Two Birthdays

February 29, 2012

Two Birthdays

This past weekend was full of birthdays for us. We went to our first kemem (Marshallese first birthday party) for Juliet, a little girl who lives up the street, and then we celebrated my birthday. We didn't really know what to expect from the kemem and I was pretty nervous about the whole thing. Even here, we're a pretty conspicous family and I didn't know how the Marshallese at the party would react to us. For the most part they ignored us (a tried and true method for dealing with things on small islands) and we had a good time. The food was great and there was a lot of it. Sky ran around with the other kids like a crazy thing and had a whole lot of fun and D and I schmoozed with the other parents. After dinner the Marshallese ladies there sang a special song for Juliet (I'll post the video soon). It was really beautiful to hear and wonderful that they did it. Sky had a meltdown shortly after the singing so we decided to call it a day.
The next day was my birthday- I'm 33! I think this was probably one of my best birthdays. I rode my racing bike for 13 miles first thing in the morning, then came home to D making me breakfast (smiley eggs!). I opened some presents and then we spend the day hanging out outside. D surprised me with another present- a TV antenna! Don't laugh, state-siders, that's a pretty big deal for us. After lunch we watch a TV show and then we all took naps before we started cooking and cleaning for my birthday party. We have a very small house but one of the upsides of that is that it takes 45 minutes to clean the whole thing. D made me home-made macaroni and cheese, grilled sausage and corn for my birthday dinner with ice-cream cake for desert. We ended up have 10 people over to help celebrate and it was so much fun sitting and talking on the back porch while the kids ran around playing. We really are some lucky monkeys.