The video you are about to watch took place May 6, 2008. A mere 8-days before Adriana Coronel Tenorio (AKA Adriana Howitt Coronel, Ari Coronel, Ari Coronel Tenorio, Ari Howitt, Ari Howitt Coronel) abandoned her kids for a 3-month jaunt to Spain. And 6-months before Adriana would to the unthinkable by abducting Samantha and stealing everything out of my house. No sign at all as to the chaos that would come.
To the naked eye, this is an innocuous video of a little girl’s 2nd birthday party. And you would be right in that assessment. That is the point. Adriana would jet set off to Spain 8-days from this day. Nobody had any idea she was doing this. It was not until a couple days before she sprang the news upon everyone. However the sales pitch was that she was going to be gone less than 2 weeks on a modeling gig. You know how that turned out.
A couple things are worth noting here. This was the last normal birthday Samantha would ever experience. The piñata celebration near the end is absolutely precious and will make your heart melt. This shows what a big heart Samantha has. Her first “boyfriend” was Spongebob Squarepants. Remember, she just turned 2 years old at this point. It’s tradition for the birthday boy or girl to take the first swings at the piñata. Then it goes from there until someone breaks it open. The piñata was a Spongebob piñata. Right there I had a feeling there would be a conflict of interest for Samantha. You can see in the video she was resistant to hit it as she just pokes at it with the stick.
The next girl up went all Giancarlo Stanton on poor Spongebob, to Samantha’s dismay. She was in tears did not want the kids to stop hitting the Spongebob piñata. So, I peeled Spongebob Squarepants off the piñata and gave it to Sam. She gave Spongebob the biggest hug you can imagine.
For years afterwards Samantha had that cutout of Spongebob on her wall. And yes, that piñata ultimately met its fate and all the kids probably did not sleep for a couple days after all the sugar they ate.
