Culture Nights: Brazil & Australia

I need to catch up on a couple of Culture Nights we've had since we moved here.  We're still not on a regular schedule for when to do them so we often go months in between.  One of these days we'll get on that.  We always have so much fun with them.

First we did Brazil.  We got to have some company this time--Marsha brought Christine, Hallie, TJ & Matt over to join us.  I discovered a site called Global Table Adventures a while back and that has been a really good resource for recipes.  I made this feijoada, along with a rice recipe that I found in the comments of that post from someone who was Brazilian (I can't find it there now).  I also sauteed some kale in coconut oil and served that as well.  Then we had this passion fruit mousse for dessert.  Unfortunately I couldn't find the right passion fruit concentrate so it was overly sweet.  Oh well, it was a pretty tasty meal.  We presented a little bit on the things we learned (Elizabeth did the Amazon, Natalie did animals, I did music, and Nate and Joe did sports) and then we watched Rio.  It was a fun night.  Sadly, I didn't get a single picture.

Just last Friday we did Australia.  We had these Aussie burgers with chips (fries).  When I went to get the link to that recipe, I noticed that we forgot the pineapple!  Darn...that would have been good.  They were pretty tall burgers, anyway, though.

Our version:

The kids wouldn't put the pickled beets on their burgers but I made them try them.

Elizabeth did put a fried egg on hers.

I also bought some Vegemite online so we sampled some of that on toast:

This sums up what the kids thought of it:

Ha!

After dinner we presented what we'd learned.

Natalie did animals:

Elizabeth talked about the convicts that were sent to Australia:

I helped Nate make a powerpoint about Australian sports:

I talked about geography and climate and Joe talked about the indigenous people.  We wanted to watch The Rescuers Down Under but we ran out of time.  We did watch the music video to Men at Work's "Down Under" though, so that counts for something. :)  

6 Months

It has been almost 6 months since our big move.  I've been wanting to write down some of the things I miss about our last area and things we love about here.  So here goes...

Things I miss about the bay area:
-Our pool.  Sure it was a pain sometimes and made me paranoid often, but it was super nice, too.  I loved being able to swim laps for exercise right in my own backyard.  I loved sitting out there watching the kids swim all afternoon.  I loved the couple of times we went night swimming--once on the 4th of July underneath the fireworks.  Especially now that spring/summer is coming on fast, I think I'll be missing it even more.
-Our friends.  I miss all the good people there.  It was hard not being all that close to family, especially after we had been only 8 minutes away from cousins, but it kind of forced us to make friends quicker.  Also, it was such a transient area that people tended to make friends fast and welcome new people in.  It has been a little bit tougher to make friends here, I think just because people tend to be more settled and already have networks of friends and family.  But, they have definitely been friendly and kind and I think the friendships will come.  Still, I look back and miss the kind gestures when we were brand new to our last area: the immediate friend requests on facebook, those who made sure I had the park day schedules right away, the dinner invitations, our super nice stake president and his wife who were in our ward and kindly invited our family over for FHE complete with letting our kids play with his homemade water rocket thing.  Lots of good people.
-The diversity.  It was cool being in the minority for awhile there.  I think it was good for our kids and for all of us.  I loved meeting people who'd come from all over.
-The food.  So many great restaurants within reach.  Some of our very favorites were dishdash, The Banana Leaf, and Sweet Tomatoes (popular with our kids).  It makes me hungry just thinking about it.

Delicious food from dishdash:

-The beach.  Oh how I wish I could just up and drive to the beach some days.  I miss that so much.

Things I love about here:

-Being close to family again.  Joe and I have never been the types that have a strong desire to live right by family.  We love getting together with family, of course, but it's also nice to have a little bit of space to appreciate the times you're together even more.  Still, the few times we have lived close to family (I define that as 20 min. or less), it has been so nice.  It's nice to be able to get together for dinner regularly, make it to events in the kids' lives, and just let the cousins play together so often.  It is so fun.

-The sky.  It seems so much bigger here.  I'm not sure why exactly.  We have seen so many beautiful sunrises and sunsets since we've been here.  

-Our house.  It is just perfect for us and I love it.  It's taking me forever, like always, to get it decorated but it's starting to come along.  Someday I'll finally get some window coverings up.

-The canyon.  I really love running along the canyon.  I don't know if there could be a better place to run in the mornings.  Just a couple of weeks ago, I finally completed my goal of running rim to rim and it felt great!  There is something about completing a goal like that that really pumps you up.  I've done it again since then and hope to keep being able to do it.  I also want to be able to run all the way up the hill.  I haven't quite mastered that yet.  

-Everything is cheaper and there's no traffic.  The benefits of a smaller town--cheap preschool, cheap kids activities, cheap food, cheap insurance, utilities, and housing.  It makes things seem less stressful.  I never have to sit in traffic, either.  I don't miss that.

Well, I could probably keep going on and on but I'll stop here.  There are positives and negatives about every place.  My goal is to try and focus on having gratitude for all the positives.  

Lately

A few weeks back when it was still cold, we stopped on our way down the canyon to check out the frozen waterfalls.  It was so cool!  We even saw a girl dressed as Elsa having a Frozen photo-shoot.  :)

Natalie won her class spelling bee so she made it to the school-wide one:

She did great!  Man was it nerve-wracking watching her.  I started to forget how to spell things myself.  She got 6th place, and was definitely the youngest left when she got out.  She missed the word "appreciate"--she spelled it "appreiciate". She was so hoping to win.  Maybe next year!  Elizabeth was sad to have gotten second in her class spelling bee after going head-to-head against another girl for 14 rounds and losing on the word "bizarro".  They are both really good spellers.

We had a fun Valentine's Day.

Eli got to do some fun crafts and enjoy a delicious cupcake at playgroup:

After some procrastination and last-minute stress, Elizabeth finished up her science project and ended up getting 3rd place for her grade!  She wrapped bananas in different materials to see which would stay fresh the longest.  She did all of that work herself, although I did end up helping her with her display since it got down to the wire.  I kept trying to convince her to back everything with construction paper, type and print things out instead of hand-writing everything, and to make her title bigger.  She wanted none of that and I finally backed off.  Why does it take me so long to do that sometimes?  

Here she is with her project:

Eli wanted to be in the picture, too:

Nate has become such a wonderful note-writer.  He is often found writing sweet notes to his family members and we all love them.

Here's one where he wanted to write "I love you Eli" in as many different ways as he could.  I helped with the cursive version:

Here's a great family picture he drew in preschool:

I love how Eli is saying "ga-ga".  He really does say that all the time.

I also have to include these awesome signs that have been on the door to the loft for quite awhile.

I love how disco dancing/music is the epitome of weird and funny to my kids. :)

The kids also made this awesome block city one day:

I love when they're creative.

Natalie and Eli dressing up in Dad's and Grandpa Hall's old things:

Natalie on crazy hair day:

Eli, Nate and I having our first picnic outside on a beautiful warm day:

Hooray for spring!

We got to go down to Utah for Archer's blessing.  I only got this one picture of Jon reading to the boys before bed the night before when we stayed at their place:

I thought it was sweet.  

I love this little series I found on my phone that Natalie took of Eli:

 

 And these selfies from Nate:

And to finish it off, the girls had another piano recital tonight:

They did great and we followed it up with some free ice cream cones at Dairy Queen:

(well, not me--I had a blizzard because I'm the mom :)

Kayaking

A few weeks ago we had a warm Saturday and finally got a chance to try out Joe's new kayak.  The kayak I ended up picking is technically just a one-person kayak but it has a high weight capacity so I figured he could ride with the kids.  He took them out one by one for a ride and they all loved it:

Elizabeth:

Natalie:

 Nate:

Eli:

I think it was hard on Joe to paddle with them right on his lap.  So, of course now we're thinking of trying to get more someday.  Now, we wish we had a truck, too, so we didn't have to tie it on to the top of our van every time.  Maybe Joe will get his wish someday and we'll get one.  I took a turn paddling by myself for awhile and Joe went a ways down the river and back.  It really was a lot of fun and we can't wait to do it more.