Matchy Matchy...

...never looked so cute!

The first day of the big holiday here always includes dressing up.  With special attention paid to matching. Literally entire extended families will all wear similar color outfits. This year we went with blue.

This was also Isaiah's first Raya holiday.  He took it in perfect stride and did exactly what he was supposed to...ate at every house we went to! You can see a photo from Isaac's first Raya here.

Kaylee eating her first Raya food AND managing a near-2 yr old on her lap...what a champ!

A cookie in his mouth and one in each hand. Git it son.

Our neighbor (the neighbors who invited us to their families' houses today)...Isaiah found a buddy :)

...a nap on the way to house #3...he had run around chasing chickens at house #2

For those of you cultural buffs who enjoy useless facts... the collars on men's traditional shirts here can vary as can other aspects. Each state has it's own unique style (though in every state every style is worn as they're not THAT different).  A friend of mine's mom made the boys outfits this year.  She made sure the collar on their shirts was the style for our state (no buttons, low like a tshirt, not high like a collared shirt).  Then when we put on their "sampin" (the skirt looking thing) and didn't tuck in their shirts to it. We actually got complimented at one house for dressing our boys so appropriately for the state we live in. :) Anthony (for comparison sake) wore a high collar, with buttons, and tucked in his shirt to his sampin.  All my guys looked great in their Raya best!!

The boys with our neighbors' son. The kid has a near waist-length mullet, but his dad shaves his head. Go figure!

Isaac seems so comfortable on days like this. He doesn't miss a beat being around people...young or old, men or women, no matter the ethnicity.  I saw him crawl up into this man's lap a couple times (while playing with the boy in the pic above) and it was like he was climbing into his own grandfather's lap. I hope he always loves and is just "around" people like this his whole life!

...blurry, but that's because these 3 boys ran around all day long together. It was too cute watching them play!

Here's Isaac giving a tour of the chicken coop at the back of one of the houses. Or at least, that's what it looks like. It was like he had been there 1000 times!

If you can click on this picture to enlarge it, do. We couldn't find Isaac (thought he was in the back with the chickens) but turns out he was just chillin' with everyone in the living room talking to them. He did so great today and we totally weren't expecting it by the 10 or so meltdowns we had before leaving the house. HA!

I love Isaiah's face in this one. Son, this is Asia...whether you understand it or not, the peace sign will be a dominant feature in most of the pictures taken as you grow up!

And here are us girls at 34 weeks. Maybe next year for Raya we'll pick pink or purple for our family color? :)

 All in all it was a great day! Yay for children behaving as they should and making a holiday even more enjoyable! (except for that soccer ball Zay threw on the coffee table with an Auntie's gold-rimmed cups and saucers getting hit...thankfully none were broken!)