Happy birthday, Santiago

It's Sunday and I am proud of announce that not only did we KNOW it was Stake Conference, we actually FOUND it this time. 

After church, we went to Santiago's birthday party. There's a group chat for each of the grades at the boys' school and an invite went out to the whole class. Yesterday and the boys and I hit up the Lego store at the mall with the indoor skating rink and bought a gift. Today, they showed up at the party center with the suits on, nervous about hanging out with strangers they can't communicate with yet but game to slide from the bounce house into the pool.

The boys in the class can running up to Joseph, eager to say hello. It took a minute, but he warmed up. James was a little more reticent because he was older than the rest of the kids, but he got into it eventually too.

At kid's parties in Mexico, the whole family is invited and the whole family, included dads, generally sticks around for the whole thing. We sat with some parents and got the skinny on the school (apparently the 3rd grade group of parents is more cohesive while the 6th grade parents are less organized) and a whole list of places we need to visit this year (literally a checklist on Tom's phone).

The whole time, caterers were bringing non-alcoholic drinks around (James downed at least 4 piña coladas) and the party staff were running pool games for the kids (Joseph won the first one that consisted of dancing until the music stopped then jumping into the a hula hoop floating in the pool -- he won a Minecraft t-shirt that he's very proud of). Between the running and jumping and glass drinks in the pool, I think Parliament Pool staff would have had a heart attack.

Then came the food (4 kinds of tacos for the adults; pepperoni pizza, spaghetti, and Ritz crackers for kids). Then the cake. Behold:

And finally the piñata. It's a local thing here to PUNCH the piñata instead of hit it with sticks. Kind of the more aggressive and less lame version of those American safety piñatas with the pull-strings. All the little kids feebly punched at the giant blue number 8 with little plastic bags on their fists (safety first!) for a while, then we convinced James to take a swing and he nailed it.

Happy birthday, Santiago!