My daughter was born on the last day of spring. When she was about to turn 4 she gloriously announced she would like to have a “Princess Party…you know…Snow White. Ariel. Sleeping Beauty.” I took a deep breath trying to cope and conceive of the fact that I could actually be further immersed in Princess. This was when I had my epiphany. I replied to her “Sure. No problem. But why not a REAL princess. Like….say… Nefertiti?” She agreed that was a WONDERFUL idea and I was off the “Disney” hook. We went to the library checking out everything we could find with regard to Queen Nefertiti, mummification, tombs, Egyptian children and all things Egypt.
On the last day of spring in 2007, twelve little citizens of San Francisco arrived at our house for the celebration after having deciphered their invitations written in hieroglyphics. They wrapped each other up like mummies using toilet paper then I taped a world map on the wall and they played Pin the Pyramid on Egypt. We spray painted cigar boxes gold and the kids glued gems on them prior to searching for treasures in the back yard such as pencils with cat images, rubber snakes, gold coins and colored Lucite rings. The kids also had an archeological dig in the sandbox for small plastic dinosaurs (it is really hard to find bones when it is not October so dinosaurs had to do.) The grand finale was the amazing golden pyramid cake. The children went home with their “goodie bag” consisting of the golden boxes filled with their new Egyptian treasures and a DVD of The Prince of Egypt.
Who knew 6 months later we would be in Saudi Arabia just across the Red Sea from Egypt. My husband and I decided we would be remiss if we did not actually show Olivia the real pyramids since we were so near-by (6 hour flight) so we made a left turn on our way out of Saudi en route France landing in northern Africa.
To be continued…