Ready for the Festa

The Festa Junina is a pretty big deal.  I tried to figure out when the actual holiday is, but as far as I can tell it's just a long celebration.  It's technically the celebration of St. John, but as far as I've heard, it's really a big party to make fun of hillbillies.  So....what are we teaching our kids?  I guess nothing worse than Halloween, if you look at the root of it. 

There is a big festival at the school on July 7, and we're invited to a party this weekend where we are encouraged to dress in costume.  I really love (sarcasm) how the school sent home a note 2 days ago saying the kids would have a party at school today, to send the kids in costumes and with traditional food.   Humm....not a lot of resources, not a lot of language.  Luckily, I had a (private) Portuguese lesson yesterday and I changed the lesson plan to be everything Festa Junina.  We worked out a plan for food and costumes I could pull together easily.   I rummaged through our closets for what was close enough.  I spent a total of $4.25 on the hat, some ribbon and fake flowers.  I used a little lipstick and an eye pencil.  Voila! I think it turned out pretty well.  See below the internet example I found and my finished product.  

The Cozy Kitchen

So, this is the kitchen.  It is so hard to get a good picture of a kitchen, I guess because it's so small.  But my standards have changed, and after our short term housing, I consider this a gourmet kitchen where I create culinary masterpieces and someone else cleans it all up.  Well.....it works something like that.
Oddly, kitchens are typically treated like furniture here in Brazil, meaning they do not belong to the house, but the owner.  When one moves, he takes his kitchen (by that I mean not only appliances, but cabinets, even the sink) with him.  Luckily, that was not the case for us.  Strange though it may be, another American expat lived in this house 7 years ago, and they are the ones who selected and installed the kitchen as it is today, and sold it to the homeowner when they left.

I was blessed to have the owner leave her large gas stove/oven, which is uncommon to have here.  It has 6 burners and a full size oven.  Typically people have a cooktop and a small oven about the size of a microwave.  I finally understand my mother-in-law's dedication to her husband when, early in their marriage, she made him cookies, painstakingly baking them 6 at a time in her toaster oven because that was all she had.    Our first house here was that way.  But in this oven, I  have room for 2 pizzas, 24 muffins, or two big cookie sheets.  Hoorah.  And it's finally cool enough that I want to use it!

We had to buy our refrigerator.  Although we bought the largest appliance the space would hold, it is actually quite tiny.  I don't know if you can tell by the picture, but it is very skinny.  It is no taller than your fridge, but it is skinny.  Luckily, here it is customary to go to the store about every day.  That works out, because you're not fitting enough food for a family of 5 for a week in this machine.  I've gotten used to it, though, and it doesn't feel small anymore.  And it does make a nice gallery to display the artwork I am presented with on a daily basis.

We have this nice space in our kitchen with a high counter, 3 bar stools and a pass through.  The kids like to snack here, or decorate sugar cookies, or chat with my while I make dinner.  And it makes the kitchen feel less closed off. 

You can see our water dispenser here.  We are advised not to drink tap water, and we don't though we do cook with it, and brush our teeth with it.  From the amount of people we see buying these bottles, I think almost no one drinks tap water. These are 20 liter bottles, and we probably go through 3 a week.  They cost about US$4, and though we buy them at the grocery store, there are guys who will deliver them right to your house, even carry them in for you.

The Dining Room (AKA The Classroom)

Welcome to our Dining Room!  Join us for a meal.  We have no eat-in kitchen, so this is where we take our meals.  We spend a lot more time here than the average family, because this is also our homeschool classroom.  At least a couple of hours every day we read and discover, listen, learn, practice and share here.

We lived in this house for 2 months before I got around to buying a dining room table.  It was beautiful weather and we were eating out on our covered patio anyway.  Practical, too, when you have a toddler insisting she can handle her own spoon.

But probably a bigger reason it took so long to buy the table is because I could not find a table that was not made of glass, or at least partially glass.  We had a brief experience with a glass table at our short term residence, and it was not a good one.  Picture the fingerprints. I couldn't find any chairs without upholstery either.  I preferred bare wood (see: practicality of eating outside, above).  I finally special ordered this table and conceded on the chairs, ordering the darkest color fabric available.  We laugh because, again, we used our furniture allowance for this table & chairs.  At home we still use the table and chairs I took out of my parents basement when I got my first job.  It's the table I ate on as a child.  Maybe when we go home DaddyHealy will give me a furniture allowance. te-he.

The giant china hutch in the dining room was a piece I didn't want, but have learned to love.  The owner left it in the house because it's too big and heavy to move to the apartment they are living in while we rent this house.  It is a beautiful solid piece of furniture.  But it was her grandmother's armoire.  Antique family heirlooms and small children are not an especially good combination.   

Our contract for this assignment allowed us to ship a very limited amount of household items, and consequently, we have no "china" which, at this point in our lives, we are not using anyway.  DaddyHealy smartly suggested I use the hutch for homeschool supplies.  What an awesome use!  It is full, organized, and convenient.  Books, pencils, art supplies and notebooks. Glue sticks, stickers, scissors and paper.  Magnets, math manipulatives, a scale and lots of chalk.  I bet there are plenty of teachers out there wishing they could have this kind of storage in their classrooms.  A lucky teacher, a lucky woman.

The Living Room

So, welcome to my home!  Here is the living room where I read 25 books a day and play kitchen, play pet shop, watch "My Little Pony" in Portuguese, and "Go Diego Go!" in English, snuggle my kids, snuggle my hubby, and stay up too late reading several nights a week.  This is also where we pile together for our routine Friday night Family Movie Night.  It's also home to our one and only fireplace, and therefore our whole family gathers here on cold days. 

The electronics you see here we brought from home, but the voltage in Brazil is different, so we need a big 10"x10"x10" black box, an inverter, to change the power from 220 volts to 110.  Unfortunately, often electrical here isn't grounded, so when you touch the box, and sometimes the electronics, you get shocked.

The sofa belongs to the house, but we used a company provided furniture allowance to purchase the remainder of the furniture in this room. The recliner is a very recent addition.  DaddyHealy has been asking (begging) for it for months.  I said it'd never fit, he claimed it would.  We still had allowance money to spend.  We went back to the store, looked, talked, I explained to the saleswoman my concern, and she (smartly) suggested they bring it out for us to try for a day.  If it doesn't work, they'll come back and pick it up.  Let me just say, she earned her commission.

This is the view taken from the fireplace.  I don't know if you can tell, but there are no light fixtures.  Every room has just 2 or 3 bare bulbs hanging down.  I remember shortly after we moved here asking DaddyHealy what they have against light fixtures.  Now I don't even notice.  These are the kind of little luxuries I expect to notice when we move home. 

Obviously this looks into our dining room, and to the back right is the door to the kitchen.  On the upper left wall you can see our "split" air conditioner/heater.  Most Brazilians who have these have smaller ones in their bedrooms only.  It's uncommon to heat or cool common space.  Normally they just use it at night.  John Deere owns this unit and had it installed for us.  The units themselves are expensive, but the electric bill is what prevents most people from having them.  They are relatively efficient, but how efficient can a heat source be when there are huge gaps between your door and it's frame?

It's a good space, though.  There are already so many family memories that have been made here.  We do a lot of Go Fish! on the coffee table, which, by the way, has teething marks from baby H.  The bottom of the entertainment center has 2 drawers, one full of toys and the other full of books.  We keep books in 6 different locations in the house, but these are the ones that get read the most.

Wanna' Share a Cup?

I've been meaning to invite you over for a cup of coffee and to show you around the place.  But just like life in the Northern Hemisphere, three big hearts (make that four) manage to take up so many hours in my days. 

But, the maid just left, the big kids are at school, baby H is napping, and my best (American) friend down here is on a flight home for good.  It felt lonely this afternoon, and since the house is clean, I thought I'd love to have you visit.  So, grab a cup and let me give you a tour.

Famous

I recently had H's pictures taken at a studio near here.  It was fun, and definitley a lot different than the Sear's Photo Studio!  For example, they took all her clothes off and put her in a real bubble bath!  When I picked up my pictures they asked if they could use one of  her photos in their newspaper ad.  So the third child is the first to make it in the Brazilian newspaper!

The ad says,  "Who I am..."

"I am 1 and half, the daughter of Sarah and Jason.  I reside in Horizontina and adore to sing, dance and hear stories."

Our little celebrity.  As if we weren't already proud.

Comfort Food

She asked me one day if they have waffles in Brazil.  I told her, no, I don't think so.  Then she asked me when we're moving back to the States.  It made my heart sad to think that waffles were what did her in. 

I did, however, recently encounter a waffle iron here in Horizontina, and paid a price I am unwilling to disclose to make her dreams a reality.  DaddyHealy assured me it was worth every penny.  And can't you just tell?

Winter Days

It may be difficult for you all in the Northern Hemisphere to imagine winter right now, but I can assure you, we have seen our share of cold days already this June.  On a recent national holiday, we hit our lowest temp so far....28 degrees.  I know that may seem trivial to you, but you have insulation.  And central heat.  And double pane windows.  And doors and windows without daylight shining around them.

We had a little boy's bedroom warmed up to a chilly 48 degrees by 3 in the afternoon.  We have a heat exchanger "split," space heater, and fire in the fireplace and finally managed to get the livingroom up to 65 degrees.  We have long underwear.  We have fleece blankets.  We have warm socks and slippers too.  Best of all we have 3 little bodies always willing to share their heat.

Here is what we learned:

Winter days are not good for taking showers, but they are good for eating popcorn and watching Bambi.

 You do everything as close to the fire as you can.

 Just because your "classroom" is in the 50s doesn't mean you don't have to do your math.

We are blessed that the homeowner left us a nice wood pile, and we will most likely use it all.

I am really glad I married a boy scout.  He builds awesome fires and assembles cloth diapers with speed.  How many wives can brag that?

Hypochondriac?

She said her eyebrows hurt.  How could I deny her a Dora band-aid?

The Day of 100 Books

We used to read so many books to D.  In fact, I have often said when he was a 1-year-old, we probably read him 100 books a day.  I miss those days, and I've been planning a day in my head for a long time....a day to repeat that.  We were out late last night and the kids woke cranky and overtired.  DaddyHealy had to leave on a trip this morning, it is raining and cold, and I knew I was going to be holding one, if not 2 kids all day long.  So, I suggested the day of 100 books.  The little Healys ran around like mad, collecting favorite books, ones we haven't read in a while, classics, and some they forgot we had.  We snuggled under fleece blankets and began the journey.   

In case you are contemplating just how many books that is, this is a picture of just the first 37 books.

There are so many things I love about reading to my children...the learning, the discussion, testing their knowledge or understanding, snuggles, together time, stories, rhymes...but as I look at the mound of books piled high on our coffee table at the end of this day I think what I love most of all is the memories tied to each book.  We've talked about when we lived at "the little yellow house" and Grandma Mary mailed us this dolphin book.  We've remembered the book-lady who sends us a new one every birthday and Christmas.  We reminisced about when our friend Baby Paul and his momma taught us to do a dance to one of our favorite Sandra Boynton books.  MommaHealy tells stories like "this was your favorite book when you were a baby," or, "this was momma's favorite book when she was a little girl," or "Grandma Lana gave this book to you when you were just 2 weeks old," or "Your aunt picked this out for your first birthday because you loved cats so much." 

So those of you out there who love and miss us as much as we love and miss you, fear not.  You are part of our lives and our conversation every day, in acts as simple as choosing a bedtime story or snuggling up on the couch for a good book.