Gefeliciteerd, drieëndertig!

If invited to a Dutch birthday party, you may be told "gefeliciteerd!", or, "congratulations!" even if you yourself are not the birthday person. Family, and often friends, also get congratulated and wished a happy day.
(I'm told they also do silly things like sit in a giant circle and make small talk, but that's somewhat phasing out with younger generations. But seriously, every article I read about how to properly celebrate a birthday the Dutch way mentioned some version of "the circle of death")

Vlaai is the traditional dessert of choice, which is a large tart, but unfortunately I got sick the day before and was unable to go find a good bakery. Instead, we settled for another popular option, and a very fitting one color-wise, too: tompouce.

We bopped around the city, popping in to a few bicycle shops so Christopher could get an idea of what he wants. We've shipped my bike here, which Christopher got me for my birthday three years ago, but it was finally time to replace his from early highschool years for something more fitting to our new lifestyle. We knew the bike was going to "be his birthday gift", but that didn't stop me from putting a few thing on the mantel (the Miffy wrapping paper was a must).

And a birthday for Christopher wouldn't be complete without a good meal of red meat. We had the best pastrami sandwiches.

Lucky for Christopher, he's a few years past the age that a newly emerging tradition is poking fun at, the 21st birthday roast, where all your friends make jokes at your expense. But if he still lives here at age 50, he'll be eligible for another weird Dutch tradition, becoming "Abraham" (and if you guessed that for me it'd be "Sarah", then you're on the right track). Fifty marks the year that you are "visited" by these biblical figures and have their wisdom imparted to you, or rather, simply the year that you are now recognized as wise.

Another silly little thing we knew we'd need to get to is the date formatting. Here you'll typically see DD/MM/YY instead of our usual MM/DD/YY. I've already had to put my birth date in "wrong" and it felt so weird. But lucky for Christopher, being born on 12/12 makes it easy!

To all our lovely friends and family (with special shoutout to the Providence people who reached out <3), gefeliciteerd to you, and happy weekend!