Food for the body and the soul

On Sunday there was a big party at church with food from different Latin American countries. Delicious!

And today we went to the local library with the kids. There's a place we'll visit many many times while we're in Finland. There are no public libraries in our town in Brazil so this is so precious to us.

Spring in Finland

So we arrived on Friday night and have been enjoying grandma's house for two days now. It's chilly (although people who live here think this is already pleasant and even warm at times...) but there's a lot of light until late, the food is good, everyone speaks Finnish (much to the children's dismay) and the kids seem to enjoy gloves, scarves and hats. We're happy to be here and I think we'll enjoy the stay. No one misses daddy yet but then again it's only been a few days and the kids are busy with all the new things to do and to see.

The flights were ok, the kids slept reasonably well and generally enjoyed flying. It got very boring in São Paulo where we had a nine-hour-wait but the rest was good. Lucas got a bit fed up with all the sitting and apparently getting nowhere and "wanted to go home" towards the end of the travelling...

Yesterday we celebrated my sister's birthday and had a few people over. Today there'll be a big party in the church as the Spanish speaking group celebrates its 9th aniversary. I called one of the ladies yesterday and she told me there'll be loads of foods from different Latin American countries. I'll also get to meet all the dear people we used to congragate with when we lived here so I'm expecting a very special afternoon today at church.

Very happy to be here although we still think it's chilly :)

Leaving soon

The last couple of days have been quite intense. Yesterday I managed to hand in all documents for my Brazilian ID. I'm hoping it will have come through by the time I get back. They said it'd be quicker than the actual visa (which only took a year and a half) so I'm hoping five months would be enough... :) It'd be great to get the rest of my documents done when we get back so I could get on with life, get a bank account and apply for jobs :)

Today I went for some last minute shopping and had my nails done (something I don't normally do at all but now I thought it'd be nice as I won't have to do as much laundry and washing the dishes as usually). I'll still have one more English lesson at a student's house and then we'll spend the evening with my parents-in-law.

We'll have to catch a taxi at 2 am and I'm crossing my fingers that the kids sleep all the way to the airport (and some more in the plane). Otherwise I'll be dealing with two grumpy kids during the whole day in São Paulo (we get there at 11 am and leave at 8 pm...).

I'm so excited about going. I can't believe it's true that we're actually leaving tomorrow! Will get back to the blog as soon as I get an opportunity but probably it won't be until sometime on Saturday.

Sickbed

So we caught a stomach bug... Isn't that just perfect timing! The kids have been mainly ok (Luana was at home yesterday but went back to school today) but I've been feeling pretty bad the last couple of days. This obviously happened as soon as hubby left for Porto Velho (the state capital) to deal with the last bit of paper work for his new job.

Thankfully I have great parents-in-law as well as a caring neighbour. My mother-in-law was here the day before yesterday, cleaned the house, looked after the kids and slept over in case I needed any help during the night. My neighbour also watched the kids and gave me some herbal medicine. Yesterday I was feeling so much better but this morning was horrid. I'm trying to eat something as I do feel hungry at times. It's just that most food makes me feel sick. Oh well.

I still have a few days to get better before we travel and I'm confident I will :)

busy busy

The last couple of days have somehow been so hectic with us trying to organise the trip (very last minute) and hubby having to travel to Porto Velho (the state capital) in order to do the final medical consultations and hand in his documents for his new job. He's stressed about the flights (or rather about us not finding decent prices this close to departure) and I'm getting stressed about all the zillions of things I still need to get done before we leave.

I'm a list person so I made a few lists (what to do before we leave, what to take along, what to buy as gifts etc.). That helped and I divided the things to do between the days I still have left. There are just so many small things to do as always when you're about to travel.

I have a crafting mess in our room and I really need to get that organised before we go. I can't just let things lying around for five months... I think it'll be a good thing to organise the crafting supplies though as I'm sure I'll find many things I can send to my sister-in-law for her to use in the poor rural schools in the landless movement.

But now I'm just too tired to do anything like that. I stayed up far too late last night looking for flights for us so tonight it'll just be some ice-cream and telly for me and then to bed! I'm hoping to do something nice (like the next Green Hour challenge or some nice crafting) with the kids the next couple of days despite the travelling madness :)

Painting

We did some painting yesterday. It's been so hot the last week or so that we decided to paint outdoors in the front yard. We used paints called "tempera guache" (don't know whether they're called that in English too or not). I'm not very familiar with them as normal watercolours are mainly used with kids in Finland. Over here though they use these a lot. I mixed some colour with a little water and the kids painted mixing really wet primary colours. We used a regular white paper and I could see that a thicker paper made for watercolours would have been in place here. I'll get some when we go to Finland :)

The kids really enjoyed mixing the colours. I don't think we had painted this way ever before.

Lucas liked it too although his concentration isn't as good as Luana's. After the wet painting he painted some "regular" stuff too.

Finland!!!

I just got a summer job in Finland for five months! Five! I'll start already in the beginning of May so we'll travel in a few weeks. I'll be a busy bee until then as I still have a few English courses I need to finish as well as some things to prepare for the trip.

Hubby is off to the travel agent to sort out our flights and I'm trying to get daycare organised for the kids. My mum will obviously help with the kids but I can't expect her to look after them 24/7.

I'm just so excited!!! So happy we'll be able to stay for a little longer. This allows me to go to a friend's wedding, see another friend's baby that is due in September and simply see all friends and relatives and do lots of nice things with the kids.

Arco iris

"O arco iris fala que Deus é amor,

Deus é amor,

Deus é amor,

O arco iris fala que Deus é amor."

"The rainbow tells us that God is love,

God is love,

God is love,

The rainbow tells us that God is love."

The song is from the Sunday School and the photo is from our backyard yesterday. The kids were playing and I was cooking when suddenly I heard them shout: "Äiti, äiti, arco iris! Arco iris!" (a lovely mixture of äiti=mum in Finnish and arco iris=rainbow in Portuguese). I ran out and took a picture for them. What a beautiful way God has to remind us of His love!

How to peel an orange

I posted a picture of my hubby eating oranges with the kids. Susa asked me how he peeled the orange and I tried to explain but I think I wasn't really clear with the explanation so here's a picture :) This is how he peels the oranges. He then cuts a "lid" off the top and the kids eat what's inside the white part.

Green Hour challenge 4

This time we wanted to discover a new road to the river Mororó. We walked a little further down our street and then turned to the river. It was a street I had never been to and to my surprise there was a lot of unbuilt land. It's wonderful how I've discovered whole new places just around the corner through our nature walks!


I once again had asked the kids to observe and listen. The first thing Luana saw and wanted me to take a picture of was this flower. They grow absolutely everywhere but in people's gardens. I guess it's a flower no one really plants, it just appears by itself. We also saw a bunch of pink and purple dragonflies and the kids were thrilled. They were just so quick that I didn't even try to take a picture of them!

After some walking (and Luana falling in the slippery mud) we caught a glimpse of the river. There was quite a lot of really wet land (and mud) and I could just imagine what happens when the river runs over. No wonder no one had built there!

There was a tiny bridge and we crossed over the river.

And then we found the loveliest, tiniest and most peacful street and this little minimarket. The houses were all very modest but the atmosphere at that very moment was so cozy and nice. There was laundry hanging outside every single house, the windows were open and we could here music from many houses.

The notebook pages will be done today. Our walk was really nice and it was great to see a landscape that we didn't expect to see just around the corner from our house. The kids especially enjoyed walking through the muddy field :)

Interviewing grandpa

No nature walk today either... The kids were a bit tired (maybe the school week was difficult or maybe it was something else) and we all really felt like just staying at home. Luana asked to cut and glue things so I took out my box of paper scraps as well as my box of felt and yarn left overs, gave the kids scissors and glue and sat down myself, too. I hadn't done paper crafting for a while and it was really nice. I'll post some pictures of what we did later on.

In the middle of the paper madness happening in our living room my father-in-law came over. Luana started to tell him how the Mororó river flows and in which direction is goes. Then I reminded her we were supposed to ask grandpa about the fish in the river so she asked. I just took a pen and some paper and started writing down weird and wonderful names of different kinds of fish that actually live in our small polluted river. We also asked him about the fauna by the river Jaru and got a huge list of animals (and we didn't even talk about birds or insects). I'm really pleased that we have someone so close who knows so many things about the nature over here. After all, he's worked in farming, fishing and hunting for years and years before starting to work for SUCAM (Health Ministry's public health campaign superintendency) and he always has a good (and usually true) story to tell.

After dinner we thought we'd go out for some ice cream and the kids were excited about the idea. However after we were all set to go it started to rain. There were lots of tears of frustration (especially from Luana's part) but luckily my creative husband remembered we had some pop corn and passion fruits at home. He made the pop corn and I made passion fruit juice and we had a lovely time all together in the kitchen.

Through this incident we also got to talking about God with Luana. When she saw it was raining and we explained her we couldn't go out she went to her room quite upset. After a while she came out again and told me she had prayed that God would stop the rain but He didn't. She was wondering why God didn't want us to have ice cream if He always wants good things for us. I've had that conversation with her once before, can't remember what it was that time she had asked for in prayer and didn't receive. It's quite hard to explain a four-year-old how God does indeed give us the best things but that His idea of best doesn't always coincide with our concept of best. Luana really likes to pray about things and she often tells me she'd like to pray about some particular issue or person. Now she's starting to realise we don't always get what we ask for in prayer.

Oh, and I rearranged things on the sidebar. My blogs started anonymous and at first I didn't post pictures of our family. Now however the anonimity is long gone so I put up a link to an older blog with the kids' pictures. There's also a link to my old food blog, which unfortunately is only in Finnish. The kids' blog has some posts in English, too.

With daddy

The kids eating oranges with daddy one afternoon.

There are certain things they only do with him and this is one of them. Sometimes he comes home with a big bag of oranges, gets a knife from the kitchen and sits with the kids in front of the house. They are capable of eating countless oranges!

Not much going on

We haven't been doing much lately... Yesterday we took a look at the numbers from 6 to 10 in English. Basically the kids can say all the numbers up to ten but I wanted them to really learn them so that they remember what each individual number means. Luana is learning to write the numbers at school so this goes together well with the regular school work, too.

Today I'll be teaching in the afternoon and at night so no homeschool activities today. I might take the kids along in the afternoon so they get a nice playdate while I teach.

Lucas seems to have stopped napping after lunch. It's funny because his older sister still very much needs her nap. I'd rather have him nap but I guess I can't force him to sleep if he really isn't tired. At first I got really stressed about him not wanting to nap anymore and me loosing that "own time" but I'm calmer now :) I've decided to have them both in their beds after lunch and read a few books to them as I usually do. If one of them hasn't fallen asleep after that I go over and do some massage on their backs and see if they fall asleep. If that doesn't work either I'll just let them stay awake. The only problem with Lucas is that it's difficult for him to stay quiet and not to go to Luana's room while she's sleeping. Right now he's in his bed with loads of books. I asked him to be quiet and read for a while. He seemed really happy when I suggested that instead of getting stressed about him not sleeping :) Now I'll just see how it goes from here.

We'll be back with the Green Hour challenge tomorrow!

I received those flowers from two girls in Sunday School last Sunday.