A Mix for Fifty-Six

I thought yesterday was a great day. Both of our worship services were terrific. My husband preached so powerfully and prophetically. I know I am his fan, but I do not have a blind eye – I know when his sermons are particularly powerful. Yesterday both were. It was a great day.

Of course, in addition to the worship, I was happy, as was everyone else to be celebrating João’s 56th birthday. I have absolutely no compunction in sharing how old he is since I am almost three years older than he is and am not ashamed of my age.

The celebration started early, on Saturday night, when he received a super duper fruit basket, with about any fruit you can think of… cashew, persimmon, grapes, guava, papaya, bananas, strawberries, mangoes, sugar apples, plums, pears, apples, melon, lemons, oranges, tangerines, passion fruit, etc. Might have been his gift, but we are all enjoying it.

Saturday night I worked on our lunch preparation, so that upon arrival from church, it wouldn’t take me 3 hours to make lunch. I made my first ever lemon meringue pie and you know what? It was good. Actually too sweet for my taste buds right now, so I am on the lookout for a recipe that is less sweet (although I did cut back on what the recipe called for.)

Lunch was just the girls and us, since our son-in-law is in the US in a work related trip. I think the best gift for João was being able to enjoy his girl’s company in the quiet of our house. As we grow older, we find restaurants noisy, making it difficult to really talk and enjoy the conversations. That is true more so for me, than for him, since I am probably losing my hearing, or at least the ability to filter out background noise. Another nice family inheritance gift for me… Also, with the recent investigations here in Rio of the restaurants and lack of hygiene, sanitation and health standards, it’s kind of taken away our appetite for eating out. I will spare you the gruesome details of the report, but was particularly sad to know our favorite, Outback, was a grievous offender, explaining why we both got sick after our anniversary celebration there in December.

We all had a good laugh, when João opened one present from a dear friend. It was a blood pressure monitor. Considering the health problem João had and the fear that he had high blood pressure (he doesn’t), some people kept saying he needed to have a monitor at home. Others said, that at his age, he needed to check his blood pressure. So we laughed, when Sissy said: “What more appropriate way to say you are getting older, than a blood pressure monitor?” The girls thought it was a great gift. So we all took our turns learning to take someone’s blood pressure and see how we are doing. We must all be a healthy bunch, as we all had very normal blood pressure. Mine fell in the middle (107/67) and João’s was the lowest (96/68).

As far as Mia was concerned, this was much ado about nothing, since she will be turning 12 cat years old (that is 64 in human years) in September, and let us know that she is the oldest in our household and therefore continues reigning as top cat. No matter how old she is, there is no doubt about that!