Birthday Eve

Well, tomorrow is my birthday, but we decided to do our celebrating today, since we had pretty much the whole day free. We walked down the beach at lunchtime to a happening little restaurant that serves a fabulous local dish called moqueca. We had the lobster moqueca, and it was the best we've ever eaten. Then we went next door to the ice cream shop. After that we wandered through the little booths of beach vendors. Ruth arranged with her dad (but completely of her own initiative) to buy me a fresh coconut water, and I picked up a beautiful little piece of sand and shell art that is now hanging proudly on my wall. Then, we made our way back to the apartment, stopping to watch a man take off in his hang glider. (I'm so glad we didn't arrive a few minutes sooner or we would have been numbered among the witnesses that saw a city bus run over a motorcycle and it's rider, and I think that would have been quite traumatic for the children. We arrived on the scene just as the ambulance was driving away, and the children never really did know why that big group of people was standing around by the side of the road). Once we arrived at home, we all took a nice nap. We went to a beautiful church service this evening and then came back to the apartment for mango pie. It was a fun day, and I'm so thankful I got to share it with my beautiful family.






*More pictures on flickr.