Our Family in Huntington Beach

We were all together before Mariah left, so I forced everyone to take a picture! I'm so glad! There are more, but I'm in a hurry, so we will post them another time.
Liz

Happy 2nd Birthday Sienna Rose!!!

Church

We made it to church today. It takes us an hour and a half to get to church. I know, I've said this already like a million times and whatever it's not THAT long. And really spending $100+ reais (about $60 dollars) each time we go is not THAT much. But for some reason I like to be whinny about it, maybe it's because we have to leave the house at 7:00am to get there in time. I don't like leaving the house to go anywhere at 7:00am, heck I don't even like to be awake at 7:00am. Oh and no matter what we're always late. Today Maria had to pee so we had to pull over on the side of the road so she could pee. It was her first experience peeing on the side of the road and it took forever.

Then there's the whole other issue that church is just hard, even if you live next door to a chapel there's no way around the fact that Sacrament meeting with little kids is the opposite of spiritual.

Our ward has no nursery and our primary has a total of 8 kids and for some reason it feels like there are 100 kids. They're not the most behaved. So I stay with Enzo and Maria because they're kind of freaked out by the other kids. There's never toilet paper in the bathroom. The children's hymn books are falling apart, literally falling apart. It seems like our chapel has been forgotten and left to rot. It's in a really sad state. Maybe we should spend an extra $60 and go there on a Saturday and clean it up. I should definitely at least bring some toilet paper on Sunday.

But I did get to go to Sunday School today, Iris stayed with the kids in Primary, and the sister who taught the class did a really good job. And when we we walked in Maria clapped her hands and said "friends" and knew exactly where primary was.

So I decided I need to be better attitude. Seriously, what the heck?! If I can't be positive about the most important thing in my life then it's going to be hard to be positive about anything else.

The primary president/teacher/music person tries really hard. I appreciate her effort. Today I told her I could help. I was reluctant to offer any help because, well no good reason other than doing nothing is so much easier.  But Christian already reserved the car for every other Sunday until the end of the year so I told her we were coming to church every other Sunday and if she wanted me to I could teach a lesson or something like that. So after church she came to me and asked is I could teach the kids the songs for the primary program. I'm just as surprised as you are that we're having a primary program, but I guess we are. It's in December. She wants me to teach the kids the songs. She's a convert, mostly everyone in our ward is, and she only knows about 3 songs that are in the Children's hymn book, the same 3 songs that are in the church hymn book, so it's hard for her to teach them the songs.

So basically this whole long post is me asking you for help because I have no idea how to even approach this. Have you ever heard me sing? It's bad. How do I teach these kids the songs they need to learn for the primary program?

My baby is turning into a little girl

I don't have any pictures of cute kids in costumes but I do have pictures of a cute girl who hates wearing clothes and loves wearing earrings. 

The hippies who sell jewelry love her and love making her pretty things.

we have a bike, and some other little updates

Hi family (and friends),
just thought I'd give you a little update on our life here in Itacare. We bought a bike and we love it. All of the streets are cobble stone so it's not super comfy but oh well, at least now Enzo gets to school much faster. I love that we're walking distance to everything and love it even more now that we're a quick bike ride away to everything. Except for church. Arghhh, I hate that church is so far away. All I can say is that I've never appreciated the priesthood as much as I do now. Christian does a good job at blessing the sacrament and passing it out to us on Sundays. He also does a good job at making sure we're all spiritual enough. We wear our Sunday best, though lately we haven't been wearing any shoes to our Sunday home church.

I kind of look pregnant in the picture above though I can assure you I am not. As far as the adoption thing is concerned we're still just trying to learn more about the whole process. basically we're just asking a bunch of questions.

Speaking of babies, Baby Maria is a big girl now. She's saying all sorts of things, it's pretty funny. She's not feeling great these days because she's been sick with a stomach bug, the same one I had last week where I thought I was going to die.

Enzo loves school and he also loves not leaving the house. Last Saturday we went on a hike and he was complaining the whole time because all he wants to do is stay home. When he's home he wants to work on his workbooks, read books, or do math flash cards. I'm not really sure what to make of it. He misses his friend Junie a lot. He also misses Gio and Zeke. He always talks about Gio and Zeke. last week I made snickerdoodles and he really wanted me to save some for them. I was finally able to convince him that it was going to be impossible to save them snickerdoodles. Then I told him the story of how Kaity made the first snickerdoodles that I had ever had and besides Kaity is the queen of sickerdoodles, I'm sure Gio and Zeke get wonderful snickerdoodles from their mom. Then Enzo was sad and wanted wonderful snickerdoodles from Kaity.

In other news Enzo has another loose tooth which is always exciting.

Maria also really wants a loose tooth.

My mom is coming to visit us for a month, so is my uncle, and so is a bunch of other people. Yay! I haven't spent Christmas in Brazil since I met Christian, who showed me that Christmas in Hawaii is way better. We don't have any real traditions and my family doesn't do gifts. I'm not really sure how Christmassy our Christmas will look like but regardless I'm still excited to have my mom visit us for a month.

That's it for now.
Beijos
Da

Fall Update

I know you guys don't need the play by play, but here we are at week 22 and a half. Austin snapped a few pictures of us today in the beautiful Fall light in our backyard. I have been feeling great for the most part. Yesterday we had a busy day of walking around since we went to the REI garage sale in the morning and then took Bo to the Hogle Zoo. I don't know if it was all the walking or what, but I was having Braxton-Hicks contractions all day. They weren't too painful, but quite uncomfortable and did not get me excited for real labor. Luckily, we still have a while to go and lots to do before then.

Getting nice and round. I think it's part-baby and part-Fall treats. A day doesn't go by when I am not tempted to make some kind of treat. Today we had leftover pumpkin cake that we made yesterday when we should have been making dinner, but decided to make a treat instead. I know it's at least part-baby since he kicks like crazy. I have actually seen my belly move from the force of his kicking (luckily, he's not big enough to start kicking my ribs).

Hey guys, I have another survey for you to take, its only 5 simple questions, if you have a minute to fill it out I would really appreciate it. Its about baby cribs again for my class.

https://qtrial.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_43gE2CQhCuV0Zla

Thanks

Austin

DC trip

Remember when I went to DC to shoot that recipe for Lactaid? Here is a link to the video.
I'll post about it tomorrow on my blog with some pics.

Today is Children's Day in Brazil. Good times. Wish you were all here.

One month of Bahia

Hi family,
Sienna inspired me to post. Thanks Sienna. Those of you who are on my Brasil email list already got this update today. Sorry. Those of you who are not on my list and want to be send me an email at damarispalmer at gmail dot com and I'll add you.
xoxo

Hi friends, I thought I'd give a little update on our first month of Bahia.

Our first visitors just left and we wish they had stayed longer. Josh and Heidi (Christian's cousin and her husband) came to visit us and they were so much fun. They love food, which is always fun. They wanted to eat and try everything, so we pretty much ate and hung out at the beach a lot, my ideal way to spend time. They also brought us stuff that I had ordered online, a bigger mosquito net, some chapter books for Enzo, and washable paint for Maria. Thanks Heidi and Josh! It's amazing the stuff you miss.

Our house is feeling more and more like our home. Here are some pictures. We're also feeling more like we have a routine so it's easier to enjoy where we're at.

Enzo is going to Kindergarten here. He's getting the tail end of Kindergarten because the school year ends  in the beginning of December. We're trying to get him caught up with his class and he's a good sport about it. It's fun seeing him learn how to read in Portuguese and figuring out where to put accents on words. In February he starts first grade and in first grade they only write in cursive. We'll have a lot to practice.

Maria is pretty much potty trained. During the day she only uses underwear but at night and during naps she still wears diapers. Diapers here are awful and super expensive, she was getting horrible rashes. I think we're all happy that for the most part she's diaper free.

This past week Christian and I went to an orphanage in Ilheus, the big town where stuff like orphanages exist. We got some more information on adoption and it's pretty complicated to adopt through the orphanages specially for the age that we want (under two). We don't care about gender or race but we do want a child that's younger than our two children. It doesn't have to be a newborn, but it does have to be younger than Maria. Christian talked to a local lawyer and she said the most common form of adoption is when someone gives you their kid. I know a lot of people who have adopted (my aunt, bishop, god-mother, and other close friends) and it's always because someone asked them to take their child. I'm kind of weirded out by this for various reasons, mostly because what forces people to do that in those situations are economic reasons which I find extremely problematic. Anyway I won't go into it too much but just wanted to share that we're really hoping we'll be able to adopt while we're here if it's the best thing we can do for a child and for our family. If it happens it needs to happen before March. We can't leave the country for 6 months after we adopt. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers that if it's the right thing to do then it will happen.

Love, Da

Happy October Family and Friends!

Hey Family and Friends!

Hopefully, people are still reading this blog even if the posts are rather sporadic. It's beginning to look a lot like October around here. We had snow yesterday for a minute, but mostly lots of rain. It's a fun change. It's also been really cold. We were too stubborn to turn on our furnace on October 6, so we've just been bundling up with jackets and blankets in the house. Bo got to wear his warm jammies that he has been asking to wear ever since I unpacked our winter clothes. I kept telling him they were "too hot" so now he takes them out of his drawer and asks to wear "too hot."

Bo helped us pick out a few pumpkins to decorate our porch. It was really funny cause we pulled up to the grocery store and there were a ton of pumpkins in a big pile outside the store and he goes, "Pumpkins! So cute!" He's very good at picking up what we say and copying. This morning he told me to "wait a minute" and the other night when I was trying to get him to take a bath, he kept saying, in a very sweet voice, "No thanks mommy."

I planted these cosmos forever ago and one is finally blooming right in time for the freezing temperatures.

In other news, I am 20 weeks pregnant and on Monday, we found out that we are having a BOY! We are super excited for Bo to have a little brother to play with.

We miss you all and hope all is well in your neck of the woods. Post when you get a chance, so we can feel not so far away.

Love,

Sienna and Family