Celebrations around the world

Last week Singapore had another public holiday called Deepavali. Also called Dewali, its an Indian holiday much like our New Year. This is a very important holiday to them, celebrated over 3 days in some parts. Our neighbors are Indian and they invited us over to celebrate with them. The children painted candle holders in preperation for that night. They also had a party for the rest of the complex this weekend. They had fireworks, aka, sparklers, henna painting, and amazing Indian food! We donned our Indian attire and headed our for a night of fun and festivities.

If you look closely on the boys hands, you can see the henna tatoos they got. Made from a paste of henna leaves, green tea and some other stuff I am not sure of, it stays for about 3-5 days.

Julie getting a henna tatoo Cate was so excited about getting her hands painted. She had her first one, a little flower, and then it got smudged after she tried to touch it. So then she got back in the queue to have it fixed. That wasn't good enough, she had to have the other hand done as well. So cute!

Ryan got a scorpion

Ethan got a peacock on one hand, and a heart with his name hidden in it on the other hand

Aaron got a peacock and a scorpion too.

Preperations for the special day

Creating a picture with colored rice

All the children gathered and painted small candle holders for the "festival of lights"

P.S. these picture are all backwards. I am still technologically challenged and can't figure out how to load the pictures when i have several that have a specific order. So, the prep obviously happned first and the pic of me and the children was actually the end of the night.