Been busy

Last week and weekend were really hectic. We had our monthly birthday celebration in Sunday School and as I'm the only teacher in my group at the moment I was the one who had to bake the cake. The very same Sunday there was a baby shower at the orphanage. One of the girls is going to have a baby boy soon and it was also her birthday. I had volunteered to bake two cakes; one for her and one for the baby. Saturday and a good part of Sunday were then spent in the kitchen. You can take a look at the cakes in my foody blog over here.

We spent last week cleaning up the house and emptying our guest room. It had turned into my husband's little office full of computer parts and tools. We needed the room empty so that our niece could move in on Monday this week. Her parents moved to the countryside but she's in her final year of high school so it's best for her to stay here and finish off her studies instead of changing schools at this stage.

In addition to the cakes I also prepared little birthday gifts for Sunday school (first picture) as well as small baby shower favours for the orphanage (second picture).

This week has been a lot calmer although the kids have kept me busy as they're extremely excited over having their cousing living with us. We'll get back to Outdoor Hour challenges and other homeschooling stuff next week.

busy busy busy

We (or I) have been quite busy the last couple of weeks. Some unexpected things happened also... Luana fractured her ankle walking home from a kid's party near our house. Initially we thought that she had just twisted her ankle real bad but the x-ray revealed a tiny fracture. So she'll have a cast for a month or so and there won't be any ballet for her for a while. Our Outdoor Hours have been reduced as well and I'm trying to do activities without having to walk anywhere...

We were left without water for over 30 hours last week... Something broke at the local water company and the whole town was without water. Luckily we have a well on the other side (the house that's rented at the moment) so we got some water from there. It was a good wake up call though and we've had long discussions about our water consumption with my hubby. We're going to make some improvements around the house and we've also been talking about how not to waste water with the kids.

Last week there was an international crusade in our church and I was the interpreter for three foreign evangelists. They came from Norway, South Africa and the US. It was really good as I like interpreting but haven't been able to do it for a while. The whole campaign was a real blessing.

Will be posting about the latest Outdoor Hour in a minute!

Christmas in Sunday School

Children's Day (Oct 12th) is a big date over here and it's widely celebrated at schools, in homes and in church as well. This year we arrived from Finland so late that I didn't have time (or energy) to organise anything special for my Sunday School group so I promised I'd have something special for them for Christmas.

I made a chocolate cake and put together small gift bags with sweets and these wooden pegs that we painted at home with the kids. Lucas was really good at this and he would have painted many many more. I did fortunately buy some extra pegs that will be given to relatives at Christmas. After they had dried I glued a small magnet on the other side and wrote a little note that says "Jesus was born in order to save you".

Busy week...

... or at least it felt like we were busy all the time. The main events were a birthday party where the kids were invited (and went to dressed as a princess and a pirate) on Tuesday, a movie and a dinner with my sister on Wednesday, my massive headache on Thursday and the Portuguese-speaking Bible study on Friday.

I felt a bit rough the whole week and I'm actually surprised that I'm feeling just fine right now. As I was coming home on Wednesday night I felt so cold and I had to have extra blankets in my bed so that I could sleep at all. Thursday morning I thought my head was going to explode and I had to ask my mum to take the kids to the nursery and stay at home the whole day. On Friday my whole body was aching as if I had exercised loads and I had a really sore throat. And today I'm feeling just fine. What was that? I don't really care as long as it doesn't come back...

There are plenty of things to do before we leave (only two weeks to go, yay!) and I'm going to sit down tonight and make a few lists of things to do and things to buy. I've pre-packed our suitcases and there's still some space in them although admittedly there are tons of things that didn't make it to the suitcases yet... So I'll be busy with that during the last couple of days.

Tomorrow I'll focus on Sunday School. I'll have the kids just this once before we leave Finland so I'm really looking forward to that!

Church camp II

As I said the kids were well taken care of and they had their very own activities in a tent just outside the main building. There were several people working with them and taking care of them.

Together they produced this piece of art by painting a piece of white cotton.

They also made self-portraits.

Each child made one branch for this tree and in the end they put the tree together with all the branches.

P.S. There are pictures from Luana and Lucas' birthday party (held yesterday) in here and recent picture of the puppies (born on Aug 4th) in here.

Church camp

The Spanish speaking group of our church had a weekend camp a week ago and I went there with the kids. We had a great time! It was good just to sit and listen although I did some interpreting as well. The kids were well taken care of during the meetings as there was special program for them so it was truly relaxing also for the mama :)

We slept in cottages with lots of other people and the kids thought that was well exciting! They really wanted to sleep on the upper bed but their mama was boring and didn't allow that...

The kids had fun with the other kids they already knew and especially Luana also made some new friends.

Luana and mama.

And a really tired Lucas in the bus on the way home :)

Birthday party and Sunday School

This Sunday we were busy with things to do. First there was my friend's daughter's birthday. The kids love a good birthday party and were so excited to go. The little princess (now 5 years old) got lovely pressies and the party was really nice too. We gave her a domino game with little dalmatians instead of domino cards.


Luana has just found her little gift bag during the treasure hunt in the garden. The kids thought it was so exciting to look for hidden things.

From the party we went straight to church and had our "Brazilian" Sunday School. I told the kids a little bit about Brazil, gave them some fresh and dried fruits and some guava juice and we also talked about friendship and how God unites us even when we're miles apart.

My Sunday School kids from Brazil had drewn pictures to send to Finland and I put them all up on the wall together with the Brazilian flag. The Finnish kids thought it was interesting to see the pictures and a letter that one of the girls had written in Portuguese. They then drew pictures to send to Brazil. I'll send them to my husband who will take them to my Sunday School class there.

Finally weekend

This week was somehow too much. I guess I hadn't realised how tiring working itself could be and I did all sorts of other things after work. I came home after the kids had gone to bed every day this week and I wasn't happy with that. I guess the lesson has been learned: no activities after work unless absolutely necessary.

I really missed spending time with my babes. Even if we quarrel and argue often I still wanted to be at home to give them a bath, read, eat together, draw, put them to bed etc. Today I finally came home straight from work and spent the evening with the children.

They had had a fab day today with my mum. There was a spring festival of some sort nearby and they had spent five hours (really, FIVE) just walking around, participating in different activities and playing. There was an obstacle course for kids, painting, pony riding, music and dancing and they also got to plant flowers. I was so sorry I had to work and I missed all the fun but I'm also really happy my mum had the energy to go with them (for FIVE hours).

This weekend there's my favourite festival ever taking place in Helsinki. It's a multicultural festival where lots of NGOs display their work, different organisations sell food from all corners of the world, artisans sell their work and Finnish and foreign artists play music - all free of charge. It's just that I'm absolutely too tired to participate! :( It's ok though, I really just wanted to stay at home with the kids and spend some time with them so I won't complain.

Tomorrow we're off to a little girl's birthday party and after that to church to teach Sunday School. Our topic is Brazil and I'm planning to feed the kids all sorts of exotic fruits. I'll also let them do some colouring using the Smilinguido figures.

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.

Easter Sunday

This morning we had a special Easter Sunday School for the kids below 9 years of age. We expected around 100 kids but almost 150 turned up! We had to improvise a little with the gift bags as there were only 100 of them but in the end everything turned out nice and I think all the kids were happy. There was cake, pop corn, the little surprise bags with sweets, lots of singing and of course the Easter message.

These pictures are from the old church where youth evenings and bigger children's events usually take place. There's a lot bigger new church right next to this one.



And this is how the gift bags looked like. Someone had actually taken the trouble of sewing bags from yellow bunny fabric and then glueing the legs and the head of the rabbit. And there were 100 of them! (The material of the head and the legs is called EVA in Portuguese or softis in Finnish, I have no idea what it's called in English...)


I hope everyone has had a wonderful Easter time!

Upside down service

Yesterday I went to the youth meeting at church. Usually I stay at home and my husband sometimes goes depending on whether he plays the percussion or not. Yesterday was however a very special meeting and my mother-in-law gracefully offered to stay with the kids so that we both could go.

The service was called "Upside down" and everyone was asked to wear their clothes turned upside down. The inside of the church had been turned around so that people were facing the door instead of the back wall. We started the service by wishinig each other a good night and a blessed weekend as if we were already leaving church. There was some very good praise and worship and a few testimonies from ex-trafficers and drug users whose lives God has turned upside down.

The sermon was on Daniel 1. The pastor highlighted the fact that Daniel was taken away from his country, his people and his customs. Yet he was able to continue serving God and keeping his integrity in the middle of the pressure from other customs and a different way of life. God has turned our lives upside down, too and we should keep that in mind in our daily lives. It is possible for a christian to lead a life that pleases God and still be a part of the community outside the church.

Some people also shared that they had felt embarrassed having to leave their houses with their clothes the wrong way but as they got to church they had felt more at ease as everyone else was dressed like that, too. And that's true in our lives every day. We often feel embarrassed or awkward for not wanting to participate in some of the things of the world but when we get together with brothers and sister in Christ we feel at ease because they're "awkward" in the same way we are :) Hence the importance of unity among believers.

This morning I taught Sunday School again. We looked at why Jesus was going to Jerusalem and I told them about the Jewish Passover traditions that are observed even today. It seemed to be all very new to them and the kids were interested and participated well in everything. I have a nice crafting in mind for next Sunday and I'll share it in time so that anyone interested can do it on Sunday, too.

Planning for Easter

This is how peaceful and quiet it is at home right now. The kids are sleeping and I'm surfing and finding all sorts of nice ideas for Easter both for homeschool and for Sunday School. I want to talk about both Passover and Easter with the kids. In Sunday School I will take two separate Sundays in order to cover both issues. Here at home I have lot more time so we'll talk about both during several days and will hopefully do a lot of related crafting too.

I'm thinking about preparing a Resurrection basket to Sunday School in order to go through all the events of Easter with the kids. The idea is from here. There are also some good printable activities I found in here. I'll just have to modify them slightly and write the things in Portuguese instead of English.

So I'm well excited with all the good resources and all the preparation. Today we'll look at the primary colours in English with the kids and I'll still have to prepare something for their notebooks before they wake up.

Craft fair pictures - finally!

Inside our church on Saturday.

Some of the things of the craft fair. My little things sold all except for one heart!

And finally some of the yummy things that were also sold. Apart from the cakes and deserts there was also proper food, hot dogs and fruit salad.