My 23rd Bday!

Birthday time is always busy for the Manea family, since mine falls on the 6th of August, and my dad's falls on the 8th. This year has been no exception especially since Hybrid was in town!

6th - My Birthday
On the night of my birthday (Thursday night) I had the family around to Matt's place for coffee and tea. It was really nice to get everyone together, but we had a few missing since Matt's lil sister has caught the dreaded swine flu, my uncle is currently in Romania, and it was a bit too late in the evening for Simona's kids to join us :) None the less it was a nice night of food and drinks, with Mina making way too many cakes as usual.

7th - Dinner with the Family
On Friday night I decided to take my parents and Mina out to Sandrino's, my favourite restaurant in Fremantle, and then out for dessert at San Churros which is a Spanish chocolatier right next door.

It was a typical Manea family ordeal, with Mina complaining about everything from A-Z (my favourite complaint was that the churros tasted like french fries with chocolate), but she decided she liked the Sandrino's pizza so at least there was one positive.

After dinner Matt and I rushed home and had a 2h nap because we were going back out at 12pm to see Hybrid! It was SUCH a long day - I had been working since 7.30am and was so ready to call it a night, but it's Hybrid... I would have really regretted missing them. When we got to Villa (the venue), it took us quite a long time to figure out that the guy dj-ing was actually Chris from Hybrid! We kept saying to each other how great this guy was, but we wanted him to hurry up so Hybrid would come on. Turns out Chris has just shaved his head and been enjoying a little bit more food lately so we just didn't recognise him, especially since we were expecting "Hybrid", which is actually 2 guys (Chris and Mike).

It was a really great set with a lot of variety. A few things of note were a Moby remix, a Radiohead remix, "I Love You" (John Creamer and Stephane K - Hybrid remix), and Finished Symphony which everyone went crazy for. It was a great night, but we ended up leaving at around 3.45am because we just couldn't stay awake any longer!

8th - My Party
We had a nice long sleep in and almost got our 8 hours sleep, but we had to get up and start getting stuff ready for my party that night. But first off we went to visit my dad since it was his birthday, and gave him his present which consisted of "Bucky Balls" (little magnetic ball bearings that are really addictive to play with) and my old digital camera which he had asked to have since he knew I got a new one from Matt for my birthday.

After we got back from my parents house, we spent the rest of the day (until about 8ish) getting everything together. Mina made me a whole bunch of awesome little cakes, but I still decided to make fairybread, weetbix choc slice, and some fruit and veg platters (to ease the sugar pain). I couldn't wait to put on my new shoes and my new Review dress so I did a lot of setting up in style, which of course my feet punished me for the next day.



It was a really fun night! I managed to catch up with uni and work friends, but I was missing a few people, particularly my friend Amy who was really sick that night. Poor thing came over anyway to drop off her famous Granny Crunch (a mixture of cream, crunchies, instant pudding, and other naughty things) so that was really sweet of her.

9th - Cleanup!
We spent the whole of Sunday cleaning up the house, which was long over due even before we had people over. Luckily we had the new espresso machine from my cousin Simona to provide us with much needed coffee for the day! In fact all the gifts I received were really thoughful, so thanks everyone :)