Mothers Day

Mother's Day in Mexico always falls on the 10th of May. Many of the schools hold a program in honor of the mothers where the kids will perform songs, dance, recite poems etc. Many times the kids will be in costume. Our school chooses to combine the celebration with Fathers Day. This year the program will be on June 2nd. Yesterday we received a note that asked for the Mothers to come to school an hour early because something special was planned. The kids had prepared a song to sing to us. Josiah's class had also learned a poem in Spanish and one in English to say to all the Mothers. The English one was

"roses are red

the sky is blue

sugar is sweet

and so are you"

After their songs and poems we went to the classrooms and got our gifts from the kids.

The gifts are cute although not really my style and the sad thing is that the kids had nothing to do with the gifts. The school bought them already made. They did come with some really cute cards that the kids made which I will treasure forever.

They also hired a Mariachi band to play for us. This is/was a very common thing to do to show someone you care about them. It was much more common years ago and has slowly become less of a tradition. Mariachi bands can be hired to seranade for Birthdays, Anniversaries, and other special occasions. My neighbors talk about how they use to get seranaded when they were in High School but it doesn't happen much anymore. Also, a small cultural fact - Mariachi music originated in Guadalajara. Every fall Guadalajara is host to the Mariachi festival where bands come from all over the world to perform.

Happy Mother's Day!

5 de Mayo

As most of you know today is 5 de Mayo. The interesting thing is that there are a few misconceptions about this holiday. Many Americans think that today is Mexican Independence Day. Wrong, Sept 16th is Independence Day. 5 de Mayo is the celebration of when the Mexican Army kept the French army from invading. They won the battle against the French in the state of Puebla. Puebla is the only area in Mexico that really celebrates 5 de Mayo as a holiday.


On April 30th we celebrated Kids Day. You know Mothers Day, Fathers Day - why not a Kids Day? I think its kinda funny because here every day is kids day. Mexicans are very good at catering to kids needs and wants. Many times a native has given my child a candy to make sure they won't throw a fit. One time Abigail was upset about not having a certain candy and we were so emberassed we took her in the house to discipline her. Within one minute the doorbell rang and our neighbor had gone to his house to get her the candy she wanted!! Anyway April 30th is they day they choose to celebrate children. They were allowed to dress up for school. I had put curlers in Abigails hair because she planned on being Jazele from Enchanted. That morning I told her that she reminded me of Dona Florinda a character on a mexican show name Chavo del Ocho. Recently the characters from this show have been the toys for Happy Meals at McDonalds. She knew exactly who I was talking about and she decided that is who she wanted to dress up like. Luckily it was a pretty easy constume to throw together and I didn't have to fix her hair.

Josiah once again choose to be Spiderman.
Hannah just wore a Cinderella dress. Sometime in the afternoon I was downstairs and she was calling me. I told her to come downstairs and tell me what she needed instead of yelling at me. She kept yelling. When I finally gave in and went upstairs I realized why she hadn't come down. She was stuck in the laundry basket.

busy week

Well, we have had an exciting, busy, exhausting week.

Sunday I was stuck in bed/bathroom with a case of food poisoning. I haven't had it this bad in a while.

On Tuesday I took Josiah to the doctor. He has been complaining for some time now that his stomach hurts. He usually just mentioned it in passing and didn't really make a big deal about it. Finally I decided we needed to check it out. The doctor said it is most likely parasites!! Yuck - guess that is part of living in Mexico. So, we put both Josiah and Abigail on parasite medicine last week. It is so common here that many people take the medicine once a year. I think Cory and I might just take some this next week.

I always joke about my pot luck prayer. Its a short and sweet prayer. I simply ask for a strong stomach and that the food will not harm me or my family. They are not as worried about food safety as we are. I know they think I am crazy that I bring a cooler with ice in it to keep my salad cold. Pretty much any time we eat out I make sure to say my pot luck prayer.

On Wed Cory goes to a new colonia we have been trying to reach out to. I think I have told you about Gerardo and Marta. Well, when Cory showed up this week he was informed that it was Martas Birthday. Cory asked if they were going to do anything special and she told him that her husband was too cheap and that he wouldn't even buy her a cake. Cory quickly called me and I got a cake in the oven. Cory told her we would be back in the afternoon and bring her a cake. Right after lunch we headed to their house (about 30 minutes from our house). When we got there she had lunch waiting for us. Luckily we had just had sandwiches at our house so we had room for a second lunch. We had a good time and I think she felt very honored that we took the time to be with her.

Friday Josiah was invited to an art show. One of his best friends has been taking art classes one day each afternoon. The class is at the end of the semester and they have an art expo at a coffee shop downtown. He was excited to go, as was I. It was suppose to start at 5:30 and Josiah was really stressed because at about that time we were still stuck in construction somewhere between our house and downtown. It took a long time to get there and the directions I was given to get there seemed to take me to a part of town that I had never been too. When we were just a few blocks from where I knew we needed to be I saw that I was only a block from the downtown cathedral!! This is a place I know very well (not the cathedral but the area). I couldn't believe I had taken all these back roads when I could have taken a major road way faster. Oh well, live and learn. So we get to the coffee shop about 10 minutes late and find out that only two families from the class had gotten there ahead of us. An hour after I arrived the art teacher showed up. Half an hour later the entertainment showed up. The entertainment was great. It was a band (3 musicians). They used all kinds of kitchen utensils, rubber animals, swimming gogles, etc for their music. Of course they also played real insturments - trumpet, cello, and accordion. I don't know that I would say they were the best musicians I have ever heard (of course not as good as my brother-in-law Trey). I would most definately say that they were the most entertaining musicians I have seen.

Saturday was another great day. We had our regular little league game (we won for those of you keeping tabs). After the game we had a get together for all the families in little league. There are around 50 kids! I don't know how many people there were in total but there was a great turnout and we had a blast. There are a few families that we are really trying to spend time with and get into their lives. After lunch the kids all received a watergun and had a great time having a waterfight. While they were doing that we had a parents baseball game. It was a blast.

Today I was cooking lunch and Hannah fell off of a chair while sitting at the bar. Immediately her head swole up. It was so swollen that her eye was partially shut. My next door neighbor is a surgeon so I ran to his house and had him look at it. He was amazed at how big it was. She screamed for a good half hour. Luckily she allowed me to put a cold pack on it right away so the swelling went down a lot. Now she is left with a nasty bruise.

It didn't hurt quite as much after a glass of coke!

Tooth Fairy vs Raton Follow up

Well, while I was in Tulsa Josiah lost his first tooth. I just wanted to let you know that it was the tooth fairy that came to our house and not the Raton! Because it was the first tooth she brought $5! Just recently she did her math and realized that in total the Burns children will loose 60 teeth. She is only going to be giving $1 for every other tooth lost.

Parties, Parties, and more Parties

So, I haven't blogged in a while. I actually went to the United States for a week. I saved up my Christmas and Birthday money and treated myself to a trip to the states, I only took Hannah with me (since she is under 2 and doesn't have to pay for a ticket). It was my first time to really leave the other two big kids for more than one or two nights. We all did well.

I went to Tulsa (Broken Arrow) to see my twin sister and her family. Ok, the truth is I mainly went to see my only neice Elizabeth. She turned two last week (12th - the same day that Abigail and my grandmother have Birthdays). I went to Tulsa the week before her Birthday and my sister was kind enough to bump the party up a week so we could be there. We had a great time visiting them and had a blast at the Strawberry shortcake party. My sister Monica and my grandmother were also able to join us for a few days which made it extra special.

Elizabeth blowing out her candles on her delicious Strawberry shortcake.

The girls had a great time together. This was the first time they really got to spend time together since they have been able to talk and interact. It was really fun to watch them play with eachother. I just kept thinking about my mom and how she had two of us at the same time!

I got home on the 10th and started thinking about Abigails Birthday party. We decided to hold it off a week since I wasn't going to have time to get everything ready. On Saturday, her actual Birthday, we decided to go to Peter Pipper Pizza after Josiahs baseball game (they lost for the first time this year!). We dediced to call some friends to go with us. As soon as we arrived Abigail saw some tables that were decorated for someones Birthday party. She ran over to the table and was so excited that they had decorated for her party. She was so happy. Kim talked to the lady decorating tables and found out that for $1 a child they would decorate the table for us. So I ran and payed my $6 and got the table decorated. While eating I overheard Abigail tell Karsyn that she needed to eat all of her pizza or else she wouldn't get any cake. Cake! Luckily there is a grocery store connected to the pizza place so I ran and got a cake, forks, matches, and candles. In the end she was thrilled about her party. If only I would have known I wouldn't have already invited guests to the real party.

Not the greatest picture but one of the best I got.

Thursday rolled around and I had double booked her school party and her real party. So in the morning we had a party at the school and in the afternoon we had a party at the house.

Here is Abigail standing infront of her classmates as they sing Happy Birthday to her.

The party at the house was a girls only party. We live in a housing addition where there are about 40 kids. No matter what they all end up coming to parties invited or not. I have had around 100 at a party before. Incase you are wondering my house isn't that big and my back yard is only about 30 feet x 5 feet. So, itsn't kinda crowded when there are that many. This time I made it an exclusively girls and their mothers/grandmothers only party. It was a lot of fun there were 7 girls in total and they all dressed up like princesses. We did about 4 crafts, made princess wands, crowns, etc. It was a lot of fun. Abigail is already talking about next years party.
Personally I am partied out for a while.

This is just seconds before her hair cought on fire. Luckily Kim was standing nearby.

This time we did the pinata inside of the house. We got a pinata that you don't hit! This kind has about 20 ribbons attached to the bottom of it. One of the ribbons is attached to the "door" which when opened releases all of the goodies. The kids take a turn and pick one ribbon to pull until the special ribbon is choosen. This year Hannah was the one who pulled the special ribbon and released all the candies.