Birthday today

Daniel's 5th Birthday is today. While he's still "Little Daniel," he sure isn't "Baby Daniel" anymore. Wow... 5 years old. This morning Daniel got up early, and found me making coffee. He tells me that he had some really bad dreams, but he's not going to tell me what they were about because I "would flip out" if I heard about them. He hinted that one of the dreams was a sad one about a baby. So, he says he's just going to keep them "like a secret" and not share them with anyone.

We had a birthday party on Saturday for the twins (who turned 8 years old back in May), and for Daniel. Look, when you have this many kids, you just start having birthday "seasons," OK? So, the plan was for each kid to invite one or two guests, plus their 2 cousins were coming over -- we wanted to keep this kind of small. Well, the people Calle invited could not come, and so here it was late in the game, with not guests for Calle's birthday party. So she asks two girls at Karate Class to come, two very nice and well-behaved Mexican girls (who are cousins). Excellent, two last minute guests, all is well.

Saturday afternoon, when the party was supposed to start... no guests. No one showed up. We waited one hour later than the original start time, and by that time cousins Chandler and Spencer showed up. So, we start serving cake and icecream when a vehicle pulls in front of the house, and out come the two girls we invited, and two other little boys, and two other little girls, and mom, and grandmom (who habla no inglesa), and the vehicle drives off! So, we went from "where is everybody?" to "Mom, we have eight more people!" Now, to be fair, when we originally invited the girls, the mother asked me "Can family come?" gesturing to another little boy. I, of course, said "Si," apparently not understanding the ramifications of my open ended invitation. Wait, wait, it get's even more Mexican...

Get this, we had taco's for lunch, and beat on a pinata in the garage. That was the best pinata experience we ever had at our parties. Let's just say our guests knew how to whack that thing something fierce! It turned out very nicely, and we made a bunch of new friends. After they left, I talked a little about how it's kinda cool to have friends that are not the same as we are in many ways. So often it seems that people choose their friends based so much on common interests, that having friends around is just like having more or yourself around! This was a very different experience, and it was fun.

In other news: I'm very nervous about my Brown Belt testing, which starts this coming saturday (physical/conditioning test), and resumes next saturday (demonstrating that I know the curriculum, or, the Karate part of the test). I'm anxious for this to be over with. Do not get me wrong, I am NOT worried that I will not pass. I have confidence that I will pass just fine. But the testing process is a very challenging ordeal. I've been doing my pushups and situps and tricep dips and wall sitting, 2-3 times a week, for the past several weeks, but now with the test being in just 5 days, I'm wondering how I should proceed. Should I get one more, two more, none more, workouts in this week? Hmm...

Which brings me to the next topic: LEARN TO LOVE ANCHOVIES.