"Home"

We are "home," whatever that means.  An overly eventful trip landed us back in the States, and hard to believe we've been here a week now.  There is no normal for us now, but we are in the business of re-establishing our American selves in our country, town, neighborhood and house. 

Luckily, the readjustment hasn't been as difficult as I expected, thanks in no small part to some great friends who took the first steps in getting things ready for our return, down to a clean and dusted house and food in the fridge.

Since this was technically a "short term" assignment, we left all of our assets, house, car, etc here in the States and arriving back to a house we already own, already unpacked and ready for us to begin life was a wonderful blessing.  We spent the week reacclimating to American culture. 

You would be amazed how much one can spend on a single shopping trip to the grocery store.  We filled a cart so full we had to hand carry the last few items to the check out.  But then again, we are staring from scratch...salt, pepper, sugar, flour, and all that it takes to make a few meals, snacks and so on.  I told the kids I needed to fill the bottom of the cart with necessities, and then they could throw in the cart whatever they wanted (retaining my Veto power) and they were excited.  I was impressed.  They chose rice krispies, corn chex, string cheese, colby-jack cheese, hot dogs, go-gurt yogurt, fruit snacks, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, blueberries, grapefruit, sweet cherries, celery, and juice boxes.  The only thing I really had to consider briefly was laffy taffy candy.  I was actually quite surprised.  I didn't expect there to be so many choices from the produce aisle.  While we all enjoyed the mangos, pineapples and passion fruits in Brazil, we desperately missed berries of all sorts.  I am trying to remember how I used to cook, what we used to eat, and trying to decide if that is something I want to go back to, or carry on with the simpler or more basic cooking I did in Brazil, where pre-made anything was unavailable, and all of the cooking started completely from scratch.  Honestly, the first 3 or 4 days eating here, we all had upset stomachs and heart burn!  I had no idea we had been eating so differently.

D seems to be in heaven.  He is home.  No doubt about it.  A place with peanut butter and toy tractors and his grandmas and the library.    M is trying to be as convinced.  Lots of neat stuff, but it still doesn't feel quite right to her. 

Our dear H still doesn't know what hit her.  She has asked a couple of times about "our red house" as we referred to our home in Horizontina.  I'm still not sure she's clear that this move is permanent.  Although it has its benefits.  The loads of toys we left behind are all brand new to her, who was just 12 months old when we left.  She is so excited to have a parque (park) in our back yard.  Swingsets are pretty much unheard of where we were living, so a timbertown with swings and slide, sand box and playhouse is indeed quite a park to her.  She keeps losing me in the house, which is rather large when I think of it from her perspective.  She struggles with the diet here.  We've done several restaurants and she has not been impressed by the lack of rice and beans.   So far we know she'll eat pancakes and macaroni and cheese.  We've found it's definitley easier to keep her fed from our own kitchen.

Momma and Daddy are often in awe.  The roads are soooo good.  Our house is sooo nice.  The hot water is so easy to get out of the faucet.  We can drink tap water.  Things are cheap.  Stores are open all the time.  On our flight back, I spoke to a man whose daughter had moved from Brazil  to the US 6 months ago, and he told me she was amazed at how easy and comfortable things are in the States.  I guess that's as good of a description of how we feel as I could make.  It is easy and comfortable to live here. 

We are missing some of the conveniences of life in Brazil as I took out our own garbage, vacuumed the house and weeded flower beds, all things we paid someone else to do for the past 20 months.  Lucky for me, the kids think everything from the drive through car wash to vacuuming and weeding are exciting new adventures.  And besides,  I could see a part of DaddyHealy coming alive again today as he worked outside for 10 hours washing siding, weed spraying, cutting trees and reassembling the children's outdoor playthings.

We've had interrupted sleep, lots of crying, more fighting and disobedience than normal, and other obvious signs of stress in some little ones.  But, we've already visited the library, and 30 minutes with a kid on your lap reading books, or pushing them in the swing in the back yard is just so magically reassuring to a little one.

There's a lot more to do, but we're beginning to put down roots again and make our house a home.