Swim lessons

The excitement of the week is that the kids have been doing swimming lessons this week that will continue next week as well. We did a 2 week session earlier in the summer, and they both loved it so much that we had to sign up for another session. Both Abigail and Owen have shown improvements even just from earlier in the summer. Abigail is quite the little fish and Owen is quite the little guppy. They can't wait to spend everyday in the pool in about a week, when we go with Alec's family to Newport Beach, California. Yeah!

Look what Abigail can do!

One of my goals for the summer was to teach Abigail how to ride her bike without training wheels. Well, I haven't gotten around to it yet. But no worries, her sweet friend Kate (who has been riding without training wheels since we met her two years ago when she was 4) took care of it yesterday. Abigail is quite thrilled about her new found skill. By 7:30 this morning she was dressed, had her bed made, and her cereal ready so that she could get outside and practice.

Where do I begin?

Where did June and part of July go? I am going to attempt to catch up. So here goes...

Okay, so this first picture is actually from April when my siblings, sister-in-laws, and a brother-in-law participated in the Salt Lake City 5K. We did it in honor of my Mom, and raised the money for The Huntsman Cancer Institute (Which was such a wonderful place during such difficult times--they were very attentive and took such great care to make you feel like you weren't really in a hospital.) My younger brother, Adam, set the whole thing up and even made t-shirts for the whole gang of 35 of us. I've never participated in a race before, and I have to admit that it was quite thrilling to be there at the starting line with all of those people. And because I was slow enough, I even had a good size cheering section to greet me at the finish line! But for sure the best part of the day was just being able to be together with my family and remember Mom. She would have loved that we had that experience together. It was really a fun experience, and one that I hope to repeat next year. Maybe by then I can even run it! (:

Okay, so on to June. Here are some of the highlights.

We've had fun times with cousins...

A dance recital (Abigail was so cute in her American-themed tap routine)...


Father's Day (these are the photos we gave Alec for his desk)...

Marketstar Lagoon Day...


A trip to the Dinosaur Park with our friend and her granddaughter (unfortunately, none of the pictures with them in it turned out.)

Alec had surgery to fix a large hiatal hernia.
And the 4th of July--with swimming at Grandpa's, pizza and sparklers at the Stones (my sister's family), and back to Grandpa's to watch fireworks from the balcony. Please notice Alec's blue Powerade tongue, since that's all he could have for a couple of weeks. He still doesn't eat much of anything. Consequently, he has lost some weight, and I have started to feel like a pig....

(Owen got his hand stuck in his mug. We just thought it was funny.)

Phew! I feel much better now that I've somewhat caught myself up. I did skip Abigail's birthday which happened a couple of weeks ago, but we'll just have to do that in a separate, less sporadic post.

Kindergarten Then and Now

Then (first day of kindergarten)...and now (last day of kindergarten)....

School is out for the summer, and we have successfully made it through an entire year of kindergarten. I can hardly believe it, it is kind of surreal that next year I will have a first-grader who will be gone all day. Yikes! But it has been pretty amazing to watch Abigail learn so much in a year. She is already reading quite a bit (it's actually a little shocking sometimes what she can read), made some great little friends, and she seems to really love learning. I hope it's a life-long love. We are one week into summer break, and Abigail and Owen have played "school" everyday, so hopefully she can last a whole summer without it.

Here are some pictures of the little kindergarten program they did towards the end of the year. Based on Abigail's preschool performances, I was expecting to be slightly embarrassed by her lack of participation. But boy did she get into it! It was great to see her enjoy herself so much.Abigail is on the left in the back row.

All that Walker Christmas Eve practicing of the chimes really paid off.

The boys enjoying the show.



Me at the piano. Another mom and I switched off every week playing the piano for singing time. Sometimes the boys came with me, and I'm pretty sure Owen could have sung every song right along with the kindergarten class.

Well, I hate to end on such an awesome picture of myself, but (or should I say butt)....

Then and Now

Then...

And now...
So, it's been a few days since our Nathan John turned one. And it's not that we don't love him or that he's the third child or anything, it's just that I can't believe an entire year has passed by! We celebrated with strawberry shortcake and the opening of presents--which of course when you're 1, means a little bit of gift wrap snacking while your older siblings pretty much unwrap everything for you.

This pic is after we took the cake away to cut it. Seriously, once this kid even catches sight of food, it is like a scream fest--or rather a shriek fest--until he is given something to eat. I'm starting to get a complex that I might be starving him.

It's amazing how much little babies change in a year. A year ago Nate wanted nothing more than to be held and cuddled, now he wants nothing more than to not be held and cuddled. He is on the go--doing a traditional crawl (not the commando crawl anymore), cruising around furniture and climbing up stairs.

He claps his hands, waves, signs "more," shakes his head yes and no, says "hello" when he talks on the phone (which he holds up to the top of his head), makes car sounds when he plays with cars, pats your back and says "ahh" when you get a chance for a quick snuggle, and makes shy faces for strangers. He weighs 19 lb. 6 oz. (4th percentile--reinforcing my aforementioned complex about malnourishment), and is 31.7 inches long (91st percentile).

clapping hands

feeling shy

sweet suspenders Grammy sent, to assist in keeping our little skin and bones dressed (see Slim)

making car noises

saying "hello", which really sounds more just like "lo"

Happy Birthday, Nate! We love you!!

Oi do Brasil!

My first venture into the blogosphere comes from Sao Paulo, Brazil. I am down here on business visiting and working with the company that handles our Latin American business. Not that anyone cares in particular, but I thought I'd give an abbreviated "play-by-play" (as Andrea likes to say).

Wednesday, April 23: A guy I work with, Mont, is going to Brazil with me and picks me up around 11:00 in the morning. I'm tired already and haven't gotten on a plane yet. In an attempt to ensure that I sleep on my overnight flight from Atlanta to Sao Paulo, I watched two different sporting events after packing my luggage and finally turned off the TV around 2:30 am. (A parenthetical side note - I was only planning on watching the Liverpool game but it ended up leaving such a bad taste in my mouth that I knew I wouldn't sleep and watched the 2nd game of the Spurs/Suns series. I'm certainly glad that game went in my favor or I may not have slept at all.) Anyway, I'm excited but not overly so as we need to pick up our passports before heading to the airport and our trip has already been delayed by a few days because of visa problems. I'd resolved not to wet my pants until actually setting foot in Brazil. Needless to say, Mont and I got our passports without any trouble, ate food designed not to give us gas at Crown Burger, and hopped on a plane to Atlanta. I'm not really a nervous traveler but I was happy to see that we were joined on our flights by 11 missionaries headed to the MTC in Brazil.

Thursday, April 24: Our flight headed for Brazil was originally scheduled to leave about an hour after arriving in Atlanta. For those of you that have never been to Atlanta's Hartsfield Airport, it is huge and if you have flights arriving and leaving from different terminals it can be quite a trial. Our flight was delayed and nobody informed us, so we ended up running across creating only to find out we could have caught a cab into town, had dinner, and still had time to spare for our flight. The lesson here, as always, nobody at the airport cares about you, unless you're traveling with families or friends.

When I finally got on the plane and found my seat I had to immediately email my travel agent and tell her thanks for getting me the most awesome seat possible in Coach. I had a bulkhead seat with enough space to stretch out my legs completely. It was as if I had lucked into a first-class space at coach prices. I popped some Tylenol PM and waited for sleep to envelop me. Unfortunately, at 3:30 am sleep still hadn't come and I resolved to put on my headlamp (with a nod to Margaret) and read my book for a few hours. Apparently that was all my body needed, a book and it had had enough, I was out before getting through the first chapter and could remember so little that I reread from the start later. Before I knew it we were being asked to raise our seatbacks and store our tray tables for our approach into Sao Paulo.

For those of you still reading, I didn't wet my pants when I landed or when we got off the plane. We got our luggage, went through customs, and met our driver. For the first time in my life one of the guys waiting in arrivals had my name on a sign, I can't deny it, it was very heady. The drive through Sao Paulo took about an hour and then the wait to check into our rooms (I forgot to request early check-in) took another hour and a half. We finally got to our rooms, showered and were ready for the day by about 12:30 local time. I managed to take a few pictures from my hotel room and have posted the best below. For those with Google Earth or even Google Maps here's the address of the hotel, Rua João Cachoeira 107, Itaim Bibi, São Paulo – SP, 04535.
One thing that I have to say before the speed of the posting picks up considerably, is that Sao Paulo is incredibly huge. They don't know for sure, but it is estimated that the number of residents in the city proper are around 12 million and the greater Sao Paulo areas contains about 21 million people. We are fortunate enough to be in a really nice neighborhood close to the office and safe to walk around in.

On Thursday, after having slept for perhaps 8 hours in the previous 48, we worked until 8:30 pm at the office and then went out to dinner until almost 11:00 pm. I was spent, Mont was having trouble getting his eyes to focus, and we finally rolled into the hotel around 11:30 pm.


Friday, April 25: For the sake of speed, we had meetings all day long from 9:00 am until almost 8:00 pm. I couldn't believe that anyone wanted to work that late on a Friday night, nor could I believe that they wanted to go out to dinner afterwards. We ate like kings (we have been eating like kings since we've got here but I'll save that for another post).

Saturday, April 26: One of the nice things about working at MarketStar is that most of the people that I work with share my beliefs. Mont and I got up early on Saturday morning and took a cab to the temple in Sao Paulo. My dad and I went 9 years ago to a session in the Sao Paulo temple and I was glad to get to go again.
A quick funny story from the temple, Mont doesn't speak Portuguese and requested a translator. He got a little headset thing to wear that simulcast the session in English. At one point he could no longer wear the headset over his head so switched to wearing it DJ style. I thought I was going to lose it a few times as I glanced over at him and saw him spinning it like he was in the club. Perhaps you had to be there but you can imagine it.

We raced back to the hotel to change our clothes so we could go out to lunch. We went to a "feijõada" with a couple of the guys and their wives at a place called Figueiro (the Fig Tree). I'll have to do a separate post for food as that restaurant deserves at least two paragraphs and pictures all by itself. To let you know how much food I ate, I didn't eat again until Sunday at lunch.

Saturday night Mont and I took a walk to scope out the church building where we were planning on going on Sunday. It was a nice change of pace.

Sunday, April 27: Sunday morning we got up and took a walk in our suits to church only to find out that the church was being remodeled. Unfortunately, I didn't bring the address or directions to any other church buildings so we walked all the way back to our hotel in our suits and the sun.

The day involved a lot of laying around the hotel room with only an interruption for lunch at a local bar and a walk in the evening. I forgot how much they love soccer here, yesterday afternoon the streets and bars were full of people excited about the local championship. It was very nice to experience that again.

Monday, April 28: Nothing to say so far, we're working and meeting all day but for those of you that are curious here are my GPS coordinates for the post (S 23° 35.2972’ W 46° 40.5084’).

Today, tomorrow, and Wednesday should be pretty much the same. I am super duper excited about Wednesday night as I fly to Rio and get to spend a few days there seeing old friends.


More to come...

Mouths of Babes

"Heavenly Father, please watch over us, for the space of many days, while our father is away."

--Abigail's prayer offered while Alec is in Brazil for 12 days (I just couldn't get over the "space of many days")