My friend Camarino who runs a building crew in the local area building houses, invited my wife, my son and I to attend his youngest son's fifth birthday party. His name is Camarino just like his dad so we all call him little Camarino. The age five is not a special year so it's just the normal five year old kid party. Some years are special like the 3rd year, a year of much celebration. The 15th year for girls is also very important.
These are common events and are held in the streets in front of the house. Usually the street is blocked off for the occasion but in Camarino's case it's a dead end street anyway. The mom's had this event totally organized with an endless series of games to keep the kids occupied. They had two piñatas, a blow up your friend's balloons contest, a spoon race and a musical chairs race.
The birthday boy gets first crack at the piñata. Camarino Senior handles the rope on the piñata and does a good job of making sure that it survives so that the other kids get a crack at it. The piñata itself is basicly a clay pot stuffed with goodies in an elaborate costume, in this case Spiderman. 
You will notice that young Camarino manages to knock off both legs from Senior Spiderman, an ignominious fate. Eventually one child manages to crack the pot and the whole thing plumets to the dirt and there is a mad scramble among the kids to get the goodies. Often one of the bigger kids will abscond with the whole thing but fear not, the parents have lots of goodies to molify the tears.
The balloon contest consists of each child with balloons tied to each ancle. The object is to stomp on the balloons of the other kids. A great game to help kids get out their agressions. Ironically most of the contestants were girls! I'm not even going to try to analyze that one.
Next up was the spoon race. Each kid was given a tablespoon (cuchara) with an exact number of beans. The object is to arrive at the finish line with the exact number of beans. I'm not sure what the prizes were but it didn't look like anyone really cared who won. Actually I think the adults had as much fun as the kids.
Then we had piñata number two: Batman. Actually parties are rated here by the number of piñatas. This was clearly a two piñata party. One piñata just doesn't make it. Too many kids are left out, there's not enough candy to go around and the older kids who have some experience at this really want a crack at the piñata. You will notice that the older kids have to use the blindfold. It sort of levels the playing field. 
This little guy is dressed in the traditional (almost) vaquero outfit. Cowboy boots, Wide cowboy belt jeans and cowboy hat. In this case it's not the really traditional one. The traditional one is the straw cowboy hat. 
Camarino's oldest, his daughter gets her crack at the Piñata. Because she is older she gets the blindfold treatment. In the end we wind up with a street strewn with candy and a mob of kids scrambling for the pieces of candy. 
The last game is the old standby, musical chairs. This turns out to be a fiasco. No one seems to figure out the right number of chairs for the number of kids and when the music stops kids go flying. The whole thing is re-started but somehow more fun is had and no one seems to care about the winner.
While 
Through all of this Camarino's wife Silvia is serving pozole, a traditional chicken/pork based soup that has hominy in it and lots of other great things. It really is a traditional fiesta speciality and Sunday night speciality that every one loves. There was also a large cake but we had to leave before it was cut.
Comments