Happy Wisemen Day (or Dia de Los Reyes Magos)!

Briefly, we just celebrated our first annual Walker celebration of the Wisemen Day. It's a much stronger tradition in Hispanic culture, but we're half Mexican in our household so we decided to finally start including it as a celebrated day. It's supposed to be on January 5th, but it worked out better to do it today. For the history on it, feel free to look it up on wikipedia.

 

We had an awesome time with four other families coming over from the ward to our house. Claudia prepared a sumptuous meal and treats (tamales, frijoles charros, rosca de reyes [sweet bread - more on that later], brownies) which were devoured by all present, including the many kids who happily bounced about the house. They got along amazingly well considering the age differences and gender differences (the girls quickly separated into their room to play with the Barbie dolls and accessories and boys subsequently bothered them trying to barge in). But I digress. :) After the kids ate, the adults jumped in and filled up our estomagos, followed by some fun board games (Partini...kind of a grab bag of different games in one...found out our guests had some hidden humming and sculpting talent). :) We all had fun trying to find out who had the plastic dolls hidden in their sweet bread, or "rosca de reyes." It's a circular pastry with frosting and dried fruit (tastes better than description) that gets cut into pieces where 2 little plastic dolls are hidden. If you get one you're supposed to throw another party in a month for all the attendees (we skipped that part today). Ian got one of the kids' ones, Claudia got another (we didn't fix the competition, promise), and the other two were spread out. :)

The tradition says to leave a shoe under the Christmas tree because that is how the 3 Reyes Magos will know there are kids in the house. They will leave a present in the show for the kid who did leave a shoe in the Christmas tree. The next day the kids were super exited that this time the 3 Reyes Magos did leave a present for all of them..

We had a great time, and will definitely repeat it next year. Thanks to all our friends for coming and having a great time! We'll see you next year! Feliz dia de los reyes magos!