2 Week Ramblings

Well, we've been here in Brazil for two weeks today. Corey was showing his parents where we were on Google maps today. Would you like a link? Here ya go. Feel free to send me some care packages of cold cereal, Great Grains would be nice. (Raisins, Dates, and Pecans variety).

I am not worried too much about our personal information right now because I doubt any potential identity thieves are here in Brazil, and as for our physical dwelling, well there ain't no way anyone is breaking in to this house, no sir! You actually can't see our house from the street view at that link, but you can see our brick wall. With it's electric wiring on top, thank you very much. And please notice the sign about it's 24 hour a day monitoring. There are security cameras throughout the property. And once you get through all that, every room and every bathroom and window and closet has it's own lock and key (we got a lot of keys we can misplace right now...) Hyrum said during one of our first days here, "Do you think this house is a little over security?" And then at night we also can close the outside shutters to each room, bolt those into the floor and ceiling, lock them shut, then bar then with a board of wood that had it's own little place to put it on the door, then close our windows and lock those! Take that, potential thieves! There is a wall to get to the back yard too, and that has a door and key too. It does seem like a little much. Corey said "They're just suffering from lack of 2nd amendment rights..."

So we live just north of Parque Portugal. I took a morning walk/jog (looking ridiculous with my pregnant tummy I'm sure) around that park three times this past week. One lap on the sidewalk that goes all the way around the park is 4872 meters, which is almost 3 miles. There is also a path inside of the park that goes around the lake (where the capybaras live) that I think is about a mile each lap, but I haven't followed the meter signs there yet.

So, two weeks into this adventure, and this past week went faster than the first, and I hope that keeps up. Hyrum broke his only pair of glasses this past Monday. He didn't bring his back up pair, despite my instructions in our packing busy-ness to get his spare. Abi didn't bring hers either. Mel has hers. My mom sent a package yesterday with their glasses in them, as I gave her instructions to their location at our home. I went to the mall Parque Dom Pedro and found a glasses shop there that was able to "superbonde" them. That lasted until Thursday when Natalie jumped on his face. Then he broke out the duck tape until I could go again to the mall to get them glued again.

Duck tape doesn't work so well, so he taped them to his face too. Ya look good, buddy!

I'm enjoying my trips to the mall now, might even adventure off of that one route that I know and see if I can figure my way down any other streets. But the driving here is CrAzY - streets are like a big mess of spaghetti and one way roads and round abouts, just look at that map. It's nuts. Corey drove me to his work last night and we went on a date at a restaurant over near there - it's less than 4 miles away, but it just feels like you're zig zagging and going in circles for 10 minutes, and then for some strange reason you arrive. We're glad we have the gps thing, not how we survived last time. But last time we were out in the campo - out far away from the city (30 minutes from where we are now), so it is a bit different of an experience this time.

Last night we went on a date to a restaurant by Corey's work called Lellis Trattoria. Address: Agenda Benjamin Constant 2031, Cambui, Campinas, State of Sao Paulo, Brazil. They put a bib on Corey, I gotta get that picture off of his phone. I told Corey to say cheese, and he said "Lots of cheese", and it was, super tasty, but that might be easy when you got a recipe with lots of fat and oil and cream, my serving was well over 2000 calories I bet. Ain't loosing weight right now. Oh well. I'm sure my daily nutella breakfast (and lunch... and snack) isn't helping either. But ya do what ya gotta do to survive. And right now that means lots of "hardship" ice cream (as Corey's been calling it) and nutella.

It's been a fun experience so far though. A small eternity. Feels like we've been here longer than 2 weeks in a way, just that weird time warping thing that happens when you travel, kinda like we've always been here and will never leave. But I know it's temporary,this is not my reality, and that time will go by more quickly if we just keep busy. The kids have been experiencing a bit of the "I'm bored" summer blues, especially without all their friends and toys and things. I'm trying to help them set goals and keep busy. They've been playing some card games and tonight I played the dice game with them, it was fun. Corey took a picture ~

I think he came to find us cause he was wondering why the little girls weren't attacking him and wanted to document the reason for his rare moment of peace on a Saturday afternoon.

 Hyrum kept losing, so I said we had to play until Hyrum won a round.

Soon it appeared that would never happen, so when he finally got 2nd place, we called it good. This dice game is fun - here's how to play - Every player takes 10 dice (buy sets of dice at the dollar store) you roll - 1s go into the middle, 6s go to the player at your left, and you roll again and again, the first player to get rid of all their dice wins. It was fun. They've also played 5000 which is fun. We have to play on the floor cause all the furniture in this house, including the table and coffee tables, are all made of painted crates, so they've got slots in them, which doesn't work for a dice game. I haven't played yet cause I didn't want to sit on the floor, not comfy when you're pregnant, or on these not carpeted floor. But it was worth it to play with them, I think I shall do it again. And I'll teach this one called Tenzi to the kids next time, and we still haven't gotten to Yahtzee either.

I feel like we've gotten a feel for most things. I could work on our routine here at home. I'll try to focus on that this coming week. We did do a morning devotional a few times this week, when I clued in that we don't need to wait until bedtime to read our scriptures, cause we have all day together! So we are starting to listen to the general conference talks before I let them go swimming. We listened to Elder Holland's talk and Brent Nielsen's talk so far - Holland cause I didn't catch that one live, and Nielsen cause that was the one the kids liked the best. Only got to two, will go for 5 next days of devotionals next week.

Also, I read to the kids this week too - cause Corey was gone in Sao Paulo all day twice this week, so I tried to keep up with his nightly story habit he started with them. Some of those classic stories we've been reading are really weird and lame. It's fun getting the kids to vote for "liked it" or "that was dumb". We thought the Snow Queen was a total waste of an hour of our time. They thought the Hare's Bride was way dumb, I was glad it was short though. Short and dumb is better than finding out it's lame after an hour, or after a half hour and knowing you've still got a few more pages to go. It's fun though. :) We're making good memories here, I love it.