I printed out 19 short quotes from Baha'u'llah, cut them out, rolled them up and tucked one inside each little heart pocket. When the kids woke up the first thing they saw was a room was filled with helium balloons.
“Dedicate the precious days of your lives to the betterment of the world” ~Baha'u'llah
Man's merit lieth in service and virtue and not in the pageantry of wealth and riches.” ~Baha'u'llah
“The essence of faith is fewness of words and abundance of deeds” ~Baha'u'llah
“Be patient under all conditions and place your whole trust and confidence in God.” ~Baha'u'llah
“The country is the world of the soul, the city is the world of bodies.” ~Baha'u'llah
“Blessed is he who preferreth his brother before himself.” ~Baha'u'llah (Yeah, I made sure Anisa read that one.)
“A thankful person is thankful under all circumstances. A complaining soul complains even in paradise.” ~Baha'u'llah (I love that.)
“Be generous in prosperity, and thankful in adversity. Be worthy of the trust of thy neighbor, and look upon him with a bright and friendly face. Be a treasure to the poor, an admonisher to the rich, an answerer of the cry of the needy, a preserver of the sanctity of thy pledge. Be fair in thy judgment, and guarded in thy speech. Be unjust to no man, and show all meekness to all men. Be as a lamp unto them that walk in darkness, a joy to the sorrowful, a sea for the thirsty, a haven for the distressed, an upholder and defender of the victim of oppression. Let integrity and uprightness distinguish all thine acts. Be a home for the stranger, a balm to the suffering, a tower of strength for the fugitive. Be eyes to the blind, and a guiding light unto the feet of the erring. Be an ornament to the countenance of truth, a crown to the brow of fidelity, a pillar of the temple of righteousness, a breath of life to the body of mankind, an ensign of the hosts of justice, a luminary above the horizon of virtue, a dew to the soil of the human heart, an ark on the ocean of knowledge, a sun in the heaven of bounty, a gem on the diadem of wisdom, a shining light in the firmament of thy generation, a fruit upon the tree of humility.” ~Baha'u'llah (This one I divided into three.)
We brought the balloons with us to the dining room to enjoy a festive breakfast. And then got to work on the big plan for the day. Random Acts of Service for Baha'u'llah. This is based on something that a Baha'i blogger drew my attention to a couple of months ago (thanks Leanna) I think it is a brilliant idea and thought it might be a nice way to commemorate Baha'u'llah's birthday. While the kids ate I began reading them the book Not Every Sea Hath Pearls and was pleasantly surprised by how well a certain individual listed and clued in to the chapter. We then talked about what ways we might be able to offer service on behalf of Baha'u'llah in honor of His birthday, Ruhi compiled a list and here is what we did.
While Ruhi and Anisa were busy making cards and paper flowers Bayan took control in the kitchen. 2). We made a chocolate cake to take to the nurses who are doing such a super job looking after all of those sick kids as well as a Thank You card to articulate what we were doing and why.
3). Anisa wanted to donate her Indian flowers to the play centre at the hospital to brighten things up a bit, so we took those in too.
4). Bayan also helped bake chocolate chip cookies to take to the local police station as a thank you to the police officers who help keep our community safe. This too included a written Thank You card explaining the importance of today.
5). While we were there the children each donated a stuffed animal to be given to the interrogation room so that kids who have to be there can have something soft and cuddly to hold onto.
6). We took paper flowers and hand crafted cards to a lovely lady in our community who is very sick with cancer. We left these on her doorstep as I wasn't taking any chances with Maryam getting near her. A tummy bug, of any sort, is the last thing she needs right now.
7). We stopped by the cemetery to say prayers and bring flowers for sweet Sachi (a beautiful Baha'i girl whose love for Baha'ullah inspired countless people during her 2 year battle with leukemia) as well as some other friends who are buried there and the kids took it upon themselves to tidy up other graves as well, picking up flowers that had fallen over and ornaments knocked down by the wind.
8). We stopped by the library to donate a couple of Baha'i books, including the Kitab-i-Igan (The Book of Certitude).
9). Baha'u'llah was also known as The Father of the Poor so we donated two bags of stuff: clothes, games, books, etc. to the Salvation Army charity bins.
10). We took a basket of fruit and veg. to an elderly couple that doesn't get out much and stayed for a visit.
11). We bought a photo album for someone who had been embarrassed to show the children their photos because they were kept in a shoebox instead of an album.
Baha'u'llah loved animals and we had hoped to make it to the animal shelter as well, but we ran out of time. Maybe tomorrow.
Over dinner Bayan asked what my best moment of the day was. I love that because I used to always ask them that question and I haven't done it in a while. I love that he remembered. While we ate we talked about some of the highlights, like seeing the appreciation on the nurses faces when they saw all the balloons and read the little tags for the kids, the huge smile that spread across one police officer's face when he saw that big plate of cookies come into the precinct, the gushing gratitude over a simple photo album and watching Maryam give Sachi's photo a kiss. I hope that's not creepy. The kids had just finished singing some prayers and her spontaneous kiss just seemed super endearing.
Bayan was so excited that he couldn't resist a little peek. For which he felt kind of bad - so we decided to let him go first.
He has been waiting for 6 months for this robotic dinosaur set (another score from the markets) and could hardly contain himself. The baby dinosaur and remote control were in his gift bag and he had to use the remote control to find the mother dinosaur.
Ruhi got some much needed new clothes.
Anisa got the ipod she has been pining for. It was also secondhand and only plays a selection of songs that we have hand picked. I am such a control freak.
After breakfast we high tailed it to Bayan's tennis lesson and then went straight to our first Ayyam-i-Ha party of the season.
There were games, and songs,
gorgeous decorations and random bits to put on our noses whenever the urge to become an elephant strikes
There was lovely food, an amazing cake and lots of friends and fun.
We cut the party a little bit short to high tail it to the neighbourhood centre where we were helping to host our community's Ayyam-i-Ha party.
We had to set up the craft tables, make the sweets and organize the decorations.
We made trays and trays of cream puffs and some basic cookies and then we got a little more creative. We used the 9 pointed star cookie cutters (thanks Mom) from Special Ideas to make some flower cookies. We crushed some hard candies in the middle to make it look like the flower's center. I didn't get to try one. They went pretty fast. But Anisa assured me they were really good. That was what we were aiming for.
The kids sang a prayer together. They sounded awesome. A truly heart melting moment.
All in all it went really well, everyone seemed to have a great time. The crafts were a success. We had prayer rocks, Ayyam-i-Ha card making and flower crafting. Some of the older ladies even came to make flowers as well. Bless them.
Day 2: Featured a treasure hunt to try to find where their presents were hidden. That Maryam is so clever. She knew just where to go for hers, though she did have some help from Anisa and this is one of her favorite spots at the moment.
Today was book day. All of the gifts were books (mostly second hand that I had found at the markets. Love the markets.) I was especially impressed with the set of hardcover 39 Clue books that I found for Ruhi. She has really been looking forward to reading the rest of that series and it just so happened that this lady had all the books that Ruhi hadn't read yet. They were as new, in immaculate condition and only 2 dollars. But best of all was Maryam's face when she saw this book in her bag. She was so happy. She opened it right up and just sat there absorbing it with a huge smile on her face. Even Bayan, who is pretty keen on the "fun present" aspect of Ayyam-i-Ha, was happy with his book and library bag. I love that they were content and grateful for what they received.
There was a children's classes Ayyam-i-Ha party and dinner later that evening. With sparklers.
Which they loved.
This was followed by some simple gifts, like much needed shoes, more homeschooling and lots of gift making for friends.
Above are the aprons we finished today. Just in time for the party tomorrow.
Only it was better in real life. I had to up my game a bit because today was "handmade" day. The kids all got new aprons. Maryam loved hers and didn't take it off all day. You can kind of see her in it below. Super cute. I also kind of cheated, because I didn't make Bayan's elephant nor Anisa's fairy costumes (again scores from the markets). Anisa's Princess costume is partially stitched and even the Belle dress that Ruhi is wearing is not entirely complete.
But I did make my own bias binding and the kids didn't seem to mind - so there you go. Note that pile of laundry in the corner. Why can I never get through all the laundry???
The blur by Anisa's feet is Maryam and below Bayan got busy making new crayons out of old crayons and pieces of oil pastels. This did not work as well as we had hoped, but we managed to make enough for everyone to have a few sticks. Bayan rather enjoyed the bashing the crayon part. As far as he was concerned it sure beat the heck out of coloring continents or shading that pesky Pacific Ocean. 
We joined friends for another Ayyam-i-Ha party. The kids had a super time giving their gifts to each other. This was "Christmas Morning" Ayyam-i-Ha style, with yummy snacks and friends to play with. You can't get better than that.
day 5:
Which, to the untrained eye, looked like this:
That is a bubble wand by the way. Maryam loves bubbles. I love how they really thought about what "their person" would want and how they shopped accordingly.
This year the kids were working hard to earn money to send to Tonga to a help sponsor a couple of girls who wish to attend the school there. They've been doing odd jobs, cleaning and pulling weeds and although they haven't done this as consistently as I would have liked it has been good to have them working hard to help others. A concept that comes more easily to some than to others but I won't name names.
I even wrote a poem filled with riddles for them to solve as they collected their coins. ( for those interested this can be found at the end of the post.)
It worked really well. 
They worked together, helped each other and amassed a small fortune in the process.
Which we took directly to the shops for them to buy groceries for the food bank. We added these to the ones we had already collected from members of the community and though you can't see it very well here they did get quite a bit.
67 kilos of food to be exact. We got to mention the Faith again and the kids were even treated to another tour of the freezer. 
They love that place. From the food bank we high tailed it to Hungry Jacks (Gag! I know. But Ruhi is nearly 11 and this was her first milkshake. So there.) for a much anticipated Milkshake which we enjoyed after prayers on the beach. 
The kids played along the rocks and we hurried home for dinner before heading off to Feast.