Happy 1st Birthday Annabelle!

There are more posts on the way from our recent trip to Rio and time with Dave's dad in Brazil, but we wanted to get this time-sensitive one up before it was too late.

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Annie, you sure woke up in the most amazing mood on your first birthday.

 It was as if you knew that we were about to go completely crazy hosting a Brazilian barbecue for fifty of our closest friends here.

 Luckily, we had help with the decorating, because people have a very specific way of tying balloons and making streamers here.

 

Having raked, burned, blow-torched, and swept (in that order) our yard to obtain some semblance of the locally prized smooth bare ground, we borrowed the plastic tables and chairs from the derelict ice-cream shop next door to transform the backyard.

 

Yes, that is our cooking stove propane tank in the stroller. This was Jim's solution to the problem of having to carry it around while we attempted to blow-torch the grass away.

We bought 10 kg of beef and I made a salad and a large pot of farofa, 

or roasted manioc flour, to go with it.

 Here is the grill, which we built out of bricks and an old shelf from a fridge.

 Sweets made by one of our closest friends

Annie got all dressed up for the party.

 Here she is opening her very first official present, a book left in Brazil for her by her Bubby.

 She loves it.

The back yard filled up fast.

 Fortunately, we also had help with the grilling itself from a friend's father, since neither of us has ever grilled beef before in our lives. He had no idea we were going to put him to work when he arrived, but he was a very good sport about it. His wife cut the grilled meat into bite-sized pieces, then a few of our neighbors assembled and handed out plates of the meat, farofa, and salad to all the guests. Mind you, this all happened AFTER the cake and singing, which is traditionally (at least in this community) done first.

Speaking of singing, here's a video of the birthday girl's celebration (sorry for poor resolution, had to shrink file size for rural upload):