Monday, May 18, 2009

Our birthday celebration

Another year, another great party.



This past Saturday Luiz turned 57 and on Sunday I turned 49. Friends joined us, one and all, to celebrate. Carlinhos and Dü came down from Belo Horizontes with Carlos’ younger cousin and her boyfriend. Ricardo is back from Cabo Frio, so he was there. Serginho, an old friend of Luiz from his Rio Ballet Company days, made a surprise visit. As well as all the usual suspects!



We made it easy on ourselves this time around. We covered the drinks and asked everyone to bring a favorite dish to share. This is (mostly deridingly) referred to as a “festa americana”. But among our crowd everyone is more than happy to help make it all happen.



Once again Carlos and Victor pulled out guitars and the stereo was quickly vetoed.



At midnight, bridging Luiz's birthday and mine, we sang happy birthdy, cut the cake and released those who were getting a bit tired and wanted to go home and sleep.



The most popular item of the evening may have been my Jello shots. Earlier in the day I combined a liter of boiling water, a liter of icy vodka and four boxes of strawberry Jello. Then I poured the concoction into 50 ml cups and chilled for several hours. At about 2:00 a.m. we pulled out the trays of crowd pleasing squiggly shooters and – kabam!



Folks had not seen those before.

Just short of 5:00 a.m. we locked the portão, shut down the stereo and went to bed. Nice night.

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