Sete Rios

Last Sunday the kids sang for us during worship. Sahara, Bria and Tirza were so excited about it. As you can see in the picture below... Tirza, once again, suffered from performance anxiety but I promise she RAN up there at the beginning. I just about had to drag Bria out of her seat but once she got started she had fun.

The other kids singing are Deborah, Ana and Samuel. They are sweet kids and our girls love to be able to go and play with them.

This Sunday, we got to go have lunch in one of our friend's home. She is the kid's teacher so the girls were really excited to see her house. They prepared a very typical Portuguese family meal for us. It was great! Get this- she had tuna fish as a starter, like with mayonnaise... with bread and these little toastas that are very common here. You can't buy tuna fish in a can like in the States so I was surprised when she served it like that. They also had bacalhau, which is a very famous type of fish here, it is actually dried salted cod. The way she prepared it was very good, it was called Bacalhau Espirito, funny name for fish. But it was prepared in a casserole with lots of other stuff which made it very good. The dessert was a family recipe with pudding, cream and crackers- very yummy!

It was a great afternoon/evening and Mark and I came home with headaches after 5 straight hours of Portuguese. It was great practice, we appreciate it so much when people are willing to take time to talk to us and explain culture and life here. I have learned not to take for granted communication, it is such hard work here and even on our best day we struggle to communicate anything more than basic information. We are so thankful that God has given us people, like this couple, to help us and encourage us.

Dia do Pai

Yesterday was Dia do Pai (Father's Day) here in Portugal. The girls had a blast making Mark gifts at school. Bria's teacher was so excited to show Mark that Bria had written a note to him, by herself in Portuguese. We did a little shopping, went out for ice cream and then grabbed dinner on the way home and had a picnic in the living room while we watched a movie.

The girls made it very clear to Mark that he had to chose 1 Father's Day to celebrate:)

Check out Mark's blog for a cute pic of him and the girls...

This is the video Tirza made at school with her teacher for Mark. We think it is so funny that she has such performance anxiety. The idea sounds great to her but then when the moment hits so does stage fright. When we showed Tirza the video she was trying to help herself talk, so sweet!

Horse Show

Our friends invited us to go to a horse show with them Sunday afternoon. It was a beautiful day, sunny and warm and the girls LOVED the horses.

Sahara was ready to jump on one and go for a ride...maybe next time... this was a show to watch other people.
We walked around the stables looking at all the horses. This one looked friendly so Tirza got to touch it.

We watched several beautiful horses preform. The big girls enjoyed it but Tirza wasn't very impressed. She wanted to see the horses jumping.

This horse was gorgeous and could do all the advanced moves, it was very fun to watch.

After watching a few horses we went to get some drinks and they have a cafe that overlooks an inside arena. This day they were having lessons for young girls and they were learning how to jump! The girls LOVED that, they watched for a long time.

We ended the evening by taking a little walk on the beach on the way home. It was still warm even though the sun was going down and the girls couldn't resist splashing in the freezing cold water.

A day of horses and the beach... not bad if you ask me.

Obidos Chocolate Festival

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New Haircuts and Computers

Last week I decided that it was time to get Tirza's hair trimmed. She was very excited about it, her first haircut! (except for the self style she gave herself a few months ago, but we aren't counting that.) She was really excited when we got to the salon but that quickly faded into disappointment... she didn't move but her face said that she didn't think the event was all she had imagined.:) Oh well, she sat still and the ladies in the salon thought that she was hilarious.

Sahara had been trying to grow her bangs out and I had been trying to let her... Thankfully she got tired of having hair in her eyes and asked to get it cut. We promptly headed to the salon when she got home from school! Ahhhh, she looks SO much better now! And the lady gave her a fancy style to her bangs instead of cutting them straight across... such a big girl!

And, new computers for Sahara and Bria. Yes, you read that right my 8 and 6 year old have their own laptops! Crazy I know... the government of Portugal has a new program to give all school kids these special Magalhães computers. They are kid friendly but fully loaded with every program you can imagine. Once all the kids have them they will use them in classes as a part of the normal curriculum. Would you believe they have EVERYTHING that my computer has!?!

Tirza was very disappointed to not get one- VERY! So I think I will have to find her a little Barbie computer so she can play along when her sisters play.

Coming soon.... our day at the Chocolate Festival! Yummmy!

Carnaval- Torres Vedres

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We wanted to see a real Portuguese celebration of Carnaval.... so on Tuesday, which is the final day of the festivals we headed out of Lisbon to Torres Vedres to see a parade. We chose Torres Vedres because it was suppose to be the "most" portuguese. Well let's just say our pictures were carefully taken and then carefully selected... we were a little shocked at the festivities! It wasn't what I would call family friendly, although there were many families there. We were expecting a few scantily dressed women but we were not expecting the male body parts that people were carrying around and displaying- even on a HUGE float in the parade. Hmmm! So we will count that as a BIG cultural experience and we know next year to use those days off to travel somewhere that doesn't really celebrate Carvaval. We will enjoy the school parties and throw our confetti there. One of my language teachers, Monica, gave the girls a huge bag of confetti for Carnaval. It was by far our favorite part!!!

Last Monday

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Last Monday we took some new friends to visit Sintra. It was a gorgeous day! Sunny, warm... it was a holiday from school- wonderful! We had the day off as part of the Carnaval holiday so the girls were all dresses up to celebrate. From Friday to Tuesday we saw kids dressed up everywhere we went- the girls loved it and were dresses up just about every time we left the house.

We took them to Sintra and then visited a Palace that is in the middle of the city. The huge kitchen stacks make it very distinctive so it was cool to see them from the inside as well. After the palace we headed to lunch. We went to a little pastry shop that is famous for some of its distinct treats. We made ourselves eat a sandwich before we all sampled the goods:)

After lunch the girls really wanted to ride the train that goes through the town. We thought it would be fun so we hopped on... it wasn't really the exciting, historical ride we were thinking it would be but the girls loved being on the train anyways...

The day was so beautiful that we decided to try to go to Cabo da Roca, it is the Western most part of continental Europe- and it is amazingly beautiful. We had driven up there one other time but it was so windy and started raining when we got there so we didn't even get out of the car. But this was was perfect and there wasn't even a breeze. We were able to enjoy the scenery, walk around and even enjoyed some ice cream.

On the way home we past a beach that normally is so windy you can even get out of the car... today calm. So we couldn't pass up the chance and out we jumped to walk on the sand. You can problay guess what happens next... three little girls, all dressed up like princesses and butterflies- the beach, the water= 3 little wet dressed up girls!:)

And with Bria's face first fall into a wave... we headed home. :)