Birthday BASH!

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Birthdays are my favorite time to be happy, wear crazy hats, and drink brightly colored drinks! This year was no exception, as I was sharing my birthday with two other Aries legends, Zach Polman and Chris Jackson! As per every other birthday, I had about a week’s worth of events planned for me and anyone who was lucky to be caught in my hurricane. The festivities started on April 4th when I left the house in my “29 Forever” tiara and Aly with a pocket full of glow sticks! It was time to show this peninsula what they didn’t know they’ve been missing! We hit the Barefoot Beach Bar like a tropical storm, and found all our favorite party people already there to receive us! I think the pictures can tell the story of that night…a fairytale of hilarious persons from diverse backgrounds sharing stories and beverages ….a happy ending for sure!
The morning of my birthday was spent with each of you via reading my amazing scrapbook!! (See blog entry Thank YOU!!) That afternoon was the joint birthday party for me and Zach at Jim and Cindy’s fabulous pad and Chris Jackson’s arrival! Chris is…an enigma … for if I was to type out all the things that are awesome about Chris, you would surely say, “Why, he can’t exist!” 😊 The range of topics in one day can span from living and starting businesses in the Philippines to tango music history to digital media production to US President Trivia to diving accidents to Toronto Blue Jays baseball stats to the healing properties of Tequila! He first came to Placencia from Toronto, to visit Jodie and maybe do some diving…but not surprisingly we were distracted and never got underwater. True to his word, he was back 3 months later for our birthdays and the fishes! (See next blog on Glover’s Reef!) Anyways, the three way birthday party was a huge hit with people of ALL ages. I was able to look around and feel super lucky and blessed to have assembled such a motley crew of awesomeness in the middle of nowhere, Belize!
The rest of the week was spent like any other -days on the beach and nights of F-U-N! Tuesday night Shay had us over to her house for a spaghetti dinner with wine, which is oh so fancy because it’s so expensive here! After we stuffed ourselves, we jumped on a small boat to cross the channel over to Tranquilo for the first rock of the microphone that week. We sang, we danced, and later I tried to give Rachel a ride home in my bike basket! On Wednesday, we hit half price happy hour at Francis Ford Coppola’s Turtle Inn, then the new Karleoke bar on the beach! It was there I entered the “Sing A Song for a Beer” contest - imagine my pure joy and shock to have to sing “I’m Too Sexy” by Right Said Fred! I had been saying all week that I wanted to sing it, but didn’t know if it was in my range. Ask anyone that was there that night….it is in my German robot accented range, and it’s definitely worth the price of a beer! By Thursday night we had really perfected those performances, and thank goodness because there was to be a Karaoke Contest on the beach stage at the Easter Festivities on Friday night! Aly and I spent all day Friday planning our stage presence and speculating how many songs they would let us perform - hopefully at least one Footloose solo, one lovely ladies duet, AND one Wisconsin trio?
The Easter Holiday is one of the busiest times in our tiny village - Belizeans from all over the country come to relax on the beach and win drinking and dance contests at the beach bar. As the people of this wonderful country prove over and over again, holidays are a time for family, friends, and Bottoms Up! It was surreal to see lines of people and cars parked on every flat surface of the peninsula! The Placencia newspaper had an entire page of scheduled events over the weekend, including our beloved Karaoke contest……but when we got to the stage, obviously no one had read the paper and didn’t hear of any contest!?!? We were devastated! I guess next Easter we will have to organize it ourselves! BUT they did keep us entertained with contests of Punta dancing, beer chugging, and burger eating. I was pretty excited to see a woman and a girl win the eating contests!
On Saturday we helped the kids dye eggs and then hide them around the beach for the egg hunt. It was made much more fun by the fact that I knew most of the kids and parents and it was on the beach! As you can see from the pictures, the dye on the natural brown eggs is so deep and rich - I was really impressed with the results! We dyed everything with food coloring and vinegar, and I later got the idea to use my sparkly nail polish enhance the egg decorations too! Who needs Paas kits!?! I really appreciate that most everything here must be made from scratch!
Thus concluded my first week of birthday goodness, but lucky for me, we were leaving for 4 days of diving and desert island adventure on Glovers Reef Easter Sunday! I sure do miss my family, but these traveling holidays aren’t so bad….

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Photos

The Winner of the Easter Punta Dancing contest!
one week after my birthday - where did she get her ideas!?!?