You can call me Mrs. May from now on

Don't I look like a very serious married woman?

Everything was great. Yesterday, when I woke up, the house was already full of people moving furniture out, bringing tables in, arranging flowers, speakers, rugs... In the afternoon, with all my mom's antique rugs outside forming the aisle and a couple of lounges, the rain started. And it was not a shy, slow rain, it looked like the sky was coming down! The catering workers, that had set a working station outside, to assemble appetizers, started carrying everything inside as fast as they could. In the end, everything worked wonderfully. My mom is the best party planner in the whole wide world.

The ceremony was so beautiful, made by two priests that are great friends with my family: Dom André spoke in Portuguese and Dom Geraldo in English - and everyone looked so touched! Then Nick, Bruce, my mom and Brian said some words, we cut the cake, had a delicious dinner and the dancing started, to stop almost at 4 am, when the workers came back to reposition all the furniture. My mom and my brother stayed with them, helping and making sure that everything was in place. I tried, but ended up falling asleep on a couch. I couldn't believe it this morning, you couldn't say that there had been a party in that home some hours before.

Anyway, Scott and I are married now, with wedding bands and everything. And soon we'll be back in San Diego to start the next step of our lives. I'm really happy!

On the way

I always get a little scared when I have to fly on these Embraer little planes that make the commute trip between San Diego and LA. I'm on the way to Brazil, though, and will come back as a respectful married woman :)

Northern California with my brother

My brother finally came to visit.

He arrived in the end of February and brough our wedding invitations in his suitcase that, very unfortunately, was lost by the airline. I was very freaked out until they found it, almost a day later. Now they are all on their way to the guests.

We flew up to see a Bon Jovi concert in San Jose and stayed a couple of days more to visit San Francisco (it was his first time in the west coast). It rained all the time and we got soaked at Fisherman's Warf, but we always have a lot of fun together, so it was worth it.

Everything is arranged for the wedding and I'm getting ready to go to Brazil. U-hu!

Go Steelers!

Super Bowl XL Champions!

And I might be turning into a football freak. We watched all the games this season and I have my favorite players and everything. We're buying season tickets for the Chargers next season, so we'll be sure to be there when the Steelers play here.

Literary review that comes with reading material

The DHL guy knock on your door to deliver a gift from a dear friend - priceless.

I've been talking to Mauro (a dear, dear friend, who lives in Rio) about this book. I read some reviews and he read the book - I didn't because I haven't gone to Brazil in a while and I can't find it here. It was really sweet of him to go through the trouble of sending me this gift. It's a very interesting story and having reading material in portuguese makes me feel so at home. I can't put it down (you can see - by the crease on the spine - that I couldn't help reading some of it before taking this picture).

A friend in town

My friend Sabrina is spending the week here with us. She's actually the first one to visit, from Brazil, since I moved to the US and this is a big surprise. Out of the other nine in our ten girls group, she's the one with whom I'm less close - I would never guess she would be the first.

It's been a great week and I think we're finding out that the only reason why we were not so close was the lack of time spent together - we worked fin the same building for a really short time and I got to know her better as a friend of Flops and Gisele. I'm very happy to find in her a very good friend.

We've been around, sightseeing, talking and laughing a lot - we even spent a day and a night in Disney, having fun as if we were two little kids.

A brand new year

I'm still not very sure about what people do for New Year's eve in this area. It's such a big deal in Brazil and here people don't seem to mind it at all. We were planning a picnic on the beach (even though it's sort of chilly, we were ready to bundle up and go) but it started to rain and we are not thaaat brave. So we changed plans at the last minute, prepared some good food (these asparagus with prociutto and an artichoke risotto) and had a quiet, but great time at home.

I know I said it before, but I'm so looking forward to 2006!