up with a nosefull of icing, a patio full of kids howling with laughter, and a big smile.

I also had the fabulous presence of mind to treat Naty to an eskimo kiss with my icing-covered face, which both she and the kids thought was completely hilarious.

Here's the video proof:

It was a wonderful birthday in a special place with very special people.

Thanks to the my family for making the Mexico trip possible, the CenterPoint team for making my birthday so special, and the kids and caregivers of Hogar de Amor for being so darn thoughtful!