Feliz Natal

First of all, I didn't know that aloe plants had such prominent flowers. Its started with the snake-like protrusions and then all of a sudden they started opening into these flowers. I haven't noticed any scent, but birds and bees love them. After some of the storms we've had you can see red buds all over the grass/roads. We have had quite a few storms. Our storms consist of rain and LOTS of wind. Some wind reaching 50 MPH and higher. Pretty constant too. It's bad enough that you have to hold onto your car doors, because the wind will rip it from your grip and either damage a nearby car or break your door's hinges. Yesterday, I couldn't climb into the car because I had to hold the door with both hands and brace myself with my feet. I'm short enough that I have to climb into the van but I couldn't let me feet leave the asphalt. After a few minutes there was a pause slow enough that I could hop in and hold the door with just one hand.

Anyway, the aloe was Christmas type colors so it counts.



Here's a message from the American kids that attend the Portuguese preschool.

Mt. Brazil slide

So at the highest mountain/volcano there is a "zoo" and a park. At the top park they have this super cool LOOKING slide. Our neighbors that went with us told us it was slow but if we brought waxed paper it would speed it up. I said "Got it! Let's go!" We get up there and I pull out my waxed....uh, oops parchment paper. Apparently, they are two different things. I thought they were the same but that was not correct. So this slide is so unbelievably slow, that it's pretty useless. We'll have to try it with the WAXED paper and see if it's worth the drive.


They had to walk down it. I even tried it thinking that my slick coat would help me slide down. I didn't even budge, pretty sad. Speaking of which, how does one gain weight when there is major lack in the fast food department? I thought that if I cut out BK, Taco Bell, Sonic, McDonald's KFC (alright I need to stop now) I would be nice and healthy maybe even lose weight but that's a big no. Sorry I got a little side tracked.


The slide looks so neat but is a total let down.


Later I'll post pictures from the "zoo" and the lower park. I have to split up pictures since we've pretty much done everything there is to do on the island already. And now that 50 mph winds and rain have set in, there isn't much outside stuff to do. Luckily they are planning a few things on base to do. This Saturday there will be bouncy houses and other stuff, so we don't all get cabin fever. Ah, well!

Hustle Falcons Hustle

Today was the first football game that Kaelin cheered at. It was windy and cold but all the girls did great. It's with some sadness but not surprise that I noticed that Kaelin has no real rhythm or coordination. The point is that she had fun, not weather she was good or not, right?





Kaelin paused to smile for me, you can tell just how chilly/windy it is by the other girls pictured.




I bundled up, and eventually had to tie my scarf around my head, so glamorous!






Daddy kept the kids happy in the back of the van. One of Sean's friends stopped by to play in what Savanna kept calling, "my yibbin room" (living).





At one point Kaelin reminded me of this guy. She did quite a few cheers before I could interrupt and help her out.

Here is one of her cheers, the wind is pretty intense so you can't hear what they are saying. Enjoy her lack of cheering skills!

Magnet paper

So I recently got some magnet printer paper, because I saw a cute pumpkin craft. You print out an orange pumpkin and the random shapes for eyes/nose/mouth. You then glue the paper to magnet sheets. Well, I found magnet printer paper and thought that would be must easier. But, I didn't get to do it because this certain company doesn't ship APO so I had to ship it to my sister who lovingly shipped it to me and by this time Halloween/Jack o lantern season is over.




Instead we went with a nice turkey just in time for Thanksgiving. I'm pretty excited to have another Thanksgiving decoration/game since it's the greatest.

Sean pointed out that I forgot his feet.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Happy Halloween again???

Happy Halloween, this isn't really a repeat. I don't know how I thought I could wear that much white, as Aphrodite, and stay clean for the night, let alone 10 minutes. So thanks to Lisa's blog, (thanks Lisa) I threw together a 50's house wife, who everyone mistakenly thought was Lucy. I guess with my newly dyed red hair, that is a total possibility. Kaelin said Spongebob was too hot so she changed to a princess riding a horse. Thank goodness we have a lot of dress-up clothes.






The Portuguese locals are allowed to come into base housing to trick-or-treat. The schedule went a little like this. From 5-7:30 the Americans can trick-or-treat, the gates are locked. Then at 7:30 the gates are opened for the Portuguese to come in. When I first heard this I thought, really? We aren't allowed to trick-or-treat together? We were told by many people that there is usually a line waiting to come in and it's quite a crowd. My goal was to get a picture of the line waiting.


Rob lovingly went down to the gate to snap a few pictures. It is a lot of people in line going up the sidewalk and back down the other way, but the thing is... this was taken at 4:00. They don't start until 7:30, so I HAD to go down again, because I knew it would be just get bigger.









Well, it did get bigger. This crowd went up and over the hill and down the other direction. They sent a security guard on a bike around the neighborhood announcing "1 Minute!!!" to make sure everyone was prepared. We walked to our backyard to see if we could watch them come in, when all of a sudden all these kids came running up the streets. They figured that they could just skip the first group of houses to not have to deal with the crowd. We had to run back to the front of the house because they were coming! I felt like we were in some kind of horror, zombie, night of the dead kind of movie.







It was so hectic! There was pushing and crowding. Almost everyone said "trick-or-treat" and "thank-you". Very polite and cute, nothing zombie-like at all. Our candy only lasted 15 min. Then we had to put "Nao ha mais candys" on our door. They all know the word Candy, I thought that was funny. I hope to be better prepared next year, because 12 bags of candy in a 16 quart stock pot just wasn't enough.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Happy Halloween from SpongeBob, Iron Man, Aphrodite and Boots the Monkey!

Don't stop reading

So one of my best friends (jokingly, I hope) said that she was going to stop reading the blog. She was tired of all the good islandy stuff. Anyway, I started to tell her that even though I liked living here there are things that are not so great. So, this is for her and for anyone else getting tired of islandy good stuff.




1. Food-
I love food, and the food here is good, but I'm getting very tired of boiled potatoes, and lettuce salad. Everything you order comes with a couple boiled potatoes and a pile of lettuce with some shredded carrots. The picture is a step up because it also has onions and some parsley on the potatoes. Then, there isn't a choice of dressing for your "salad" either. There are bottles of oil and vinegar on your table. They do have other options at other restaurants, like french fries or carrots, but they don't use as much salt as Americans are used to so everything seems very bland.

Besides the sides you can get, most restaurants have a couple different kinds of fish (a lot served as a whole fish), maybe one chicken dish and a couple steak. The catch, is that it is cooked the same and served the same way at each of the those restaurants. They have a specialty steak that is served with a fried egg on top. I don't know about you but that's not a favorite of mine.



So in an attempt not to be too negative I'll keep posting good stuff, but every now and then throw in something irksome.

On another note we are going to our branch Halloween or Harvest or whatever, party tonight so I hope to put up some costume pictures soon. Hope everyone has an enjoyable, candy-filled weekend.