Weekend Fun

This weekend was gorgeous! It is still considered winter down here-but the sky was a cloudless blue and the weather warm. Saturday was busy-Paul and Noah headed off to teeball and Sophie and I enjoyed a mani/pedi together. That girl was made for pampering! She ordered up fuchsia nail polish with a glitter top coat. She politely asked the boy working the coffee corner for ice water on a tray-delivered to her while her nails dried! Sophie was so much fun, but I'm afraid this can't become a routine mother daughter activity...sometimes feels a bit ahem, entitled to things and doesn't appreciate them so much. I want to reserve this as a special treat!
Following the morning chores we headed out to a birthday party. I know I've mentioned how these parties go before, but once again I was blown away. The birthday girl is a friend of Sophie's and her mom is our co-worker, so I felt we needed to attend. The place did not disappoint! The kids enjoyed an indoor roller coaster, huge ball pit, amusement park rides, and a trampoline/jumpy aparatus. Each activity also has a monitor to help the kids-so the first part was fairly relaxing (the waiter bringing beer around didn't hurt either). The second part involved an hour long puppet show that was super loud and annoying. By this point, we were ready to go home, but of course, we hadn't sung "Happy Birthday" yet! The new three year old came out (escorted by her four year old brother) in a full Cinderella outfit and make up. Sophie was totally blown away by this and I am doing everything possible to deprogram her before her fourth birthday in January. I had planned something slightly smaller!
We ended Saturday with a dinner out with our friends Peter and Leca. It was so nice to go out, just the four of us, for the first time! We thoroughly enjoyed our selves and the kids were happy to spend the evening with Katty.Sunday...hmmm, we pretty much lounged by the pool and caught up on school work. A much needed, relaxing weekend!

Sophie's Classroom

Since I posted about my love of the Montessori program a few days ago, I thought it would be fun to post a few pictures of Sophie's new classroom. Both she and Noah are in a mixed age classroom. All 3-6 year olds are in one class, though the 3 and 4 year olds leave at noon (Sophie) and the five and six year olds stay until 3 o'clock (Noah). I love that Sophie has a chance to play with different aged kids and I love that Noah has a kindergarten class of 7-8 kids in the afternoon. Both kids attend P.E., music, and library throughout the week and Noah also attends art class. The Montessori program was a huge reason why we chose to come to Graded, and we haven't been disappointed! Both kids are just "down the ramp" from my classroom and I love to stop by while they are at the playground or eating lunch (Noah) to say hello. It is such a relief to feel so confident and happy about our school decisions. I love how it has shaped the kids!

Outdoor space for dish washing, painting, scrubbing, etc...

The dish area and drying rack...useful skills here!

The scrubbing rock

Montessori Love

One of the reasons I love, love the Montessori program that Noah and Sophie are a part of is that "practical life" is one of the centers the children spend time working on every day. All of that pays off at home:

Tee Ball

Noah started his first tee ball season on Saturday. The American Society sponsors Saturday morning sports teams at our school and another local private school. Noah was happy to take on an activity that included instruction in English-he's been getting frustrated with swimming lessons because sometimes he doesn't quite understand what the coaches are asking him to do. In reality, both swimming and soccer amount to a sports lesson and a Portuguese lesson, and after a full day of kindergarten, perhaps that's asking a bit too much! Noah loved it and next weekend Paul will join him as his coach!

Who's Complaining?

For all of my pathetic whining, the last two weekends have been spent like this:




When Paul and I are having conversations about how to structure our weekends better so we don't sit at the pool and Club all day long I guess I should stop complaining. Seriously.

Living Room Makeover

I hate complaining about our apartment-we live in a great community. The outdoor amenities are nothing short of breathtaking (especially in a city like Sao Paulo), but the apartments, and the buildings that house them, leave much to be desired. The rumor is that the architect was a bit of a communist and he wanted all the buildings to be "equal". All 8 of our buildings are plain cement towers and none of the buildings have balconies. The communist architect put all of his efforts into the grounds surrounding the buildings so that people would come down and "commune" (or sunbathe and drink caipirinhas for hours on end) with each other. He certainly accomplished that objective! But the apartments...some are better than others. In reality we got very lucky-our apartment has been renovated in the last 15 years. Although the decor is not my taste, per se, it is fairly neutral and we've managed to make it work. The biggest problem-the white! When we arrived last August it was so very white. The floors. The walls. The ceiling. Everything!
Remember?

The we painted around Christmas time and the apartment began to take on some personality:

Finally, at the end of last year, we managed to collect quite a few things from people that were leaving. Most of July was spent unpacking, arranging, and rearranging everything to make it feel like home...we're almost there!
Here are a few recent pictures of the living room/dining room. We're still looking for a large piece of art for the far wall, but things are coming along. The rest of the apartment is looking much better too, but this room has had the biggest change by far!



If Noah and Sophie don't stop waking each other up "to play" at 5:30 a.m. my next project is going to be to transform our playroom into an additional bedroom. They're making me crazy (and each other grumpy!).

The Last Few Weeks

Normally the beginning of the school year is busy for everyone. Add to that a two teacher household, a five year old beginning kindergartner, and a three year old heading to preschool and it gets a little crazy. Add to THAT the swine flu fears (thus a few days home already with a slight cough), a new, heavy teaching load and coaching position for Paul, professional leadership commitments for me, a broken toe, abandoned race training (grumpy mama), and negotiating a house closing from Brazil and you have pure chaos! That's pretty much what's been going on here. It hasn't been pretty. This morning I believed we were starting to emerge from all of this, but was then reminded Paul was working late tonight and half of tomorrow and Noah had his first tee ball game tomorrow morning. And it is cold. Really cold. And Noah just came back from a playdate early because his ear was hurting him so badly and he couldn't stop crying. Should I go on?
It has been a ROUGH couple of weeks.
There are so many wonderful, amazing things happening, but I've been a bit blind to them lately. I just need the fog to clear.
Fun fact? We've booked our trip to Buenos Aires in late November!
Hopefully I'll be back with great pictures and fun updates soon!

Swine Flu Fears and First Week Insanity

We're drowning in swine flu fears and first week insanity....be back soon!

Sunday Afternoon in Embu

A few weekends ago we headed to Embu, a small artisan town about 20 minutes from here. Weekends there are fun-there are quite a few craftsman that set up shop along the streets, small restaurants, and a relaxing, laid back feel. We were hunting for a few pieces of art for our living room. We didn't end up buying anything (yet), but had a fun time!

A Small (Large) Bump in the Road

Since late May when I ran a 12k I've had my sights set on The Rio International Half Marathon. The a little less than twice the 12k and I was feeling very ready for it. My training back in the States was spotty-but once I returned to Brazil I was very diligent, and I was just about a month out from the race. My training was right on track. Until Sunday when I made the crazy decision to turn on a light in our living room. And bump into a wall. Now my foot looks like this:

I know-it doesn't look so bad, right? That's because the white tape is covering my purple and black toe that is swollen to the size of my thumb. Our nurse at school feels confident I broke the toe, but Paul, in his ample broken bone experience, feels I may have just sprained it. Three days later, it still hurts like crazy and I still limp around like Tiny Tim. I have no idea when I will be able to run again-the nurse told me to stay off of it for 4-6 weeks-almost laughable since the school year started on Monday and I have two little darlings that need me up at home. We'll see. I'm awfully bummed that a goal I've had for many years, and was so close to reaching, disappeared in a split second of clumsiness. I guess there's always next fall (spring).

Last Days of Vacation (for some of us)

I made it back from Seattle! Can you tell?


Today is officially the our last day of winter vacation and tomorrow we are back to school. The last few weeks have been miserable here-cold, rainy, muddy, and gray. Usually I have no complaints about living in an apartment, but after three weeks of that weather I was beginning to go crazy and the apartment walls seemed to be closing in. I was starting to feel ready to go back to work, but, of course, today the weather turned and it was gorgeous. It gave us a perfect day to enjoy a chuhasca (Brazilian BBQ) with friends in Embu, but it definitely made me long for a few more days of lounging at the Clubbe and playing at the park. Hopefully, these sunny days will start to be a little more frequent, although the rumor is by Tuesday we could be in the 40s! Either way today was a perfect way to end our "winter" vacation (which is strange since we battled 100 degree temps in Austin and Seattle and perfect summer weather in Virginia).

I bought the new kids new backpacks in Seattle. It seemed like a fun way to kick off the new school year-Sophie is starting the K-3 program and Noah is a big, full day kindergartner. Unfortunately, due to the swine flu concerns our school decided to postpone the first day of school for students until Monday, August 10th. Most schools here are closed until August 17th, so we'll see if Graded follows suit or actually opens on the 10th. Noah is really, really excited to head back, so for his sake I hope it is sooner rather than later!

Not so fast, guys!