Cinco de Mayo!

I just read that Cinco de Mayo is celebrated all throughout the U.S. to celebrate Mexican heritage and pride, but is only celebrated in the state of Puebla in Mexico (to commemorate a sweet victory over the French). So . . . I will avoid telling you I thought it was Mexico's independence day (which is apparently in September).

This is my first year ever doing *anything* for May 5th. Usually I find out it's Cinco de Mayo by listening to the radio, and I make the mental note: "Here it is . . . and there it goes." But this year I decided to shout "Viva la Mexico!" by having a little family fiesta. Sometimes I just like an excuse to do something different.

We had both chicken and beef taquitos, black beans (from food storage), chips and salsa, and sliced cantaloupe. Remember how plain my table was on St. Patrick's Day? This time I made sure we had a centerpiece.

Vamos a celebrar!

If you are a fan of black beans, you would love these.

Let's call these taquitos "rustic" to make up for the fact that I should've worked on my plating and presentation here. But boy, they were good.

I took one shot, one shot only, of the family--because even if I'd have snapped 10 they'd all look basically like this.

Pinwheels for all.

Try not to imagine how many germs must have blown across the table and onto the food, hm?

Mary drew a super cute Mexican senor and senorita.

After dinner the kids played outside while eating lime fruit bars.

You know what I should have done? Made the family communicate entirely in Spanish. Then maybe Tyce could've practiced with me and worked on improving his grade. Everyone else could just recite the words they've learned from Dora the Explorer. (Largo! Corto! Rojo! Azul!)  Ah, well . . .  next time.