Tomorrow, Tuesday is a holiday here in Brazil. And thus so is today. Corey doesn't know what holiday, and neither does anyone else. But yay, two days that Corey doesn't have to go to work! Fun for us. He'd probably like to go get work done though, cause there is a ton to do (I'll give a Movie Mouth update soon) but we were happy to have him home. So what did we do with our time together? Seemed like a good day to take a family outing to our old stomping ground in Barão Geraldo. First stop - the
Praça do Coco. We had taken the kids here 8 years ago. Abi wasn't born, so she and the girls born after her didn't have any deja vu, Melodie kinda remembers, Hyrum and Wes don't. Joseph? Ethan? Do you guys remember this place? The kids played in the dirt and tried to not let the bugs bug them. Lily got right to work in the playground, she's a pro~
Melodie says she doesn't know how people swing in these tires...
Getting on the coco train
Natalie fell asleep in the car during our 15 minute drive over. She hasn't been good at taking naps at all since we've been here, but put her in that hot car and carseat, and she's out for the count.
Little Angel face, she's so pretty.
The kids tried out the Ninja Warrior Obstacles in the park - They want to come back so they can train more for Brazililan Ninja Warrior.
It's a cute little park.
There is a little cafe there. Corey went and ordered us a jug of sugar cane juice, which we had one one of our park outings 8 years ago. None of the kids really liked it, and Corey said it wasn't as good as he remembered either. So we had to play a game - as soon as you guys finish the juice, we can leave. So we plugged our noses and tried to finish it off. We woke up Natalie to see if she could help us out a little with the juice.
She drank a little, but then rejected it too. Well, I guess that's good enough. Let's go.
Over to our two little Fiat cars we go. It kinda feels like Mario Kart with how crazy the roads and drivers are here, especially driving these two little vehicles, we feel like we're in little karts driving through the Coconut Mall.
So we told them we'd go get something to eat now, but first, we need to make another stop and go by our old chacara. Taking a left at this intersection, I remember it!
Driving down the long roads into the Brazilian wilderness...
Off the paved road now, onto the dirt road, I remember...
When we got to the gate of our old condominiums, and that is where we called it good.
Do you guys remember taking out the trash? We had to walk it all the way down our lot and outside our gate, and then outside the condominium gate... I remember. Most of our trash was put in little grocery sacks, and I'd loop them all on a broom and have the kids hold one end of the broom and I'd hold the other and we'd walk out to the trash container. Usually at night. I remember seeing the stars - you get a good view of the stars out here, not so much this time with where we are in Campinas. Good times, good memories.
Melodie didn't remember it at all. I'm sure if we were able to get through the gate and they saw our lot, they would have a vague memory of it. But this was as far as we went. Corey said to me several times "I'm not proud of what I've done..." which made me laugh.
Well, the kids had been patient with us and our little drive down "I think we were crazy" memory lane. And they were hungry. Ok, let's go. 15 minute drive back into Barão Geraldo...
As we drove, I told Melodie thing I remembered about that first experience, like our car that we bought that was a lemon.
We didn't know what we were doing that last time. Last time,
that was an adventure. It makes this trip look easy. We're totally living it up this time around.
The sky looks so big here in Brazil. I wish I could have gotten a picture of the hills as we drove. It is a big beautiful country.
Down the hill - there was one place that we passed on our way to the chacara that I wanted to get a picture of... go straight on this road...
Over several speed bumps, we're coming to the corner...
And there it is. I totally remember going into that little grocery store, paying with our American Express and wondering if we'd survive this crazy adventure and make it back to the US...
That time around 8 years ago, we moved from Virginia to Brazil - Corey quit his job there and decided to figure stuff out on his own and we lived off credit for 4 months. I was a little more than a little stressed, I've come a long way. I'm sure as Corey reads this he's saying again "I'm not proud of what I did..." Taking us all on a memorable adventure, what is there not to be proud of sweetie. It's all good, good times, good times. We drove by the Barão Geraldo chapel where we went to church...
Yup, that's it! Looks the same as it did then. It's been here every Sunday for the past 8 years. Life has just kept on happening down here.
Ok, you kids have been patient with us. Let's go to McDonalds. It was just right around the corner from the chapel.
Who wants hot fries and a hamburger on this hot day?
Everybody but Mel. She just wanted an ice cream. And she helped us out with all the "orange juice" that we got. Natalie liked the yogurt
They had free face painting and balloon inside the AIR CONDITIONED (ahh! heavenly) restaurant. The playplace was outside. It was covered and shaded, but still hot. It was nice inside. I went in to watch kids get their faces painted.
Very nice customer service there at the Barão Geraldo McDonald's - I give them 4 stars.
The girls all got butterflies, Wesley got a Brazil flag. Hyrum and Mel didn't get their faces painted.
Wow, Soph ~ what a pretty butterfly!
The kids got regular balloons and Abi got an apple balloon too! But it looked like a tomato to me. And there's nothing wrong with tomato balloons.
The kids were ready to cool off with a swim at home, so we headed home and went for a family swim. We saw a few street performers on the drive home. This guy was juggling. Only in Latin America! It was a good day.
