1st Birthday-Videos

Brasilians LOVE birthdays. In many ways birthdays are a bigger deal than Christmas. We've been to parties for 4 year olds before where the parents rented out a facility similar to a chuck-e-cheese just for their child. This is not uncommon for parents to do for younger kids.

The most important birthdays for Brasilians are a child's 1st birthday and a girl's 15th birthday. People literally save for years to throw a 15th party for their daughter. Lots of money is typically spent for a child's 1st birthday as well.

Our family does things a little differently. Instead of a big party when she turned 15 Brownyn chose to pick about 10 of her good friends and we rented a house in the mountains for a night or two and took all the girls there. It sounds expensive, it wasn't. Her grandparents were here and so they helped a bunch. Ansley chose to go back to the United States for a visit instead of having a big 15th blowout. Grandparents helped with the cost of that as well.

Bronwyn and Ansley were old enough to pick what they wanted to do for their 15th birthdays. With a one year old obviously it's different. Benay and I get to pick.

When Anderson turned one we had a party at a building where our church met. We invited a lot of people, but it wasn't a blowout kind of party. We imported some stuffed animals and then used a prop that our church family had made for a street parade for a Noah's ark kind of theme. Our friends helped Benay make all the snacks. Pretty simple and it worked for us.
With Giovanni we simplified even more. We had a party in our backyard. Benay, Bronwyn and Leni made most of the decorations and it was perfect. God even blessed us with a warm, sunny day.

When it's time to sing happy birthday, the tradition here is for the family get behind the cake table and take a few pictures and then everyone sings happy birthday. I'm thankful you don't hear the conversation our family was having before we sang, but I had to deal with my oldest daughter after she popped my oldest son on the head because he pinched her rear as we were posing for the picture. It's always fun with 6 kids.

Here are Giovanni's birthday songs in Portuguese and then the Brasilian English version:

After the songs Bronwyn let Giovanni dig into a birthday cupcake. Looks like he liked it:

As you can tell, our family is blessed by many people who love our kids.