Our Colombian Holiday Successes

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On a Personal Note

I really don't get too personal with this blog very often. But, this year, I wanted to share some pictures from our holiday celebration -- mostly so that you know we actually DO practice what I preach. In our house, we are trying to teach the boys to be proud of both their Colombian and American roots. There is a healthy mixing of many holiday traditions. But, since this is not a blog about American traditions, I'll leave those out of today's discussion. Instead, I wanted to recap our Colombian successes.

Noche de Velitas:
This year we hosted a Noche de Velitas Open House. Over 70 people came to make their own Farolito and enjoy Colombian Hot Chocolate and American Cookies. The kids from my Homeschool Coop Spanish class sang a Christmas Carol in Spanish. We listened to SALSA and my husband and I even gave a brief Salsa demonstration (very brief as HE can't stand to Hacer el Oso!). I had called it an Open House because I knew that we couldn't fit 70 people in our house at once. However, nearly everyone came early and stayed late (a surprisingly non-Gringo kind of thing to do). Thankfully, our normally horrible weather was cooperative -- 60 degrees and NO RAIN -- my own Christmas Miracle -- so the kids ran around outside enjoying the night and the Farolitos. The parents were inside enjoying Chocolate and conversation. It was an amazing success!


Our Año Viejo:

This year the boys wanted to use their clothes for the Año Viejo. This was fine because we seem to have a plethora of jeans with holes in the knees, white t-shirts with stains, and socks with holes. The boys -- with a little help from Dad while Mom took pictures -- put the guy together. They filled it with paper and cardboard (the arms were wrapping paper rolls left over from Christmas). The head was a giant fountain firework with drawings of faces the boys made (one on each side so that they wouldn't fight over who got to draw the head) taped to the outside.

Because we recently moved into the country, this year we were able to actually BURN our Año Viejo -- in the rain. Thank you lighter fluid! :) Each of us wrote down something that we wanted to leave behind in the 2010 and placed the paper inside. It was tremendously therapeutic to watch mistakes from this past year go up in smoke! Even the persistent drizzle did not dampen the glow of the Año Viejo's final moments. The boys agreed that they ALWAYS want to have the Año Viejo tradition. Yeah!! Here are some pictures!

Comments

Natalie said…
Thanks for sharing!!
January 3, 2011 at 9:57 AM
Notorious MLE said…
Rock on! And tell Colombian Daddy I loved his Christmas posts. So funny and so true.
January 3, 2011 at 1:32 PM
Anonymous said…
hey I liked Colombian daddy's posts too, he should post more often.
January 3, 2011 at 4:26 PM
Anonymous said…
This is wonderful, thank you for sharing!!!
January 7, 2011 at 6:39 PM
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