Oh, he thinks he is SO funny:)
Okay, so it was a little funny BUT we can't encourage him...
Because if he thinks that someone else thinks he is funny....
He just has to take it one step further! He sees the line and he just has to cross it!!!
That is why we love him!
I have always wanted to have family pictures taken on the beach, and I finally got my wish. Our sweet j-girl, Caroline, did a photo shot for us just before Easter. The girls are wearing their new Easter dresses and even though it was a little windy and cold we had a good time and got some great pictures. 
Another favorite, the girls love being at the beach. They love to run around in the sand, find shells, play in the freezing cold water... they just love it!
I will post a few more over the next few days too. There are more on facebook also but I figured my grandmas problay weren't signed on to facebook and would problay enjoy new pictures of their great- grandbabies! 
Easter Baskets
Chocolate, bubbles and gum
Huge Chocolate Eggs that Caroline got the girls....
HUGE, with a princess prize inside
It took the girls several days to eat all that chocolate.  |
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| Make a Smilebox slideshow |
Last week the girls started a 2 week Spring Break! WhooHoo! Mark and I both had Tuesday off as well so we decided to take a day trip a couple hours North of Lisbon. The city is called Coimbra and is famous for the really old University that is in the city. We did see a little of the University but we really went for Portugal dos Pequenitos (Little ones Portugal). It is a little city for kids... it has monuments (kid sized, of course) that have parts of famous monuments from all of the city. For example, there was a Lisbon monuments and it has small sized replicas of about 7 different monuments in Lisbon. There are also area with information and things from all the places that Portugal had colonies. And the girls favorite part was an area with typical Portuguese houses from all over the country. Portugal is a small sized country as far as land goes but every region is very distinct. The kids could touch, climb on and play in every thing, they loved it!
After we spent several hours playing we left small land and spent some time seeing the city of Coimbra. It is a very old city, with lots of history most of it surrounding the university. We had dinner at a little cafe that sits next to a very old church that holds the tombs of the first 2 kings of Portugal. It was all closed up for renovations so we couldn't go in and see the tombs.
We are now happily ALL enjoying some Spring Break time... relaxing! We went to the beach on Sunday afternoon, it was a little cool because of the wind but we had a fun picnic and the girls played for hours in the sand. We have a couple more day trips planned for later this week and I need to get some buttons on some new Easter dresses before Sunday:)
Wow, I am so behind on blogging! Life has just been speeding by.... But this week we are all on SPRING BREAK! Yeah a much needed break from our normal routines. We plan to relax, a lot! and see a couple towns outside of Lisbon that we haven't visited yet. 
The other big happening that I haven't blogged yet is the BIG field trip that Sahara and Bria went on... their last day of class before Spring Break was a trip to a town called Evora, about an hour away from Lisbon. The school took ALL the kids from age 5 up to 4th grade. They had 3 giant charter buses, the kids all wore matching hats and off they went for the day. The girls had a blast! And the trip had a special meaning as well... at Christmas time and the kids made crafts and sold them in a Christmas store at the school, then they collected clothes, toys, car seats, baby stuff.... this trip was to take all this to an orphanage in Evora. The kids got to see the orphanage that they has worked to help. The kids from the orphanage were in school so they didn't get to see them, Sahara was disappointed, but I think that was so the other kids weren't embarrassed. They saw the town, which we haven't even seen yet, had a picnic and then came home. We didn't get much info about the town from them, bascially we know they played on some rocks... guess we will just have to go see Evora for ourselves!
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.
