Fiesta Time…and no not for Cinco de Mayo…

I think most people in the USA know at this point that Cinco de Mayo is not actually Mexican Independence Day (9/16). 🙂 If you didn’t, now you do. The kids did get the day off of school as a government holiday, here it is called “Batalla de Puebla” day. And it means nothing to people here because we are pretty far away from Puebla here in Zacatecas.

But that doesn’t mean we haven’t been doing some celebrating.

We celebrated Kid’s Day 4/30. It’s a holiday widely celebrated in a big way here in Mexico. The last couple of years people haven’t been able to celebrate, and it seemed like this year everyone was making up for it! The kids each celebrated several different days at school, and we had a big party at church for kids. 

Anabel with friends at school.

At the party we had clowns, balloon animals, carnival games where they could win candy, face painting, piñatas filled with balloons and egg shells filled with either flour or paper confetti. The egg shells called, cascarones are a kids’ favorite at all parties. They also don’t cost much besides time to make. Our dedicated children’s pastor and other helpers made 200 of these, and a great time was had by all the kids. They can get quite messy, but that’s when you have the victory is laughing at someone you just covered in flour, but watch out for the revenge!

cascarones time at the party at church

60 children and about 15 youth came, many of the youth helping as volunteers. Several moms stuck around as well, we fed a lunch with cake and jello to everyone who attended. We do these events encouraging people to invite neighbors and we were really glad to see several new families come, especially families we have done outreaches with in the upper part of the neighborhood. It seems our trust building and praying for that area is working!

Anabel proud of her gift she made in church class. She didn’t fully understand the candy was for me. It didn’t last the day.

Yesterday we celebrated the mom’s at church. It was a simple celebration after the service, we had nachos=(chips, corn, liquid cheese, jalapeños, and chopped up pickled pig skin) and played a few games with the mom that the church leaders put together. Each mom also received a small gift from the church and a gift that their child made in class. It was fun to see them being celebrated, especially since many of them are single moms and might not get to do much celebrating otherwise. The official Mother’s Day here in Mexico is always on May 10th, Anabel doesn’t have school but Joel does. Many businesses are closing early so that people can be with their moms.

moms playing musical chairs!