Today we celebrated our first Children’s Day, a national holiday in Thailand.

from Wilkipedia-

Thailand National Children’s Day (Thai: วันเด็กแห่งชาติ) is celebrated on the second Saturday in January. Known as “Wan Dek” in Thailand, Children’s Day is celebrated to give children the opportunity to have fun and to create awareness about their significant role towards the development of the country.

Usually, His Majesty the King gives advice addressing the children while the Supreme Monarch Patriarch of Thailand gives a moral teaching. The Prime Minister also usually gives each Children’s Day a theme and a slogan.

Many Government offices are open to children and their family; this includes the Government House, the Parliament House Complex and various Military installations. These events may include a guided tour and an exhibition. A notable example is the guided tour at the Government House, where children have an opportunity to view the Prime Minister’s office and sit at the bureau. The Royal Thai Air Force usually invites children to go and explore the aircraft and the Bangkok Bank distributes stationery, such as pens, pencils and books to every child that enters the bank as a community service. Many organizations from both government and commercial sectors have celebration activities for children. Children can enter zoos or ride buses for free.

There is a Thai saying that states, “Children are the future of the nation, if the children are intelligent, the country will be prosperous.”

What a beautiful holiday and one we gladly observed, children are such blessings and deserve to be celebrated! We noticed the sign about the upcoming Children’s Day at the mall last week and the boys have been counting down the days until it got here. It was like a big free festival just for children. It was really fun and sweet. We heard there were celebrations and parties all over the city, but we decided to go to the mall mainly for the A/C:) The mall had many booths and activities set up, and so did each store. We ended up staying all day walking around and having fun.

We take tuk tuks anywhere we need to go and we have begun to become friends with many of the drivers. They have a taxi station at the mall and we see them almost every day. they are very kind and the man in the middle speaks English and helps up a lot with translating. Today, they had homemade icecream that they were giving out to the children, it was very sweet.

We were extra lucky today, Saint was there:) This precious little boy has stolen my heart, he is the one that we gave Trek’s Christmas present to. His dad is the tuk tuk driver from the picture above that speaks English, and he brings Saint with him to work many days, so we get to get some snuggles.

He is so cute and is 14 months old.

Jarrett gave me the best present on Children’s day-Starbucks:) The boys and I walk by it every day, but I never go in. It is such a special occasion that I always want to wait for Jarrett to come enjoy some coffee with us.

Huge balloon octopus in the middle of the mall. I wish we had been there when they were making it!

There were hundreds of children at the mall. It was crazy and packed out.

The boys played some video games.

And they braved the mosh-pit jumpy castle.

Conner only lasted a few minutes before he came out crying, there were about 100 children over the limit in there and he got smooshed.

There were lots of children performing, they were all dressed so cute.

This little girl took my breath away.

We had to wait an hour for a scavenger hunt to begin, so we went outside to escape the noise and crowds for awhile. I let the boys each choose a super hero toy, so they were lost in super hero world the entire hour:)

We headed back in the mall, but never found where the scavenger hunt was:( We ended up at Robinson, which is like a Dillards, and they were having lots of fun things for kids. When we walked in they were handing out Happy Meals, so the boys were so excited.

We tried to play the games, so we could win those cool wrapped presents, but we were totally lost in translation. Can’t you tell from Conner’s face?! hehe. Our lack of knowing Thai finally bit us in the butt. We decided to leave and get a pretzel.

We did score a cool game at one of the stands and played it while we waited for our Auntie Annie’s jumbo soft pretzel-yummo. They are only $1 here in Thailand, so we get them a lot. They are Peyton’s favorite, he gets the pretzel sticks.

It was an amazing day and definitely a holiday to be added to the Ingram calendar.

Happy Children’s Day