Oktoberfest

Over 100 years ago lots of German and Italian immigrants came to our state to start new lives. Their influence is still strongly felt and is present in lots of things throughout our city.

One of the things that the Germans brought, and I love, is Oktoberfest. This is celebrated throughout our state and some other states in Southern Brasil where German influence is strong as well. I love it because our family has German roots and I've always been intrigued by our name and would love to know more about our old world family history.

At the end of our street is an Oktoberfest every year and we love to go and experience everything. This year it was this past Sunday.

We weren't sure if it was going to happen this year because all day Saturday Benay and Garrett looked like this:

Bad hot dogs got both of them. They were in bed most of the day on Saturday but thankfully God healed them enough to be able to go to Oktoberfest on Sunday. Benay said she felt like she was running at 65-70% and Garrett said 90% but they both wanted to get out of the house. So we went and they just sat. We knew Garrett wasn't near 100% when we saw him sitting watching his friends play soccer. Sitting and watching. He NEVER does that.

Anyway, we experienced the German festival again and we had fun.

We enjoyed hanging out with some super heros.

We enjoyed some German food....

...and some espetinhos.

We enjoyed listening to the German band.

We enjoyed watching the German dancers.

We enjoyed watching the guys and girls fastest beer drinking competition. Here are the guys seeing who can finish drinking a meter of beer, from long flasks, the fastest. Two guys quit before they could finished.

How do you even measure a meter of beer?

We enjoyed watching Anderson, surprise, play soccer. He's in the number 8 Kaká jersey.

 We enjoyed some popsicles.

We enjoyed sitting and taking it all in.

And B, you know we ate some Bretzels. Here's mom with her faking a "yummy Bretzel" smiling face while having a stomach ache. I ate one, maybe two, just for you.

Here's a short video of some of the sights and sounds around the music/dancers. At the end you can see the official flask cleaner doing his thing before the beer drinking competition.  I guess hygiene is super important before you give yourself a beer buzz.


A common theme throughout the day was, "You know who would love this?" and another person would say, "Pops."

Maybe some day Pops you can come here in October and get in touch with your German roots. May not be as good as your trip to Germany but we know you'd love it.

Ein Prosit Pops!