Día Del Niño

Well ya learn something new everyday. I've never heard about "Día del niño" but apparently it's a big deal in Latin America. Who knew! Well Iveth knew, and even though she's not in Mexico, she wanted to celebrate it and share the tradition with us. But April 30th in Utah this year was rainy and cold, so she planned it for today and invited us to come to her house at 5:00.

She had invited a few people from her English class - two ladies from Mexico and one from Congo! The Congo lady, Carine, didn't speak Spanish, so there was a lot of English speaking, Spanish speaking, translating, and repeating of instructions going on during the course of the evening. The kids played in the sandbox

Iveth brought out popcorn and cheese puffs

Then Iveth started games. They divided into two teams.

The games were pretty fun to watch cause a good portion of the participants were toddlers. Abi ready for a race...

...but she had Owen and Daniel on her team - Abi and Sophi tried to help them run, but Owen was dragged and Daniel was pulling a toy that he got distracted with after the race started.

The first person was supposed to run around a hoop then come back for a teammate, hold hands, run with them around the hoop/post/marker, then back for another teammate, etc. I got a kick out of how Iveth said "You Lose!" Abi's team lost this first race. It was cute though cause the toddlers didn't know what was going on, other than someone said "go" - so off they ran!

And kids fell and got ran into and distracted, typical of kids all over the world I'm sure. It was fun to watch. Then they had a water balloon toss game -

Another game where you had to use teamwork to grab cups from the middle of a square without touching the ground inside the square, if that makes sense. Sophi's team did awesome on that one - Sophi got a lot of cups. And of course, there was a pinata - Go Owen!! Hit it hard!

Then it was Daniel's turn

After all the kids had a turn whacking the pinata, it was Corey's turn to go and he finished it off

Hooray! Candy falling from the sky!

After the pinata, I took Peter home to feed him, and a few more kids followed me (Lily, Natalie, and Daniel). Corey stayed to clean up, and Peter took his time nursing, so when Corey still wasn't back after 45 minutes, I decided to go back over. I walked into Iveth's apartment to find Corey was the center of attention telling funny stories of how crazy life is with 12 kids, he had everyone laughing.

I stayed and listened to his stories and added my two cents, but mostly I just grinned as he talked. He often says that he wanted 3 kids, I wanted more than that, so we met in the middle with 12, haha. Owen was clinging on him and was doing a good job giving a proper demonstration of what Corey deals with every day, and has dealt with for 19 years as a new baby always shows up in line to replace the kid that has grown up. So, it was a fun event, one that we might try to continue if we have Hispanic friends we can tag along with. My kids have often asked me why there is a Mother's Day and Father's Day but no Kid's Day?!?! I have said that every day already is kids day! What we need is a break from kids being the center of the world. On that note, I've been reading a good book called EntitleMania by Richard Watts, which is giving me some good perspective on proper parenting techniques. "For everything you give your child, you take something away."

I liked an analogy he made in the book on pg. 20 that parent's should not be copilots, who are experiencing the ride with their child, but they should be air traffic controllers, on the ground in the control tower, where we can see things the pilot doesn't see. We track the entire flight, but our role is to respond to pilot inquiry and advise of irregularities so that the plane can avoid catastrophe, but we leave the flying of the plane to the pilot. It's been a good time for me to read this with the car outta gas drama we've had this past week. It would be easy to give them money for gas, but we do want to help them be ready to face the world and have to pay for their own gas (if they are able to get a car) so we're trying to let them take a little more responsibility bit by bit. They need to learn to think ahead and plan ahead and budget accordingly, instead of doing what Ethan did with the money Corey gave him for his cell phone "I want to hurry and spend this before I need it for gas" - that is almost a direct quote! Luckily having a large family does require the kids to learn a lot of self survival. Most of them do their own laundry, Owen can get his own cereal from the high cupboard, and Natalie helps me by going to fill Daniel's bottle sometimes. There is so much to do around here that we do need the kids to help, and they are learning to contribute and are picking up skills little by little along the way, yay!