REAL! Fishing

I’m in Alaska with my Gramma and Grampa ‘laska and we are having SO much fun.
My Grampa built me and my sister a play house and a pirate ship in his backyard
and I love to “walk the plank.” I also make yummy food in my playhouse kitchen.
One day we went fishing in Grampa’s boat. I had to wear a special jacket to keep me
safe. We rode in the boat to a place called Tutka Bay Lagoon and there were lots
of other boats there. Mommy and Daddy got out on the beach to fish and I stayed
on the boat. A few minutes later with BIG eyes I said ” This is REAL fishing, I’ve never
done REAL fishing before only pretend fishing!!” I was super super super excited.
My Grampa had a special little fishing pole for me to use and he helped me catch my first
red salmon. Alaska is so FUN! My Great Gramdma ‘Nana’ is here visiting also and we are all making
lots of memories together.  You can see lots more pictures on our picture and videos page.

Set The Hook!!!

Proud fishergirl

Heart Melting

Every now and then, we all encounter moments where we wished we had a camera.  Moments that we wish we could freeze in time.  Not having a camera at the time, I now want to paint a couple pictures for you of the last two I’ve experienced.

A couple days ago, I got home from about 5 days of meetings at a camp 45 minutes outside of town.  When I got home, the idea of “daddy” was once again a novelty, and I got to play dolls, push little girls on swings and everything else I had been missing for the previous days.  Then, at bath time, Noelle came tearing down the hall, naked as could be, yelling “papai, papai” (Daddy, Daddy).  After Marla took her back into the bathroom, I followed her.  When she saw me again, she jumped from Marla’s arms into mine.  Then she put her arms around my neck and squeezed for a long time saying quietly “papai, papai, papai.”

Then on Sunday, after church was over, Marla and I went to pick up the girls from their Sunday school class.  As their class is in an old converted house, we could look in the room from one window, and see what was going on.  Posted at the other window like a sentinel was Samara waiting to catch the first glimpse of us as we rounded the corner.  I could see that clutched in her hands were the two gram crackers that she had been given.  She had broken each cracker in two separate pieces, so that she clutched four equal sized crackers in her hand.  As we picked her up, she carefully distributed one cracker to daddy, one cracker to mommy, one cracker to Noelle and one cracker for herself.  Her teacher later told us that she had been saving those crackers during the whole class… just so that she could share with us.

How I wish a picture could fully capture such moments

Are we there yet?

The attached PDF file is a small description of our most recent travels here in Brazil.  It also details what the next several weeks hold in store for us.  Cars, airplanes, campers and car seats just to name a few.  To read more click the following link Are we there yet.

Lar Betania (Bethany House)

 

                     There is an orphanage here in town that is sponsored by the church that we work with.  Many of the short term mission teams that come to Brazil spend time doing work projects around the property.  But mostly they love to come and play with the kids.  There are about 30 kids there now and they live divided in 5 houses with house parents/mothers.  The kids are from 10 months to late teenage years.  Few are true orphans the others have parents who are incapable (drug addicts, in prison…) of taking care of the child.  We have spent time at the orphanage when work teams are here and lately I’ve been taking the girls over on Saturday mornings just to play.  We usually show up as the kids are finishing up their chores.  As we start to play on the playground kids wander over and before I know it Noelle is in the charge of three or four “mothering” 8-12 year olds and Samara is giggling and testing out her growing Portuguese vocabulary.  I love to just sit and watch the kids play, to have Elle come and hold my hand and, to have Erik ask me to take pictures of him doing “stunts”, to hear their laughter and to have a pocket full of candies to hand out.  Below are just a few pictures of these sweet kids.

getting dizzy

Erik the stunt man

Who says that carting off piles of leaves isn't fun?!

Samara and her new friends playing house

Crutches smutches...I cruise pretty fast with my plastic chair

Finger fencing championship of the world!

A little help

National Tragedy

Why they lost?  Well, from my point of view… they lost their cool.  Could this meltdown have been avoided.   Hmmm, I don’t know.  You see, what makes Brazilian soccer fun to watch, as I have seen and as it has been explained to me by others, is that you can see that they are having fun when they play.  This wearing of emotions on their sleeves opens the game up to creativity and experimentation.  Brazilians like not just to win, but play beautifully with finesse.  Theirs is not a game of cold and calculated play, it is a game of emotion and creativity.  To ask them to play without emotion, would to make them un-Brazilian.  Do I wish they had won… yes!  Do I wished they’d have calmed down put their emotions in check and played their game…yes.  But I guess the show goes on, and our flag at least for a time, is at half mast.