Don't Live Without It!

When we were in Brazil, we visited a family and they had the greatest thing in the world - a door to their kitchen! That you could close! I sat at their dining table eating, looking at the kitchen door, dreaming... wow, with a door like that, I could keep kids out of the fridge! I could keep cookie crumbs contained! I could cook without kids grabbing my legs! Not that I don't appreciate each of those blessings for how they enrich my life. Nevertheless, a kitchen door was at that time in March 2007 placed on my mental list of things I will have in my dream home.

So, could you imagine my delight when I saw this in the apartment!!! A door to the kitchen!!!

And like I said, the apartment we'll be renting is, I'm pretty sure, exactly like this one where Curt and Ashley live. I will pray that it is. For I desire a kitchen door. With a kitchen door, you can close it while the meal is being eaten, thus assuring no children escape with sticky hands and fingers to ruin the furniture that is not yours.


Open the kitchen door, you see a little family of 9 sitting down to dine at a 2 person (maybe 3) sitting breakfast nook. You can also, with a kitchen door, assure that no child leaves the table who would claim to not have finished eating - you have to open the door and leave, so they can't accidentally leave their partially eaten plate and return later acting like someone carried them captive away from their food.

Everyone eating pan y manjar. Corey has officially introduced "once" to our family. "Once", the Spanish word for "eleven", is like tea time for Chileans. From the quick internet research I just did, it appears that it's called "once" because there are eleven letters in "aguardiente" which means brandy or hard liquor. The origins of once:

Tradition has it that long ago men that wanted to drink their liquor, or “aguardiente” in Spanish, during the time of day that is now “Once” invented a code to hide the fact that they were drinking at 5:00 in the afternoon. This code was the number of letters in “aguardiente” which is eleven or “once” in Spanish. With the passage of time, tea time became known as “Once.”

Well, isn't that just enlightening. So our tea time included bread, various spreads, and water.


The kids thought it was fun. People buy fresh bread everyday, which I think Corey will enjoy. Someday I'll learn to bake bread. Until then, I'm grateful to be back in a city with a bakery, with lots of bakeries! Campinas had a bakery too, that was an easy way to feed the family. Glad to have that back, too! Bakeries and a kitchen door! Can life get better?