At Last...

Monday evening the sun began to set and the Baha'i festive season of Ayyam-i-Ha began. We commemorated this by decorating the house with lots of flowers and are still in the process of putting up our festival figures (children in traditional dress from various parts of the world). Here are a few pictures of the children arranging some flowers. At most Holy Days I let the children each choose a flower to commemorate the occasion. We then reuse the flowers to decorate during the Holy Days and festive seasons.

Bayan attempting to water the flowers.

After decorating and having dinner we took the children outside where I had organized a number of games for us to all play together. The first was a very active virtue game I got from Linden Quolls site, the second was a treasure hunt for paper flowers and the third was a work out the hidden message game. We hit a few hiccups but had fun anyhow.

A flower hiding in the fig tree.

As the sun set we took the kids inside (in the future I think we might say the Ayyam-i-Ha prayer first) to open their presents (round one, anyway). For better or worse we have decided (I have decided and Mehran has halfheartedly gone along with it.) to give the children one gift each day of Ayyam-i-Ha. I generally try to keep the items under 10.00 each, so it is nothing extremely extravagant and most of the items have been purchased on sale (normally 1/2 price) and stored away for ages. I think that it is important to make the intercalary days as fun and festive as possible.

Round one: Ruhi and Anisa both love care bears and Bayan loves all manner of vehicles, but up until now has not had one. Here he is enjoying his first "twuck". He has hardly put it down.

In the interests of environmental conservation, especially after the wretched packaging, we use Ayyam-i-Ha gift bags which are reused year after year. That way at least there is no wrapping paper to dispose of. A small thing, but better than nothing.