Polly Pocket Laundry

Looks like Abi's been washing her doll's clothes. I found these out drying with our laundry on the balcony. Totally made me smile {heart} she's so cute. Love you Abi!

Isla De Maipo

So, yesterday we went on an adventure. We were going to go to Pomaire, but since we were lost for 1 1/2 hours in Maipu (pronounced "my poo" to which my kids giggle everytime we say it) we decided we were good when we arrived at the Isla De Maipo exit. Maipo "my poe" - much better than "my poo".


We drove around the Isla de Maipo lost for a bit looking for some street, then just happened to see two women in skirts riding bicycles. Hooray! Sister missionaries! We pulled over and asked the Hermanas if they knew the street - they did and even gave us a map, which actually had the exact house address on the back of the person we were buscando. We drove straight there, clapped at the fence, Jose was home, and we were all invited in - major invasion of kids. "Tantos ninos! Uno, dos, tres... siete?!?" They were so nice to let us all drop in on them

They remembered Corey well, and quickly brought out a photo they have to remember him, which made us all laugh -

They also had a copy of one of our Christmas / New Years greetings letters that we sent out

Only Joe, Mel and Ethan alive at that time in 2002. The kids always like looking at old pictures of themselves.

Corey lived here with this family during his time in Isla de Maipo. He was only here for a month but said it was a such great pension and he has such great memories of his time here because of this family - they were so kind, he and his companion felt like they really enjoyed having them stay. It's nice to be loved! Especially for missionaries who work hard all day with lots of rejection their pay.

So we had a great visit, the kids fell in love with their dogs - one was a puppy that looks exactly like the Chloe we left 5 months ago.

Abi wanted us to take Chloe home with us.

The kids spent their time exploring their property.


We all went back and saw their lagoon.

Group photo!

Valentina and Lily enjoying some brevas (figs) straight off the tree - I had never eaten a fresh fig before. Have you seen figs? Tasted yummy, looked interesting.

Ethan was lost in play out in the yard and says this is his favorite house in the world. He was totally jealous of the kids' little club house area with the pond/lagoon right behind it and low reaching trees to climb.

He's ready to move in. We were lucky he agreed to come home with us!


So the kids played outside and explored. The adults and toddlers (and Hyrum cause he's afraid of the cat) went back up to the house to visit.

Everyone loves babies!

Lily stole Valentina's teddy bear and high chair.


Of course Abi found the stash of pink girl toys.

She was happily lost in play the whole time.

Hyrum started to relax and enjoy himself a little. Jose brought out toys for him


It was a nice visit. When we headed home, I am glad that Corey realized we were heading toward San Antonion, aka in the wrong direction. We paid the toll to get off, did a U-turn, and paid the toll to get back on. This way to Santiago, much better! Passing Isla de Maipo again. Tolls are worth it for a good road. We were able to drive straight home with zero mistakes, less than an hour. The kids all fell asleep. Much better.

Trip to Los Dominicos

Today we took a trip. We took a trip to Isla De Maipo where Corey spent a month during his time as a missionary here in 1995-97. But, since I didn't blog about our trip to Los Dominicos yet, I gotta do that first.

So two weeks ago on a Saturday we took a trip to Los Dominicos with Kurt and Ashely. They took the metro. We took the car - about an 8 minute drive.

First little shop in the little market - a pet shop. The kids want a bunny.


I told them if we buy a rabbit we'll have to give it away when we leave Chile. They said they are okay with that. We'll see if I give in to anther impulse buy. This cute puppy was my first impulse pet buy last June.


Then we looked at chickens for sale. Mel said she'd settle for a chick. She just wants a pet. I think these are for people who want eggs. I'm not interested in having a hen right now in our apartment. Although it would save us mucho $ on eggs. We eat a lot of eggs. Sure miss Costco and their bulk 5 doz eggs for sale. But I know I'll go again someday!

My favorite place in Los Dominicos was the miniature garden.


I liked the cloth canopy - took a photo to remember it for my someday future yard/outdoor space.


We wandered around the shops. Pottery for sale from Pomaire. They actually just call the pottery "pomaire" since that is the little town famous for this type of pottery. Just googled Pomaire... if you want a little Chilean history lesson, here's a website to see. I'll save this for the kids when we make it there - Pomaire is actually where we started to go today, but after being lost for two hours in between Santiago through Maipu trying to find an on-ramp to the freeway, we finally found a way on near Penaflor and then cut our trip short for time's sake - took us 2.5 hours to get to Isla De Maipo, about 10 minutes from Pomaire. Should have only been about half that. The kids were very patient with us. We'll try for Pomaire on another Saturday outing.

There is an art museum at Los Dominicos, and in there they had a display of the lyrics to the famous Chilean Song "Si Vas Para Chile" - I remember when Corey was on his mission I bought a shirt that had the Chilean flag and those words on it. It means "If You Go To Chile". Here's a wikipedia on the song. I took pictures of the lyrics cause I didn't realize before now that the song talked about Las Condes. That's where we live!


When you visit places it increases your interest in them and you learn things you thought you already knew about. I knew a little bit about this song, but wasn't interested really, but after seeing Las Condes in the lyrics I'm interested cause I know Las Condes. Atleast I know what it's like now, and now I'm interested in what it used to be too. It's great to travel. It increases your circle of knowledge and thus also your circumference of darkness.

One last thing then I'm done rambling. When Corey and I visited Chile together in 2000 with baby Joseph, we visited Los Dominicos and had a nice stroll around the touristy shops. We also got a picture in front of the big white Church there, which said picture made it into Joseph's ABC book under the letter I - "I is for Iglesia. "Iglesia" means church in Spanish. This is an iglesia in Santiago Chile." with a little picture of the three of us in front of the church, baby Joe in his umbrella stroller. Sorry I don't have that ABC book or photo file here in Chile. But someday I'll have it, and so I took a photo so I can have a "then and now" scrapbook page for Joe - Here he is 10 years later.


~ The kids ABC books are turning into family travel logs, more so for the younger kids as we travel more. Have you heard about my ABC Books? I like them. I think it was pretty creative of myself. I'll save that for another post.

Lily and Mel - Best Sisters!

Melodie is such a good sister to Lily. Love you Lily, love you Mel!

She is a good little mother. Lily loves her.


And Lily likes Joe too.

Well, I'm sure Lily loves all her siblings, but I think she feels safest with Joe and Mel. She lets them carry her and be her surrogate parents when Corey and I are busy. They even change her diapers. It's fun having these older kids. It will be fun to see how the dynamics of our family change as they all grow up into young men and women. I love having all these kids. I feel so lucky, they are awesome!

Lily's Pigtails!

Lily's first pigtails! When she went out side to play, all of the kid's friends (only girls were out today) squealed and came up to kiss her little face saying "Que preciosa!"

And here's an update on her toe - I mentioned she had hurt her toe at the beginning of the month, then it fell off two weeks ago, and now it looks a lot better and the nail is growing back. I bought her some cute tiny flip flops today cause she doesn't like wearing shoes. Plus her size 4 shoes were getting to small. She's growing! Little Lily is still little, weighs less than our neighbor's 8 month old, but she's growing cause now she's in size 5 shoes, size 19 in Latino shoe sizes.

She'd probably grow faster if she's take naps without putting up a fuss. She fights it hard. So we usually just wait to see if she collapses somewhere, then I put her on the bed.

Making A Plan

So I decided, for my sanity, that I need to atleast pretend that I know how long we are going to be here in Chile. Now I like Santiago, I really do, it's just that when I planned for this move in September, I thought I was going to be spending 3 months in Costa Rica then returning to the US. I was not planning nor did I pack everything I would have packed for a family of 9 that I would have packed had I known we were going to be spending 9 months out of the country. But when we were in Costa Rica, we hoped and prayed for Corey to have this opportunity and now he does. So we are here. And it's good.

But lately we've been talking about how this could be longer than 6 months - like a year or two, if he gets funding from a Chilean VC. Ok, I'm okay with that, but I'm not ready for it. So in Costa Rica I agreed to coming to Chile for 6 months, so I'm going to go back to that plan for my sanity. So, I am planning on staying here until the beginning of May - I would stay till the end of May, but I'm going to cut it a little short cause of Beka's wedding, which was also in the initial plan when we were in Costa Rica. Ok, so I hereby plan that the kids and I will be going back to the US in May and will be there in time for Beka's wedding on May 7th. Corey might come with us, he might stay until the 23rd to complete his 6 month time with Start Up Chile. Then we can get our stuff out of storage and go through our past life and then if we know in May that Corey's gotten funding down here, then we can stay in the US for a bit and come back prepared for a longer term adventure. What do you think, sound like a plan?

And I was reading a friends blog today (Hi Rachel!), and have to say I still desire and hope and pray to move back to Washington DC someday, I got homesick looking at her pictures. I loved it there. Totally loved it. The history, the National Mall, all the comforts of the US - Costco, Walmart, HomeGoods, plus Craigslist is huge out there which I love. I also really liked being in the "mission field" and meeting lots of people who don't know much about Mormons. It was fun.

Lily's Candle

Watching TV in Vina Del Mar in December

Lily has had the least hair of all my children. Abi has so much hair, when people saw her the firs thing out of their mouths was "Look at all that HAIR!" I didn't quite know what to do with myself when Lily was born with what looked like a receeding hairline. We called it a non-advanced hairline. I remember when she was 4 months old I put colored hairspray on her scalp for Halloween and got a good laugh.

So after we arrived in Chile last month, when Lily was almost a year and a half old, I did my first attempt at pulling her hair into an elastic. After seeing Amy's post on Lucy's Pigtails I thought I'd mention it.

You can barely see it, but Lily's got a little flame of hair on the top of her head. Sticking straight up. She looked like a little candle.

I didn't try to do two pigtails, maybe I'll try that tomorrow for fun, but she still has such little hair and it's so thin, I don't know if it would vale la pena.

She only left it in for a little while, then pulled it out. But the hair stayed pretty much straight for another hour. Then just looked weird the rest of the day till I washed her hair to fix it.

Doing her best cheesy grin for the camera.

Yeah, it's gotten longer this last month, so maybe I'll try two! You've inspired me Amy. :)

Play Time

The kids are in their comfort zone now playing with the kids here. They've been playing outside most all week, it's fun! And they're learning some Spanish too!



Mel, Joe, and Ethan are in this picture above.

And Abi, Ethan, Wes' feet, and Mel are in this one.
There are lots of kids to play with.

Hyrum's done swimming.

So in addition to swimming, Corey served as interpreter and instructor and taught the group how to play Pomp. It's the new favorite. So Pomp, swimming, and they also played dodge ball last night, and we brought down some glowsticks for fun (Thanks W&J!)