Here is an email I sent to my family today:
Hey there Family! Well week four is over today, we've been here in Brazil for one month. That wasn't so bad I guess. Here are some detailed descriptiong of this past week - I was going to say highlights, but this has turned lengthy again... I might go through and edit it down for you:
MOTHER NATURE - I must say, there are a lot of bugs here in Brazil. We've heard that there are especially a lot here in the wilderness (campo) where we are. I prefer the little reptiles over the furry mammals of the US (frogs seem cleaner to me than mice) but still, mother nature overdid it on the amount of mosquitos, moths, and ants that are living in this little corner of the world. I've started to put insect repellent on the kids every night when they go to bed. Once I thought I covered Wesley pretty good, but I didn't do his face. The next morning there he was with two big bites on his cheeks. Ok fine. So the next night I got his arms legs, and cheeks and neck. The next morning he woke up with two bites over each eyelid! Man, those dumb mosquitos! It made it look like Wes was wearing pink eyeshadow, so it was kinda cute. But still I feel bad for them when they have bites all over. They must itch, but Wesley doesn't scratch them so his go away pretty quick. Hyrum has a ton of bites too, his are mostly on his feet since he doesn't like to wear shoes, he goes barefoot most of the time, so that might be my fault. His stay for weeks and turn brown like bruises, so his legs look really bad. Joe and Ethan have both had a few bites, but as far as I can tell, Melodie has not had any! Isn't that weird? She must taste different of have some chemical that makes her undesireable. She even runs around in shorts and a tank top and flip flops, pleanty of skin exposed, but she's clear. I find that very interesting...
There is a high traffic freeway of tiny tiny little ants that run at a diagonal across our bathroom wall, from the bottom corner of the door to under the sink, across the shower and out the corner of the window. They are really fascinating to watch. They are so tiny and move so fast, they are busy busy and I just wonder where are they going and what's the big rush? They are always working and they are always in a hurry. At 3 in the morning, if I go in the bathroom there they are. Corey has also noted "Those little ants get great gas milage".
Thursday night, Corey was sitting on the couch working at his computer and saw a reflection of light flicker off of something on the black tile floor. He couldn't find the suspect at first, but then from the other room I heard a can of Raid going full blast several times. I came in to find Corey on the couch, and he was working at his laptop and said without looking up "I just killed a cockroach, it's on the table in your cake pan (that had been sitting out... it was where the cockroach fell to his death). I walked in and almost screamed, it was the biggest cockroack I've ever seen, and I think cockroaches have such ugly legs. Corey says fleas are uglier. I don't know how the cockroach's size compares with Corye's previous cockroach encounters. It stayed lying on it's back all glissening in poison for the rest of the night, it's mouth, head, and antennas kept moving for the two hours before we went to bed. I kept saying that he was going to walk away, remembering some legend that cockroaches will be the only thing that would survive a nuclear fallout. Corey was sure that he was going to die. Corey was right, it was dead by morning, and we saved it to show all the kids - it's so fun sharing our discoveries.
I killed my own cockroach last night. Mel and Hyrum were still awake to see us in action. It was smaller than the first one, but they move quick. Corey and I both took turns trying to get it while Mel and Hyrum watched from up on the couch. Corey said "Do you think they know they're ugly?" - and thus subjected to discrimination. Yes, they must die. The roach hid behind some books and cd cases, which I moved carefully as I tried to find where he went. Then I saw his little antenna twitching from inside the cd case where he was hiding, he was just waiting for us to stop looking and then he'd be able to make his break! He's smart. But we opened the case and got Raid all over the floor trying to get him. They are ugly buggers.
FROGS AND DOGS - There are different kinds of frogs here, there are really little rubbery looking ones and little toad looking ones. The rubber frogs are small and can jump so far it's amazing, they've got great accuracy too, landing on the boards on the back of chairs, landing on the ledge of bricks on the brick walls. We haven't caught one of those yet and I don't think we'll be able to. As for the little toads, we've had lots of toad visitors. I'm not sure if it's the same one or if there are lots of them. There is one that I think is the same - a little frog that keeps showing up behind our couch. Maybe he just knows it's the best place to find food, since all the bugs keep congregating in our front room under our table eating scraps of food that fall. On Wednesday last week, we had left the cover off of the pool over night, and when we let the kids go swimming in the morning there was a toad frog swimming in the pool. Melodie loved it, she's always wanted to be Snow White, Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella and have the birds be her friend and land on her finger. Maybe she knows that frogs are as close as she's going to get. I guess that will have to do. After I showed her how to scoop him up out of the water, she was playing with the frog in her hand and giggling and having lots of fun. After about 2 hours, Ethan got up the courage to touch him and hold him. Our kids are making great strides with nature! Especially from our first day... when they saw a dove that has a nest under our porch roof and they all asked if it was real or plastic (it was holding very still as it saw our family invading it's formerly peaceful and quite home).
There are tall trees/shrubs around the whole yard with a chain link fence behind that, so it's very private and safely guarded. However, there is a dog that somehow keeps getting into our yard. He's gotten into the trash 4 times, the first time was my fault I guess, cause I left it down, the second time I had it hanging up high but he was able to jump and grab it, the 3rd time he got the lid off of our can and pulled some of it out, 4th time he jumped up again. That last time I had several promptings to take it to the curb, so that time was my fault too - he got it while we were at an activity at the Church Sunday night. Now we are going to turn it into a daily chore to take the trash out so there will not be any opportunity for him. The first time we took the trash out was at night last Tuesday. I gave a little grocery sack of trash to each of the kids and we were all going to walk out together, but Hyrum froze at the gate to our yard and started screaming (afraid that the Dogs were going to get him). Corey was up in the house so I tried calling him to come get Hyrum since I couldn't leave him and he wouldn't go up to the house. Melodie tried to take him up, finally he gave up on me rescuing him and took of in a little toddler sprint for the porch. Corey had heard me calling and came out to see Hyrum's little sillouhette cruising as fast as it could up the path, screaming very loudly. When I came back with the other kids, Hyrum and Corey were at the gate to meet us. Corey had helped him calm down. We closed out gate and all walked up the path together. Since Hyrum was now safe inside the gate and the threat of the dogs was gone, he started his macho talk again and Corey and I both laughed as the first thing out of his mouth was a very confident and tough voiced proclamation that "Dogs are so Dupid!".
The dog has also eaten things that are left out. Our first week here Hyrum's shoes got left outside and in the morning we saw one of the velcro straps has been torn off. (...I didn't have a needle and thread to try to fix the shoe, so I figured we'd just let him wear it broken, but I remembered our great stapler! The staples are holding it together well, I hope it will get us by until we're home.) I looked at the bites and thought it was a dog, but Corey thought it had to be the big lizard since the gate keeps the dogs out. But after the trash was gotten into and we saw the paw prints in the wet trash, we knew the shoe and the garbage scrounge was a dog. The kids discovered a hole under the fence and have shoved sticks and bricks and rocks under it to give the dog slivers to keep him out. It's one of the games they play, "trick the dogs". The other day Mel, Ethan, and Hyrum had dressed up as Catwoman and two dogs, Mel was dressed in Black, Ethan and Hyrum were in regular clothes but had put socks on their ears and secured them with tape to their glasses. It was really cute, they were playing outside, and Corey said as he looked at the kids "Oh my gosh! The dogs got through the fence again! The dogs are in our yard!" The three of them screamed and came booking inside, then Corey said "Oh no! Now the dogs are in our house!" as he pointed at them, then they realized they were the dogs.
BRAZILIAN MAIDS - Our laundry lady quit on us. She a short little lady who talks way too fast for Corey and I to understand. She's probably in her 40's, her husband cleans the pool and was supposed to be the shipper of dirty and clean clothes, but just two times washing for us and I guess she's done with it - washing for 7 people was just too much for her. She came once after a few days our first week before we had officially established that she would do it - she knows our land lady and was coming by to see what she could do to help us out with anything. I gave her a normal/slighty smaller than normal pile. Then her husband didn't come again for 2 weeks and a half so of course we had a lot by then... I hesitated to give him all of it knowing it would be a ton to line dry, but we decided to just pass it over, and they brought it back 6 days later. It had rained for 3 days, so I knew it would take a while since it couldn't dry outside. I was washing the clothes we still had at home by hand at this time - we were all down to just a few pieces of underwear and socks. I had forgot to save Corey a pair of his garment bottoms, so he only had one. We just decided to make due with dirty clothes, but one night he wore my bottoms while I washed his and hoped they dried by morning. So after the 6 days waiting for the clean clothes to come, we had collected another weeks worth by then but they didn't pick it up - I couldn't understand what he said as to why he wasn't going to take the dirty clothes, but thought I heard him say his wife would come by Sunday. She didn't, we didn't hear from her, Thursday we talked with our landlady (who had arranged for us to use them) and after that it was decided that it would be better for us to figure out some other way to get out clothes clean. Oh great!!!
So Friday Corey was going to Sao Paulo with Flavio, a man in the ward who is taking Corey's GMAT class and who works in Sao Paulo. We got all the kids up and headed to Flavio's house to drop off Corey, and I was going to ask Flavio's wife Ana what I should do - where I should go like if there was a laundromat or should I try to get another maid lady or person in the ward who could help us or what. Corey and Flavio left, I stayed with Ana at her house for a while since I had a car and it was decided I could take her to a doctor appointment. She said she could ask around to help me find out a good place to go since she didn't use laundromats cause she had a washer and dryer (I started to drool...) I was so excited when she said I could stay at her house and do the laundry while she was at her doctor appointment. All I had to do was let the maid in when her maid came by. So I was happy and started to do laundry before we left to the doctor. When I got back to her house from taking her to her appointment, her maid and her maid's son Pedro were waiting outside her house. Just so you have a mental image if a Brazilian maid: Ana's maid's name is Vanessa, she was wearing shorts and a midriff spaghetti strap tank top, had tatoos on her upper back and lower back, her hair is pulled back in a kinda pony-tail-bun thing, she has big earrings on, that is what Ana's maid looks like and I think is pretty typical of most women here. Her son is 8 years old and he was really cute. He liked Wesley and they played a bit, my kids watched the Little Mermaid and Harry Potter, and I was doing laundry, and felt really proud of myself cause I thought I was helping out with the chores - I washed the dishes, swept the floor a little, mopped a little and straightened the sofas. Vanessa asked if we were going to stay there for lunch. I tried to explain that we had bought and eaten some bread and didn't need lunch, but I didn't know if that was bad manners, and since she didn't understand me anyway, I just said ok. So Vanessa made lunch - some rice and beans with salad and juice. I thought it was probably good manners to wait for her before we ate, maybe it wasn't... as we were eating the phone rang twice. The first time I heard her say "We're eating lunch". The second time she answered, I didn't hear her say anything, but she started to cry afterward. I thought she had gotten some bad news about something, she went into the kitchen and was crying, I tried to get the kids to finish eating so we could clean up. Shortly after that Ana came home with her kids - I guess the kids all get out early on Friday. Ana said she was surprised that I was still there (maybe I was just supposed to wash the clothes, and not dry them and line dry them at home? The last load of my 3 loads was almost done in the dryer). I asked if Vanessa was ok, Ana said she was just having a hard time cause she wasn't able to get anything done with all my kids there in the house. "She's not used to having so many kids around and it's hard for her." Doh! So me and my boisterous messy kids brought a Brazilian maid to tears. I was kinda surprised, cause I thought things were going great! Maybe I was just in a good mood cause I was able to get the clothes clean... But I thought the kids had been pretty good - they just watched the movie and played with their puppy Snoopy. And I had helped clean up too... but then I realized most of the cleaning I did was cleaning that wouldn't of had to be done if we hadn't been there. I wouldn't of had to keep straightening the couch if the kids didn't keep messing it up - I wouldn't of had to keep mopping the floor if Wesley didn't keep pouring out water everywhere. I kept giving him drinks of water, only to find he wasn't drinking it, he just kept feeding it to the dog. So I told Ana I was sorry, asked if it would be best to help clean up the mess from lunch or to just go. She said it would be best to leave. I felt like Flick on Bug's Life - "I should probably help clean up first don't you think..." "No no no! No! Just go! Leave!" Ok! So I started to round up the kids and rush them into the car, I got out the laundry from the dryer, said I'm sorry to the maid, she opened the gate so I could leave, but the car wouldn't start - I had to warm it up - doh! Hurry hurry leave!!! Get yourself and the crazy kids out! I let it warm up for a sec, was able to get it in reverse enough to get out of the gate so she could close it and go inside and clean in peace and quiet. I coasted down the street a bit and warmed up the car at the corner. I felt bad, but I guess it's was a little comforting to have someone share in my motherly stress, even if she didn't do it by choice. It is a lot of work, but it's worth it. So as for our laundry... we're washing by hand until further notice. The kids want to help, once I get some real laundry soap we'll set up a little system and take a picture of my little washboard kids at work.
Our landlady Sueli is trying to sell this chacara, and on Friday after we got home from Ana's after making the maid cry, we cleaned up a little when Sueli called to say she was bringing by someone to look at the house. I wasn't able to clean up much in the 30 mintues she gave us, but the place is pretty dirty, and most of it is not from us, so I figured oh well if there is some clutter around, atlease we weren't the ones who broke the bedroom door off the hinges or put holes in the wall or the piles of junk in the back yard. It was a group of like 10 people together. They seemed to like it, and they were all smitten by the children who kept saying "O-BLI-GA-DO" and "Tau" to everyone's delight. As she was leaving, she came up to me and said "Everything was beautiful" and I thought she was talking about the porch area or the house and how well I'd done in straightening it up? I was a little confused since it didn't look that great to me, but then she started going off about the kids, and I realized she said "The kids were beautiful". As the group of people left the kids were waving and they were all smiling and laughing at how cute they were - Wesley is especially adorable as he says "chow". It is a lot of work taking care of this group, but it's very rewarding and I know will be worth it as the years go by.
Here are some last details about each of the kids - I know this is a long email - feel free to take a break here and read the rest on another day...
JOSEPH - Joseph is really doing a great job studying. Everyday we take time to work, play, and study, and Joseph does his study's very first thing everyday. He still is reading his president book, but we're glad he doesn't quiz us much anymore. Corey was on the computer last week and Joseph came up to him and said "So how's Mitt Romeny doin'?" Corey wasn't looking at the latest Mitt news, but we could have been since we are checking up on it regularly. That statement made Corey laugh. Joe want's Corey to run for President. I've told Joe that I think Dad has other stuff he wants to do instead of being president, but if Joe want's to be president someday he's welcome to work toward that. As for other things, Joe is doing great at swimming and loves listening to the Scripture Scouts at night - he's trying to memorize all the Book of Gold songs and then will move on to the other sets.
MELODIE - So she had fun playing with the frog in the pool, she is always busy painting and coloring and is really creative, I love to see her creations - she's made lots of pictures that she want's me to mail, but I don't know where the post office is. I guess I could figure it out if I really wanted to, but instead I think I'll just keep them safe somewhere until we can deliver them personally.
ETHAN - We took Ethan to the medical clinic last Thursday cause he had some strangs skin discoloration on his hand. He had a small blotch that I noticed first, then the next day there was a lot more across all his fingers in lines - I found some things online that talked about a condition called Morphea that got me worried, so we wanted to figure out what it was. R$130 Reais later (about $65 buck), we found out that it was burn marks from him getting lime juice on his hands and not washing it off before going in the sun. So it was lime juice burns. Hyrum had some discoloration on his upper lip and cheek too, Dr. Sergio said it was the same thing. It should go away after 3-4 weeks.
HYRUM - Hyrum is just a funny kid. It's hard to talk with him sometimes, he doesn't listen and doesn't care to. I guess even when he does he doesn't understand. So he likes to get into the fridge on his own, we're trying to put a stop to between meal snacking, Hyrum doesn't follow the rule, and when the other kids find him munching on bread or drinking juice, they come protest how we are not being fair. We try to get Hyrum to stop - so when we hear the fridge open and know it's him, we'll say "Hyrum, get out of the fridge." And we'll hear his little 3 year old voice say "Mom, can you please stop talking to ME!" Or if we even see him going in the kitchen, we'll say "Hey Hyrum, whatcha doin'?" and he'll say "Dad, can you please go away for a minute!!!" It's pretty cute and funny, so we let him get away with stuff and then get in trouble from the other kids. Also, some funny words Hyrum says - he calls the Kitchen "Chicken" when it's time to go swimming and get ready, he'll say "Can you help me put on my swimming soup?" We've tried to clarify SUIT, but he says "I know! Can you just help me put on my swimming soup!"
And one last thing, Friday last week both Joe and Mel had teeth that were really loose - We took turns wiggling it, Joe was going to try and pull his out, but I said he got one try, and then I got one try. I have a little dental tooth pick thing for removing plaque, and when it was my turn, I just pushed it down and was able to get under the tooth, and pop! it was out. Then Mel came in and wanted me to do hers. She wanted a turn first, ok fine - I gave her 10 turns, then it was my turn, I got my tooth pick hook and pop! it was out. They were really excited, and Ethan was upset, as he has been when they've lost teeth before, asking when he's going to get a loose tooth. Hyrum also came in and asked me to pop out his tooth. I tried to explain that's not how it works, but he didn't get it, so he and Ethan were pouting while Mel and Joe were jumping around excited for the tooth fairy to come visit them. Too bad there isn't a Dollar Tree or Walmart for the tooth fairy to go shopping at. I forgot to put anything under their pillows, but I didn't have anything. Melodie woke up and said the tooth fairy didn't come, I looked around and realized Corey had brought some sidewalk chalk from Sao Paulo, so I told her to go back to bed, she giddily ran in and layed down, I came in and put it under her pillow and put R$2 reais under Joe's pillow - and they were happy. Mel colored with the chalk all day and Joe is still waiting for us to take him to McDonald's to buy an ice cream cone. We'll get to it sometime this week.
Corey is going to Argentina this weekend to teach a GMAT class. He's leaving Thursday morning and coming back Sunday morning. There is a nice couple in the ward who have two young girls, I think they are going to come spend Friday and Saturday night here with me, the kids will all go swimming and we adults will have our English and Portuguese lessons. So that's that. Since Corey's going to Argentina this weekend, he's going to Sao Paulo today to teach the GMAT class there tonight, it's his last week going there. He still has more to do than time to do it, but he's always working hard to get the language software done and get a demo ready to show people for a trip to Japan that a BYU MBA student is taking on the 26th. Corey was going to go with him, but I think has decided it's too expensive. I guess that's it.
Also, Last Thursday was my Independence day - Corey taught me to be independent by having me start and warm up the Ethanol car, I had to go into the phone store by myself and buy more credit for our cell phone, I had to fill up the car - it's full service, I just had to learn to say "Alcool, Completo", and I also had to go by the bank ATM and sacar money. So we all loaded up in the car and ran errands so I could learn how to function on my own. It was good, and now I'm feeling more freedom at being able to go to town by myself and not being stuck in the boonies.
So that's that! Tell me what's up with all of you, love to hear from you - Grant, we did see that Lunar eclipse too - we were at the church for a baptism, after it was done everyone was outside - kids running around being kids, adults watching the eclipse it was neat. Love you all, talk to you again soon. Love Tiff and crew
