Carmen's Fiesta

Since sharing a rented-out water park worked well for Gabriel's birthday (and Carmen started saying, "I want that kind of birthday party!"), we arranged to share Splash with one of her classmates for Carmen's birthday. They both just finished their first year of Spanish Immersion, so we thought a fiesta theme appropriate. And what better way to celebrate kids turning 7 in August than a water park?

All in all, I think the party went well. It was very well attended and the kids had a great time, from what I could tell.

I would have enjoyed it more if I'd had time to cool off in the water--it was nice & hot for this water park party, unlike Gabe's. This time lots of grown-ups were in the pool! (That's Uncle Brian playing with Gabe and Carmen, who still had time for her brother even though the park was full of her friends.)


In spite of weeks of preparation, I didn't have everything "ready" for the party until 45 minutes into it. But that was (mostly) not my fault: Splash wouldn't let us in until 7:15 (15 minutes before the party).


We had to bring in several coolers of drinks (Fiesta brand fruit-flavored soda pop), move one of the tables to make room for the piñata to hang, put tablecloths on the tables, organize the things on each table (one was set up for cake & cupcakes, one had snacks on it, one was for piñata stuff (blindfolds, a stick, an extra donkey piñata), one was the "adios table"--it had the favors & Mexican jumping beans on it, and one had the pancho & sombrero for Trent as well as Carmen's ristra (paper flower crown). Then we had to hang the piñatas.

I asked Abuelo & Abuela, Martha and Trent's dad to help with the jumping beans. Which is a side story:

I ordered Mexican jumping beans from JumpingBeansRUs.com. Because the order arrived quickly, weeks before the party, I didn't open the box for a couple of days. When I did, I looked for care instructions. I read the invoice and the front of the orange game sheets, but didn't see any instructions. Obviously the beans were fine; they were making LOTS of noise. So much, infact, that I couldn't sleep one night. So I put them in the dining room. A couple of weeks later, I noticed that the box was no longer making noise. I opened it up and nothing was happening. I looked more carefully at the orange sheets and found the care instructions in small print on the back. I then put the beans in the refrigerator, but didn't have much hope that they'd return to their former activity. So I wrote a note to the company suggesting that they make the care instructions more obvious and asking them to send us more beans, which they did. And this shipment was clearly marked: for best results, store between 45 -55 degrees!


So, back to the party. I asked the aforementioned lucky people sitting at one of the tables to put two new, frisky (active & noisy) beans in each of the 60 boxes of the older, less-frisky beans, although they all seemed active in the heat!



We had to bring our own CD player to broadcast music through the Splash sound system so we could play a CD of festive songs. I spent weeks collecting 12 hours of appropriate music, then had to narrow it down. We mixed familiar songs the kids or family would know with some kumbia, traditional mariachi songs, etc. (This morning, I heard Carmen playing "La Bamba" for the first time on the piano--fantastic!) The music was a little loud at first, but when they turned on the water fountains, it wasn't too bad. I think the volume fluctuated song by song. After the party, I asked David if he got the CD player afterwards. He said, "Yeah, I went to get it when I heard the Macarena--I wanted to make it stop!"


The cake was gorgeous! Gigi made it to look like the piñata we made. She used a soccer ball-shaped cake pan, 7 waffle cones & coconut to achieve this beauty. And if you Google "fiesta cake" or "piñata cake", you will find nothing like it. I only saw two even remotely cute fiesta-themed cakes on the whole internet. Which reminds me, we really need to make an album of Gigi's cakes. I'm going to need help!


When we sang Happy Birthday, we sang once to Carmen, then once to Trent, then David & his Mom & Dad sang Las Mañanitas (I tried to help, but I don't know all the words).



The little kids enjoyed the baby pool, its slide, and each other (as usual).


The kids probably had the most fun in the water, but my favorite part of the night was the piñata.



We had a big one for the bigger kids to beat with a stick, and it was durable enough (and David pulled it up and down on a string to keep it interesting) that it lasted for all of Carmen's classmates to give it a whack.



Daniel (the eldest child of our friends with 6 kids) was the first to make a big hole (and after doing so grabbed a stick of candy that was protruding out of it, to the amusement of the crowd).


Finally some of the teenaged boys (Lauren's boyfriend Devin & then cousin Andy) did some substantial damage!


Not long before the total destruction, two of Carmen's classmates asked me, "Are you going to divide the candy evenly?" I asked them, "Do you want me to?" And they nodded earnestly. So I posed the question to the whole group, which seemed unanimous: they wanted adults to distribute the candy fairly! (This surprised me! But David had also told me that he had bad memories of the left-out feeling from his childhood experiences of mad scrambles after breaking piñatas and we didn't want that!)




We also had a smaller "pull piñata" for the smaller kids. (That's the one we made, and it was supposed to open when the kids pulled the ribbons, but apparently the cone was glued on too well!) When we did finally break it open, some kids intentionally got underneath the piñata where I was pulling out the candy and stayed there while it rained candy on their heads, saying "Ouch!" each time, over and over, without moving.


Incidentally, David came across the symbolism of the 7-point star piñata by accident on Wikipedia yesterday. Really interesting: "In the Mexican Catholic celebration of Christmas, the piñata is traditionally shaped like a seven-pointed star which represents the devil and the seven deadly sins, while the contents are the goods or blessings he is withholding. Striking the devil with faith, symbolized by being blindfolded, releases the blessings."
We were just looking for the traditional song or chant (Dale! Dale! Dale!) that was on the tag of the store-bought piñata. (We did find it on YouTube, but not where you could tell what the melody was supposed to be!) Towards the end of the piñata-beating, I heard this chant coming from Jose (Ollantay's dad)! Hey, we were wanting that song!
And one more thing on the piñata--there is a picture here of the world's largest piñata--did anybody else know there was a Six Flags theme park in Mexico? I didn't!


The other hostess, Trent's mom Angie, helped mind the "Adios table" at the end. We had a few people who didn't seem to understand "take one of everything". In fact, somebody ran off with 75 scratch art sombreros without opening the 3 sacks they were in that also held 75 stick tools and 75 ribbons. But we still had boxes of jumping beans at the end, so I'm not sure if everyone got a bag. I actually have no idea how many kids were there. They did eat all 46 cupcakes, though. (And then many of them asked for the "real" cake, too, as well as the coconut-and-icing-covered waffle cones.)

This was the biggest group of family I ever saw in one place to get a picture.


We were not out of the park by 9:30, but we were trying. We also fed the Lifeguards cake. David took a moment before we left to tell them how impressed we have been at how attentive and professional they are as a staff (as opposed to some other places we've been recently where the "lifeguards" seem to be just for looks, barely paying attention to the swimmers.)



Mom took this picture of my car after it was loaded to go home. Yes, it was that full.

I didn't get home until 10:30, and when I did, Carmen was waiting for me, expecting to open presents. When I saw the mountain of gifts, my reaction was "No way!" But David had told her she could open a few and my aunt Jennifer had asked that hers be first, so we let her open that one.



All David & I wanted to do was eat--we never had a chance to eat the dinner I'd picked up on the way to Splash. Funny thing--it was still warm! Go figure! Just as we finished eating, Carmen said, "I never got a cupcake!" I was shocked to hear that and glad we still had two that wouldn't fit in the box with the other 46. We told her she could have it for breakfast.

Gabriel has been sick the last couple of days with a nasty cough. He's woken up in the middle of the night crying (but doesn't remember it later and doesn't communicate when we go to check on him). Last night after the party he just laid on the couch, exhausted. Paloma went to check on him.


This morning Carmen immediately got into the cupcake container. She only ate a few bites, but then heard Gabriel coughing on the baby monitor. She then asked us if she should make Gabe a "feel better soon" card. So she went to start drawing and Paloma came along behind her and finished the chocolate cupcake.



We didn't remember to put the roses Meg brought into water until this morning, but they're perking up now.