![Taking Root [A blog by Amanda McIntyre]](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NX8apu6dPJU/Utld2bfNmUI/AAAAAAAAAOc/sNG3czqqx3g/s1600/h3.jpg)
That said, I have had 21 amazing birthdays. When I was younger I had many family parties at the park, swimming pools, and Chuck-e-Cheese. Then I had years of sleepovers with 10-20 giggling friends, cookouts, and camping trips. Recently I've had surprise parties and gotten to celebrate with 100,000 people in Neyland Stadium. Overall I've been incredibly blessed to have so many memorable birthdays.
If you've read my blog before then you know I'm currently living at home with my parents. They are great and I'm glad to spend this time with them, but I also don't have many friends in the Johnson City area so I knew this year my birthday was not going to be a big occasion. I was okay with that simply because, like I said, I've had many great birthdays in my life.
But not everyone is as lucky as me.
My mom is an elementary school principal and she cares a lot about her students, in and out of school. Living at home I've been able to talk to her a lot about her job and students at her school. She had talked to me about a family of little girls in her school who have had a rough home life. Just hearing her talk about these girls made me feel sad. It made me sad that I had been blessed with so much... and they with so little.
I started thinking about my birthday and what I wanted to do for it this year, and all I could think about was that those cute little girls had probably never been able to celebrate their birthday.
So I wanted to change that and celebrate them.
It wasn't much but today I took the 4 girls kids meals and cookies from Chick-fil-a and they got to have a special lunch with my mom and I outside. You could just see their faces light up when they came out of class. They had never even had Chick-fil-a, and before last year they'd never had a birthday party.
To me it was special to get to do this for them and make their day. It was just an hour of my time and only $36. And I thought it would be special to the girls too, but I didn't know how much. Before I left one of their teachers came and found me and said that one of the girls said to her: "This will be a day that I'll never forget". And just hearing that I know that I won't either.
From now on I think I'd like to do something special for someone else on my birthday every year, and maybe y'all will too. Here's some great inspiration from people that are way more impressive than me:
Here's to 22 great years and blessings!
Love y'all
