Three Kings Day

Now, if you aren’t spanish, you might not be familiar with this awesome holiday!  It fell on January 6th this year – and it’s a celebration of the wiseman coming to bring gifts to Baby Jesus.  In Spanish cultures, this is the actual day that kids open their gifts – not on Christmas Day.  In fact, there are parades with real camels, and men dressed up like wisemen from the East.  The coolest thing is that, instead of Santa Claus, you can give your child’s gifts to one of these wisemen, and during the parade (where most people watch from their apartment windows), the wisemen will climb ladders up to your window and deliver your gifts – super cool! 🙂

So, our good friends here in Greenville invited us over for the festivities (Rachel grew up as a missionary kid in Spain), and we had a great time!  Here’s a few pictures from the night.

Chloe and Emma were making “Queen” crowns (although, Chloe kept calling herself a King. . .)

Nice smile, Dad. 🙂  Here was the GIANT 3 Kings Cake – one of the big parts of the tradition.

And here’s the cake again – it was really big for us 6 people!  It was kind of like a sweet bread with dried fruit baked into the top of it.  Inside was hidden a little king and a bean.  If you got the King, you’d have good luck all year; if you got the bean, you’d have bad luck all year.  All of us just got little naked babies.  Not sure what that meant. 🙂

Chloe couldn’t wait – of course.  The stuff in the mugs is hot chocolate from Spain – it was kinda like chocolate pudding that you could dip your cake in. Yummy! 🙂

Chloe dug it.  She’s all about visiting Spain now.

The night ended with the girls watching “Dora saves Three Kings Day” on Nick Jr.  Obviously these little “queens” were quite enthralled with the whole idea.