Celebrating Mother's Day at the Kites Family Day

Happy Mother's Day to all cooking and non-cooking moms out there! 
As circumstances would have it, we had celebrated Mother's Day last Friday, like most everyone in Qatar who would be back to work today, Sunday. 
It had been an eventful weekend for us, starting on Thursday when my cousin who lives with us had an Arthroscopy at Al Ahli Hospital  in Bin Omran. I think it was only a minor procedure as she had also been discharged early evening. Unfortunately, the procedure was done on her knee so she won't be able to join us for our weekend activity.

My hubby's bestfriend also arrived back from the Philippines carrying all my porky treasures! So finally, I'd be able cook some pork dishes (oh we all so loved our Tonkatsu dinner last night ala Tokyo Tokyo), which would be more of a guilt trip than a food trip :) Just to give you a rundown of our porky weekend:
Thursday Dinner: Pork Adobo
Friday Breakfast: Fried Liempo and Pork Adobo Fried Rice
Friday Lunch: Pork Sinigang 
Saturday Dinner: Tonkatsu ala Tokyo Tokyo
Jong's Sunday Lunch Box: Pork Humba

Well, ok enough on the food narrative. Last Friday, to celebrate Mother's day, we and other relatives decided to meet up at the International Kites Family Day held at the Katar Village. The flyer says that the event would open at 3PM, so I suggested we go at 2PM to get good parking, but that didn't happen. Our Lauren fell asleep right after lunch so we had to wait until she finished her nap. We didn't want to wake her as it would only put her in a bad mood and specially since it would be a bit of a long drive from our place in Al Nasser to the Katara Village (and since it's already about 5pm, we expect that the place and the parking would already be packed).

We arrived at the place already at past 5pm, and the place is already packed. We were lucky to be able to get parking very near the event section instead on the basement parkings located a few hundred meters from the place. My cousins were already there enjoying the lovely site of kites with various shapes and sizes. Free kites were also being given away by the event organizers. But my little girl showed no interest whatsoever with  the kites. She just wants to run around and explore the place. She was given a kite but immediately gave it away also. I would expect that from my Lauren. I know she just wouldn't have the patience to watch a kite fly over her head. 
My husband took time taking photos with the new SLR camera he bought for our big ate Zci. I asked him if he wanted to try flying a kite, but no interest also. I then remember it was our middle child, Lyian who had been wanting to fly a kite for a very long time. I suddenly miss my two other girls still in the Philippines! 
The Kite Festival was unfortunately not what I expected. I thought there would be a competition of like professionally made kites. But it really was more of a family kite flying event and just a few impressive kites. Most of the kites flying over our heads were just the freebies that the event organizers had given away. 
When it started to get dark, I saw a few LED night kites they were trying launch. But I guess there were just about two successful ones.
This is the first Kite Festival and I can see there's still too much room for improvement. One glaring inconvenience to the public is the absence of garbage cans. I have bought a hala card on our way and held on to the card to dispose it when we get there. But from the parking area to the long walk towards the event section I was not able to pass any garbage can! At the site itself, I saw some cleaners roaming and picking up trash some with mobile garbage cans, but none stationary! I mean for a public place like that if you would like to teach discipline to the public in maintaining the place clean, I believe the first thing is give them a proper place to throw their trash so that throwing them around would not become the norm.
Another thing on discipline... hmmm.... well, is it just human nature that when freebies were being given away, the tendency would be to hoard them when you get the opportunity?????? I mean hello! I've seen families with kids trying to fly their kites being assisted by their parents, who could not fully assist because they were trying to clutch at least 5 more kites under their other arms! We arrived at about past 5 and there were no more kites, my daughter was just lucky she came across one who still had one to give away ---- it's a shame she didn't appreciate it! hahaha! Maybe what the organizers could have done was to have like some control on the freebies like a stamp which they could stamp on the kids palms (or parents for that matter) when they received one so that each one receives only one. I guess it's too much to ask to expect decency from people these days :(
Also they could have invited more kite enthusiasts to provide more excitement on the show. Seeing about less than a dozen professionally made kites tend to be boring in a couple of hours. And are inflatables also considered kites? I find them like flying balloons, I wonder if they were really flying on wind or if they had been pumped with helium!

But then this is just the first kite fest, I'm sure if they will continue running this annually, the above points and others would be addressed and we can expect a better and more entertaining kite fest in the years to come.I really hope that they will be making this an annual thing as this is would be a nice and relaxing way to enjoy the weekend and a break from the monotony of mall weekends, specially when the weather is good. Last weekend in particular was the perfect weather for kite flying, lots of wind and it wasn't too hot yet (actually I wonder why.. it's already May but the weather is still good and not too hot!) I hope we can still enjoy the same weather when my two girls arrive in June! I also hope that there would be other events we can enjoy on weekends when they get here.. weather permitting :)
By 7pm we are ready to have dinner in the seafood restaurant at the village. But that would be a whole new post altogether, I'd love to share with you our experience with the restaurant I still don't know what you call up to this time --- it's spelled L'WZAAR, they still don't have a website but their location can be found here :)