Gimmie a KISS!

This is for you Grandma Arbuckle

Thanks for all the goodies. It was like getting Christmas in September. Your the best!

Fun Climbing Tree

Fever

We had just moved into our new place and M claimed this box for his own. He had covered the bottom of the box with diapers to make it nice and soft. He always plays in the box putting all sorts of treasure and toys. Throughout the day M had been pretty winy and I could tell he was really tired. We went to get the kids from school and he kept telling me he was so tired and couldn't walk. At around 5:30 p.m. he went and put his pajamas on curled up in his box and went to bed. When I found him the poor little guy was burning hot with a fever. Now it all made sense he was getting sick. This was C's nice little touch of trapping him in the box. After all what are brothers for.

EVICTED...A BLESSING IN DISGUISE

There really is a good reason behind me getting so far behind on my blog. Here is the story. It was a friday morning I had just gotten home from exercising and went to shower. While getting dressed I hear my door bell ring. I thought it was a little weird because I wasn't expecting anybody. In fact nobody can just show up at your house. The guards will always call up before letting anyone through the gates below. I open up the door and here is the Zelador (apt manager) standing there with a man. They both start speaking in Portuguese of course and I am not getting any of it. All I know is they aren't leaving. I could tell by there body language something was up. I am frantically trying to figure out my new cell phone and am searching for R phone number. I finally get through to him and he found someone in the office to speak to this man. To make a very very long story short this man was here to throw us out of our apartment. Come to find out the man we were renting from wasn't paying his mortgage and was in default. He was no longer the owner of the apartment and we were getting kicked out. After about an hour and a half of lawyers speaking with lawyers. This nice man that was here to kick us out realized that we had no idea what was going on. Once he heard I had four kids and I started crying he showed mercy on us and gave us 6 days to get out. He could have just done his job and given us the boot but he went out of his way to help us. That afternoon we went apartment hunting and we moved the next Thursday.

It is interesting looking back on the whole thing. Our Zelador knew what was going to happen. A few days prior to this he came to our house and gave us a list of apartments for rent within the building. We thought it was rather strange he would do this. We also crossed paths with him in the elevator a week prior to this and he sure had a lot to say. If we could have only understood him that would have been helpful. Another sign of things to come was a man came to our house a few months earlier. He was once again speaking in Portuguese. He showed up at our house at 6:30 a.m. and talked with R for a good 10 min. We now understand he was there giving us 2 months notice that we needed to get out of the apartment.

I have to say that day was a little shocking and stressful but we love our new place and it is so much better for our family. We really feel it was a blessing in disguise. (p.s. the picture above is not really us. I just enjoy taking pics of cars and trucks that are spewing with stuff. I see it quite frequently here)

Our Friends

When we first moved into the ward we met a nice family. I say met but it was mostly just friendly smiles and quick hello's. It is obviously hard to communicate with someone that doesn't speak the same language as you or vice versa. This family has been so kind to us. We didn't even know there names and they invited our family to there daughters birthday party. Then just a month or so ago they invited us into there home. I wish I could say I went without hesitation or worry. I was worried about it being silently awkward but it was nothing like that. We really had a great time and felt of there love and kindness. I was glad we went.

Campo Do Jordao

What a fun day we had. We really didn't know where we were going. With the Garmin as the navigator we were off. The weather had been so cold and somehow we lucked out and went on a nice warm day. It was a beautiful ride! It really felt great to get out of the city and into the fresh mountain air. Campo Do Jordao is settled by the swiss I think it was (I could be wrong) But all the homes resemble that of the swiss. Kind of like Midway Utah. There are many activities there. We chose to ride on the bumper boats and take the chair tram up the side of the mountain. Lunch was very interesting. I had never eaten a mound of hashbrowns with a bacon and cheese surprise inside. The kids enjoyed it. We spent most of the day there and made it home just after dark.