Hi, I’m Angelina Ballerina. Today is our teacher’s birthday. Her name is Ms. Mimi. My friends and I are going to throw her a super surprise birthday party. Do you want to help? “Here’s my list of what we need for the party!” “Does your list say we need a present?” “Of course, Gracie! See? It also says we need a cake, decorations, and a birthday card. Hey, let’s go shopping for the gift first!”
 “Yeah!” “Uh, is it okay if I stay here, while you go shopping?” “Sure, Marco. You finish writing your song! “Look at these beautiful, shiny ballet slippers! They’d make the perfect gift for Ms. Mimi!” “Oooooh! They’re soooooo amazing!” “I can’t take my eyes off them. They’re so . . . so . . . so . . . beautiful! Oh, Ms. Mimi will just love these new ballet slippers! They’re only 15 Mouseland shillings! Let’s buy them!” “But we don’t have enough money.” “Oh no!” “What are we going to do?” “We still need a gift for Ms. Mimi!” “Hold on! We’re good at making things . . .” “We can make the slippers ourselves!” “Stupendous! We’ll start on them once we get back home!” OK, we have everything we need to make the slippers: shiny fabric, ribbon, scissors, needle, and thread. Now it’s just a cut here, a tuck there, and a lot of sewing everywhere! “We love you, yes we do. Oh, we love you!” “Huh. Wow! Angelina, those lyrics are great for the song I’m composing.” “Thanks, Marco. Uh-oh! Look! It ripped! We can’t give this ripped slipper to Ms. Mimi. But we still need a gift! See? It’s on our list. What are we going to do?” “Maybe we should make a tutu instead.” “OK, Gracie, you and Marco make the tutu. Viki, come with me so we can check on the cake!” Mom made this teeny tiny cake for Ms. Mimi, but we wanted something much bigger! “What if we add some of these cupcakes to it? It will make the cake bigger!” “I’ll help! I’ll help!” “OK, Polly and Viki, let’s get started.” And just then, Marco and Gracie come in, but they don’t look very happy. “What happened to the tutu?” “The scissors kind of got out of control.” “Oh no! We don’t have a gift at all now. But at least we have a cake—a tipping tower of cake.” This is where the party will be. We don’t have balloons, so we’re using daisies to decorate instead. “Ms. Mimi is going to love this. She loves flowers!” “Look! The cake is here!” It really does look like a tipping tower cake, doesn’t it? And Marco really does look like he’s struggling with it! “Uh-oh, ah-ahhhh-ahhh . . . AH-CHOO!” Our big tipping tower cake tipped all the way to the ground! We can’t have a birthday party without a cake. Our super surprise birthday party is ruined! “Is someone having a party?” “Ms. Mimi! Oh no! Well . . . surprise! It’s a birthday party . . . for you!” “Oh!” “Um, there aren’t any real presents.” “Or a cake. It all went really, REALLY wrong. We’re sorry.” “Ms. Mimi, we tried to buy you a gift, and then we tried to make you a gift. We even tried to make you a cake. And it all got ruined. But we think we have a gift for you after all, and we hope you like it! Hit it, Marco!” “Let’s sing a song on this, your happy birthday. Won’t take too long. Just one thing that we want to say. We love you! Yes, we do! Oh, we love you! We’d like to bring a very special gift to you. And when we sing, Each and every word is true. We love you! Yes, we do! Oh we love you!” “Oh, that song is the most wonderful gift in the world.” “Thank you, Ms. Mimi. We were very worried that we didn’t have anything for you on your birthday, so I’m happy you liked our song instead.” “Gifts don’t have to be things you buy at a store.” “Gifts can be songs or dances!” “To be really good, all a gift needs is to have lots of love in it!” And our song did have lots of love in it. “Happy birthday, Ms. Mimi!” \t “Thank you so much!”