Do I really have a High Schooler?!?

Oh my goodness...Travis is in High School, WOW!! I never thought the day would come! But that is not what I want to share, with being in High Shool he is starting to go to seminary. Well I think it is offical, he is a teenager, what happend to that little boy that would say, "okay mommy." Now I don't want to give the wrong impression that he is totally rebelling, he's not..he is just not liking seminary. I do have to say that he has a point, it is in Portuguesse, so needless to say he is not a happy camper. It takes us 40 minutes to get there..so he tried to use the "gas cost a lot of money" excuse...it's 3 nights a week for 1 hour and 20 minutes...so he tried to use the "I have a lot of home work" excuse...and finally the "there are not a lot of girls" excuse, my favorite, I think he was joking, he knows that he has no choice so he was really throwing them out there. Nice try Travis, have fun in seminary, I will be all gased up, get you an english seminary manual, and send you with a lot of pictures of girls on Tuesday night :)

Something You Don't See Everyday

Now this is something you don't see everyday. These signs are all over the place when you travel through the mountain areas here. Basically it says...Attention, watch out for wild animals...that's not an exact translation, but that's what they are saying. I have never seen a monkey or anything else for that matter in the middle of the road, people sure, but never wild animals.

Petropolis

Marcus and I took my mom to the Summer Home of King Don Pedro. It is a great place to visit and I could see why the King and Queen liked it, it is much cooler in the mountains. We were not allowed to take pictures of the inside but they had a lot of neat things, from what we were told this palace was used as a school when the King and Queen were asked to leave Brazil, so not everything inside was original, but rather they were collections of things the family still had and donated, in any case, it all still was very interesting. I think the best part was the Crown, it was on display along with Don Pedro Cape and Staff, the Crown is 4 pounds of diamonds and pearls! Every girls should have 4 pounds of diamonds and pearls in her jewelry box!!

this is the side view and front garden of the Palace

Marcus found a picture of the Crown of Don Pedro on line. He used the jewels from the crown in the upper left corner, which I believe belonged to his father. Don Pedro was 15 when he became King.

Fun in Rio

We went to the Christ Statue, thought I would share a few picture with you, we were lucky, the sky was crystal clear. We had so much fun! I think they told us there was something like 360 steps up to the statue and we all (even Grandma) climbed them it was great!

The kids with Grandma

Travis and Brian being silly!

Now we were going to use this in our Christmas letter, I think that some photo shop is in need before we can, my poor mom did the best she could, photography is not her thing, Holly we could have really used you!! :)

Grandma's are Great

My mom came to visit us and just left today, after spending about 4 weeks here. I meant to add this while she was here, but we had so much fun going to the beach and visiting all the great places that Brazil has to offer that I just simply ran out of time. Part of living here means we do not get a few of the things we are used to getting at the store in America, so I took advantage of my mom just a little bit and begged her to bring a few thing along. I was mostly interested in the hair spray. One can here is about $54.00 American dollars. Marcus was not happy spending that much money, and would say, "I must really love you, to be spending that much on that stuff!" and of course I would not want to be out done and I would say, "I must really love you,to follow you half way around the world where you have to spend that much money on that stuff!" Anyway my mom was a real life saver and we both were very happy she brought me 5 cans. Thank goodness she was allowed 70 pounds in her suitcases. As you can see she was able to bring us a lot of things that we so desperately needed. THANK YOU SO MUCH MOM, YOU ARE AWESOME!!! I hope you had as much fun with us as we had with you!!!