BRAZIL! Food!!

Oh how we love Brazilian food. We ate so much food and it was all SO delicious! We ate at 3 churrascos and many other amazing places.

Top left to right: sugar cane juice, peanut candies, grape juice, Italian style  rodizio
Bottom left to right: coxinhas, Brazillian outback, snacks for the movie theater

Sugar cane juice: super sweet. The first sip is good and then it's just way to sweet. But Marcus tells me it's very refreshing on a super hot day.

Peanut candies: the top candy tastes just like the inside of a Reese

Juice: Brazil has lots of awesome juices. So good.

Velho Madalosso: This was an awesome restaurant. Marcus and I took a bus to the Italian district and found this place. It was a rodizio style so they brought around tons of different meats and pastas. It was so delicious. Probably my second favorite restaurant we went to.

Coxinha: There are lots of different types of coxinhas but the one pictured is a chicken with cheese. A bakery down the street from our hotel in Curitiba made them and they are the best Marcus or I have ever had. They were delicious and I have been craving one since we got home.

Snacks: Ovaltine chocolate bar- not very ovaltiny. Passatempo cookies- delicious. They taste similar to E.L. Fudge cookies. The other snacks are little cracker puff things. One is a cheese flavor, the other is sausage. Cheese was alright. Sausage was disgusting.

Marcus and I celebrated our 3 year anniversary while in Brazil by going to this place:

Fogo De Chao is a high end, expensive churrasco in Sao Paulo. We got dressed up and took a taxi to the restaurant. It was so fun to go here and the food was AMAZING! It was the perfect restaurant to celebrate our anniversary.

And that wraps up our trip to Brazil. It was a wonderful experience and so fun to spend 10 days- just Marcus and me.

BRAZIL! American style

It was a bit of a running joke between Marcus and I to see what American things we could do while in Brazil. In pictures:

Outback in Brazil! (Cut prices in half to get the American dollar price)

We went to see Men in Black 3 at a Cinemark movie theater in a Brazil mall.
The movie was in English with Portuguese subtitles so it was really nice for me!

BRAZIL! Site seeing.

Once I got to Brazil and met up with Marcus, we had a wonderful time. We slept in everyday (I forgot what it was like to sleep past 7am!) and relaxed. It was wonderful. One of Marcus' mission companions lives in Curitiba and he and his wife were so wonderful to us. They fed us tons of great food and showed us a lot of beautiful places. It was so wonderful to have them help us experience Curitiba.

The day I got in to Curitiba, The Ribas' took us to the Botanical Gardens. It was beautiful and a great way for me to relax after the previous 45 hours.

Main Picture: A beautiful old church in Curitibia.

Top Right: Marcus and I at the Curitiba temple.

Bottom Right: A park in Curitiba. Curitiba is known for it's parks, and for good reason. They have lots of gorgeous parks.

We also visited an opera house and a couple other parks. Plus, our hotel was right downtown which was a lot of fun to see all the shops.

At the end of our trip, we spent a day and a half in Sao Paulo. It's known as a concrete jungle for a good reason.

View from our hotel room

Sao Paulo is an extremely crowded and busy city but it was fun to see where Marcus lived for 5 weeks.

BRAZIL! Getting there...

As many of you know, Marcus had a 5 week externship (unpaid for school credit internship) in Sao Paulo Brazil. After his 5 weeks, I flew down to join him for 10 days of traveling. My trip down was miserable. My flight down to Sao Paulo was delayed 15 hours. So I was stuck overnight in Dulles without a way to get a hold of Marcus to tell him my flight was delayed. We turned on international calling and finally got a hold of Marcus when he was on his way to "pick me up" in Sao Paulo. My super delayed flight caused me to miss Marcus and I's connecting flight to Curitiba. It would have cost over $400 to change Marcus' flight to Curitiba and then we would also have lost our hotel room. So we decided to have Marcus take our original flight to Curitiba and get us checked into the hotel. Then I arrived in Sao Paulo 12 hours after Marcus left Sao Paulo for Curitiba. I stayed a night in Sao Paulo (by myself- awesome) and got back to the airport really early to try and get on a flight to Curitiba. Six hours of sitting at the airport and a lot of crying later, I got on a flight to Curitiba and FINALLY met up with Marcus. My 12 hour trip to Brazil turned into 45 hours. It was the longest 45 hours of my life.

It's amazing

how much of a difference six months make for a little boy and a puppy.

Dads

I would like to say thank you-

To my grandpa- for raising an amazing son that became my dad

To my father-in-law- for raising the man that makes me the luckiest and happiest girl ever.

To my dad- who has always been so wonderful and loving and taught me how to find a guy who loves and respects me

To my wonderful husband- for loving me so fully and helping me to become the best mom I can be for our children.

 I love you all and am so grateful for everything you have done. Happy Father's Day!

It's Good to be 1

I have loved every stage of Johnny's life, but this is definitely my favorite. He has so much personality and is so much fun! He has so many facial expressions and just keeps us laughing all day long. Johnny also loves to talk. He will hold conversations with you, complete with hand gestures. It's adorable. 

I also call this Johnny's magical age. Johnny was a really bad napper for the second half of his first year of life. It caused a lot of stress and frustration on my part. He would normally only take little cat naps throughout the day and it was rough. Then he turned 1. I weened him off nursing and it was like we flipped a switch. Now, he takes a bottle and then puts himself to sleep for naps and at night. It's absolutely amazing and we're both happier because of it!

Johnny LOVES the water. We will go swimming for several hours (where he tries to swim by himself the whole time and hates that he has to be held) and then he still gets super excited to get in the bathtub as soon as we get home. I plan on him being in the Olympics one day. 

He's one cool dude!

Our best attempt at a cousin picture.

I love this picture. It shows each of their personalities so well.

Johnny is becoming such a little toddler. He is officially a walker. He's a little short for his age so sometimes it looks kind of funny that someone so short can walk around. But it's nice that he's more mobile so that he can keep up with his cousins better. He certainly enjoys it!

Mini Marcus

He is such a sweetheart. While he no longer lets me rock him to sleep, he is super cuddly when he first wakes up or when he's getting tired and I LOVE it. He also gives the best open mouthed, slobbery kisses. And he is just so sweet and happy. I can't remember what life was like before this little guy and I don't want to.

Taking a water break while watching Baby Einsteins