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.