Jo's 2nd b-day

For most of us, our birthday is the one day of the year that is devoted to spending time with friends and doing something special for ourselves.  Since it'll be 364 days before your next birthday rolls around, it is okay to, say, splurge on an extra decadent dessert after dinner or stay up too late or drink too much.  Our birthdays do come only once a year, after all...

Except for Jo.

Nope, none of this "once a year" crap for my dear Jo.  Jo will accept nothing less than two birthday celebrations, because that's how he rolls.  Right, honey?

Alright, alright.  To be fair, the reason why we celebrated Jo's birthday twice is because he was off having a roadtrip with Erin and I on his actual birthday, and his family wanted a chance to wish him a happy birthday as well.  So, two birthdays it was.  We were planning to have a picnic in the park, but we got thunder-stormed out, so we moved the location to his folks' place instead.  Everyone met for dinner.  The players:

Jo, of course.  Along with his Friends: Erin and Joe.

The Brothers, Esteban and Sterling.

More Friends: Corrina and Xalan.

The Dog: Glacier.

The Stepdad: Walt

The Mom: Connie

And me, of course.  The Girlfriend.

Jo was excited to have everyone over, but what he was really excited about was the food.  It was a potluck affair, so we all loaded our plates with a bunch of different types of food.

Observe............

And we ate.  And talked.  And laughed.  It was great.

Midway through the meal, Jo's new Bolivian friend Virginia stopped by with her husband and two kids and joined in on the fun.

We went to the Cheesecake Factory for Jo's actual birthday because the man's obsessed with the stuff, and, sure enough, Jo was able to enjoy round two of cheesecake.

After dinner, Jo opened cards.  I was going to say presents, but he had already opened the tangible goods on his actual birthday so what was left was the cards with the nice birthday messages on them.  It's funny how that happens.  When you're little, it's the biggest and brightest boxes that are the most desirable.  When you get older, the little sealed envelopes hold the most promise because that means the gift-giver decided on either cash or a giftcard.  Afterward, we played one of our favorite games, Catchphrase.

After awhile everyone started to disperse, so Jo and I followed suit.  Happy (2nd) Birthday, Jo!