Shoeless Joe? No. Shirtless Sam

So for some reason, Sam has taken a liking to going shirtless. He doesn't seem to know why he likes it, but the nanosecond he gets home from school, off comes the shirt. He just likes it. He spent all last Sunday (the one where we didn't go to Stake Conference) at home with no shirt on. What a goof! Claire asks if she can go either shirtless or pantless and the answer is always no, but there is Sam running around showing off. If you don't know who Shoeless Joe is, look up the 1919 World Series.

Sam made Candace and I chuckle early in the week. During Family Home Evening on Monday night, Candace prepared a lesson about consequences. She explained that there are consequences for every choice we make: some good, some bad. As an object lesson, she hid four things to taste under some cups and had the kids choose one. Once chosen, they had to close their eyes and open their mouths to see if they made a good choice or a bad choice. Sam went first. He closed his eyes (with some help from me) and opened his mouth: Salt. "Sam, was that a good choice?" Through a contorted face, he said, "Bad choice." Claire then got a bite of an apple: Good choice.

Then it was Sam's turn again. He closed his eyes and opened his mouth: Lemon juice. "Sam, was that a good choice or a bad choice?" As if gasping for air, he whispered through a sour face, "Bad choice." The tone and the face was one of those times as a parent that you don't want to laugh at your child, but I think we did. "Bad choice." I don't even remember what Claire had to finish off the lesson, but I know she made a good choice.

DON'T EAT ME, POLLY!

As much as you might think that there is always going to be something new and exciting happening week after week to a family living overseas, the reality is that we are just living life. When I was here on my mission, just like many missionaries, I always had an affinity for the country in which I served. You are living next to the people and are fully involved in the community. What you don't see is what it takes to get to maintain the cupboards stocked, how to pay the phone bill, how to do beat traffic, among hundreds of other every day activities that are sometimes mindless.

When we were given the opportunity to come back here, we jumped at the chance since we were both familiar with South American culture (me having served here in Buenos Aires, and Candace having served in Santiago, Chile). There are definitely some really neat things about living overseas, and there are a bunch of things that regularly have us wishing for more frequent visits to the United States. We are, however, very happy where we are.

Now I'm going to move on to a confession... Let's talk about Stake Conference. Consider that while living in the U.S., we always went to Stake Conference, found a nice quiet overflow room, and enjoyed the meetings. Where we are now, the Stake Center is an hour away (not due to mileage, but the zigzag nature across the suburbs). There is parking for approximately 50 vehicles (this is the Stake Center, mind you), there are no overflow broadcast rooms, and it's all in Spanish. Taking all of that into account with three small children, I must say that I was less than enthusiastic and took the opportunity to brush up on my April 2011 General Conference at home. As a family, we have committed to go next time and just deal with it. I think that we faced what many families with young children face... and that is -- What would we get out of it? The answer this week caused us to fail in our responsibilities. As Caroline gets older, we'll get better.

We did get a chance to visit a nicer suburban bio-park as they call it, which is really just a nice, private zoo called Temaiken. It's about 40 mins northwest of us and we have annual memberships. The first time Candace went a year ago, she said that it was the first time she felt like she could have been in the United States.... We went with another family and had a blast.

PARROT 1: I hope that kid in the orange jacket points a finger at me.

PARROT 2: Me too, I'm hungry.

Temaiken September 2011

And since I have been lazy on adding pictures to the blog, the below are all within the last couple of weeks.

America the Beautiful

One of the interesting things about living overseas is that you find that you miss out on a lot of current events, pop culture, and media coverage of things you might have followed very closely in America. While we keep up on CNN.com and have access to DirecTV Puerto Rico, people here aren't talking about the GOP debates, the current candidates, what Paris Hilton was wearing last night, or any number of things that might interest us. Also, when syncing my iPod to iTunes, sometimes I'll look at the top songs and won't recognize any of them. Why? The best (in my opinion) radio station here plays a mix of 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's and some 2000 rock. So the playlist might look something like this: New Kids on the Block, Ozzy Osbourne, Aerosmith, The Rolling Stones, Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Bangles, and on and on. They do not, however, play the latest Maroon 5 or Cold Play songs.

I would like to follow the campaign news a little more closely, it just takes a little more effort. On a positive note, BYU's independent status and new contract with ESPN allows me to follow the football team better from afar. Not that it did me much good last night after we gave the game to Texas after not putting the game away. As much as I liked Doman as a player, he's got to get in the end zone and learn to play to win, instead of playing not to lose.

This week we finally partook of an interesting phenomenon in our neighborhood that I will call the 'car wash on a bicycle.' So I always see this guy cruising around our neighborhood and washing my neighbor's cars while they're parked on the street. He spends a ton of time on each car (inside and out). So I talked to him and he's going to start washing our car once a month. He just needs a spout and a plug and he's set. The spout because he brings his own bucket, hose, pressure washer; and the plug because he brings his own vacuum. He showed up about 8:30 Saturday morning and spent just over an hour and a half on our car, washing/vacuuming every nook and cranny. Cost for us was about $15 and worth every penny. He'll be coming back in a few weeks to do it again. The guy was telling me that he used to work for a veterinarian washing the animals. When he quit working for the vet, he had a client who lived by us who wanted him to keep washing her dog. He did, and word spread so he has enough clients to keep busy all week washing animals. Then he began washing the original client's car on the weekends... then word spread again... and now you have to plan a week in advance so he can fit you in. We know folks in other neighborhoods who also have their "guy"... Awesome.

The kids are back into their routine and are doing great. We were getting a laugh this week as every morning Caroline will walk around the house yelling 'Paula', our maid's name. When she wakes up, she starts with the general moaning and complaining... then it's the occasional 'mama'... then a stronger 'MAMA'... then she cries and will scream 'MAMA!'... If nothing still, she'll yell 'PAULA! PAULA!'. It's hilarious. On Saturdays, she'll walk around the bottom floor of the house yelling 'PAULA!'. She wander through the kitchen, in the storage room, in the laundry room looking for her. She'll peek out the curtains wondering when she is coming. Caroline is such a sweetie.

I know it's been a while since I've posted pictures. We're in the middle of some organizing and cataloging of our extensive digital photo holdings, which has made it less of a priority to regularly download the pictures we've taken. But rest assured, our kids are still super cute and our life is exciting.

What a Wonderful Life/Wife

Life is great. So here we are living in another country enjoying ourselves. A few weeks ago, our refrigerator started leaking. A few days ago, our microwave just stopped working. On Friday, all of the sudden, there was no water. This is not the first time we have had the water problem. The city just turns the water off without advising the residents. This has also happened with our power. It would be nice to know. After several phone calls, we find out that the water should be turned back on later in the day. That was AFTER I rode my bike home from work. That was BEFORE dinner. Ahhhhh... the joys of living overseas.

What we did find this week, however, was an excellent restaurant not 5 minutes from our house. Apparently a city favorite (U2's Bono has been spotted there). So we make reservations for the day after my birthday (on 1 SEPT if you missed it) for 8pm. Like every other 8pm dinner date, we're the first to arrive at the restaurant. With all of the attention on us, we eat and are done at about 9:20. Not wanting to hose our babysitter out of at least 2 hours work, we stay and chat until 10:00pm when we feel like we can go home.

So there we were at the restaurant... 5 minutes from home... and stalling. Unfortunately there are no good movies out right now and we didn't have any other activity on the list. Dinner was not rushed. Dinner was delicious, and then we just hung out. It was really fun. It was a surprise reservation that Candace made, which is big news since she does not particularly like to talking to people in Spanish on the phone. I have a great wife.