We recently spent part of a Saturday near Dallas at this big Latino Festival that I was looking forward to for some months. Luckily, my family was willing to come along! :)
They had face painting and the kids chose Mayan numbers, Maddie's is 18 (3 bars that represent the number "five" three times and 3 dots representing "one" three times) and Nick got 9, since he is going to turn nine (in 10 months, hee hee). Maddie just did a big project on the Mayan culture at school and we had read all about the numbers and she made some carvings of her initials from pictures of the alphabet letters we saw in one of her books. Cool!
Nick's little buddy--all curled up and afraid. I call them "potato bugs" but back East I heard "pill bugs" and Nick and his first friend here, Alaina S., called them "roly polies"when they were 4-6 years old.
This is a dear new friend, Kate W. (and her fiance) from TCC who teaches Spanish. She and I LOVE Latin and Spanish culture--all of it, so we are quite kindred; plus we love God's plan and strength in our lives. She is Baptist and guessed I was a Mormon the first day she met me at the college where we work, because I was "so friendly, and Mormons are super friendly." :)
C'est moi OR Soy yo--learning to dance the flamenco. The festival offered mini-workshops in all kinds of dancing, which I loooooved!
These guys were awesome!! Dominicans playing these silver, metal instruments that we tried (and it sounded terrible) but when they got their rhthym going, it was pure merengue-heaven! More dancing and general deep contentment for me...
Note: Nick has lost about 4 teeth rather recently, 3 of them came out at school!
Getting faces painted--
Making a mini-maraca. Lots of crafts at the festival.
Hanging out at the Domincans' booth: Maddie tries to play this instrument--
So, we have been to many fun festivals and enjoy the excellent foods, music and just seeing new things. There were concerts all day and the kids ran around the huge grassy amphitheatre that was there. Then we headed to IKEA for about 3 hours of overwhelming amazement at how big that store is!!! 
