Brazil '07 - Our Home in Brazil

We all arrived safely in Brazil. Wesley was terrible on the plane - It was a long and painful 9 hour flight for me. Corey is tougher and endures better than I do - I need to complain to someone about my troubles to help me cope. As I was wondering what Wes' deal was I remembered him being kinda bad when we went to Mexico City a year ago.

Corey then told me he had been bad on the plane trip to Utah when Corey took Wes with him in November. So Corey went somewhere on the plane to hold him and let him scream after they finally took off the fasten seat belts sign (I think the people around us we worried they were in for a long flight...) and came back with Wesley asleep after about 20 minutes. But Wesley was very sensitive - no moving him around or bugging him or he would wake up and start screaming at us again. Things were ok until Joseph burst out with laughter as he saw something funny on the Airplane tv - Disney channel. That woke up Wesley, Corey went into the back again (without complaining, what a man) and when he came back with Wesley asleep again, I took him and tried to carefully hold him for the next 8 hours, which meant I was uncomfortable and couldn't sleep - but everyone else was asleep and I had a hard time not having anyone I could complain to about how incredibly tired I was. Corey let me catch up on a lot of sleep the next two days.

So I'm glad Corey has friends here, they are taking good care of us. They picked us up from the airport, took us to the supermercado, today they took us to the Parque D. Pablo Mall and we had a nice lunch, and we've been hanging out at their house today watching DVDs and Nickelodeon in Portuguese.

Here is a map of the the outlay of our lot where were are living out in the boonies of Barao Geraldo.

Here's a picture of our new home sweet home ~ the chacara (shack).

Flower by the front door:

It's a nice place, although I don't know how to light the stove and have to ask Corey for help. I think I won't be cooking much here, it just seems too complicated. Unless we get a microwave. Mostly we'll probably just eat fruits and breads.

So tonight I washed out clothes by hand for the first time. We might hire someone to do it for us, but as I was washing tonight, I think that is something the kids could do really easily. Our little "home school" is going great, Joseph is anxious to learn cursive, Melodie can tell you what a consonant is, and today Ethan mastered the proper way to hold a pencil! I am really excited about Ethan's landmark achievement.

When we turn off the lights at our chacara, it is pitch black. It is wonderful to see the stars at night. ...to the sound of 20 barking dogs. Poor Hyrum is terrified of dogs. There was a small sweet little fluffy puppy at the Sao Paulo airport that the other 4 kids were adoring, and Hyrum was standing on the suitcases screaming bloody murder. For being the biggest and seemingly toughest kid in our family, he sure is a sissy.

Wesley is covered with bug bites. He's just such a juicy morsel for the mosquitos, I admit he would be hard to resist. And tonight Corey took him to a little park near Fabio's house - Wesley stepped on a 6 inch ant hill mound and then played in the dirt for a second until the ants, who were obviously upset with him, decided to attack. He has ant bites all over his hand. I hope it looks better in the morning.