Dora the Explorer

For my birthday party a few weeks ago, Rita and I were trying to figure out something different we could do for the festivities….a sort of half-time between margaritas and more margaritas dinner. Rita decided to sponsor a Dora the Explorer piñata. Now…15 white girls swinging at a Spanish-speaking schoolgirl could be considered culturally insensitive. However, this particular Dora the Explorer looked less like a Latina adventurer and more like….well…the birthday girl:

Dora the Explorer bore more rapporta with the birthday senora. [Should you be worried if your birthday party involves an effigy? Ominous.]

The next step was deciding what prizes to use with Dora. [Candy, puh-lease. Know your audience, I say.] After much deliberation [and more expenditures than we had planned for], we complimented the candy filling with lottery tickets, rice krispie treats and little plastic bottles of "airplane" alcohol. We even included a couple of corks that could be redeemed for wine from Rita’s collection.

As the birthday girl, I got to take the first swing. Just a note of advice for those of you contemplating a piñata at your own festivities…when tomboys swinging a stick are involved, you MAY want to install some obstacles to make the game last longer than one batter. I would have thought the plentiful margarita’s would have been a sufficient handicap, but apparently this group I had some experience swinging a bat post-margarita [gotta love those church leagues]. Even with a healthy buzz, I de-legged poor Dora on the first swing. Luckily, the legs were stapled on and didn’t yield any of the good stuff, but poor Dora did NOT survive til the clean-up batter.

It turns out...people’s true colors come out when they are scampering for piñata loot. In fact, I think a black market developed in the driveway alongside the Dora carcass. [It turns out that one alcohol nip is worth 2 lottery tickets, all the rice krispie treats were cornered by the birthday girl and Julie will throw an elbow for a shot at Rita’s wine collection]. And I’m not naming names, but when we got Deb’s coat for her at the end of the evening, it was weighed down with 10 lbs worth of airplane alcohol [that’s right, we wear coats on July 9th – how’s the weather where you are? =)]

We’re STILL finding little bottles of Bailey's amongst the climbing vines down the driveway [Julie really swung for the fences].