Happy Birthday Nana!

We hope your day is special. We love you sooooooo much!

Love,

James and Lilah

Back in Brazil

We are happy to be back home in lovely Brazil. James and Lilah did extremely well on both flights and Rick and I were able to get some rest too. We had a welcoming party waiting for us back at our apartment at 11:30pm! Bem-vindo (welcome home) signs were made and placed on our door and our dear friend Rosi made some caldinho for us. This is a type of soup made with beef and yucca which is like a potato. It sounds horrible but it is really tasty, believe me! We were praising the Lord for our safe arrival and for the love and support shown by our Brazilian family!

Lilah had fun "helping" her big brother put together his puzzle.

Lilah met her neighbor and new playmate Vinicius for the first time. He is my best friend Rosi's new baby. Lilah then managed to steal his sock right off his foot and started to eat it!

Double click on this photo to enlarge it and see this mean storm roll in. I took this photo from our kitchen window. We had a few strong storms this week and this one was the worst. We are at the end of summer and it is still quite hot and sticky. We are doing our best to adjust but it's difficult when there is no AC! I mentioned the heat to a lady at church and she suggested that we take a walk through the downtown shopping mall to cool off! (It's air-conditioned.) Funny, huh?

Lilah is back to bathing in a bucket! Just kidding! This is a baby bath but since there are hardly any bath tubs in homes here, this works just fine for James too!

James is old enough to take a shower but he enjoys splashing with his sister.

We had a really rough time this week trying to get the children back on schedule. Lilah was eating dinner at midnight and going to bed at 2:30am the first night back in Brazil! After a whole week of letting them skip naps so they would be exhausted enough to fall asleep a little earlier we are now going to bed between 9-10pm. Lilah loves to sit and play in her room. I recently got all of James' baby toys out of storage and Lilah is having a hay day!

I still have several photos to post from the time we were in the states. My sister-in-law reminded me that I hadn't posted any photos of Christmas. Whoops! Look for them soon!