Gilson Family

Monday, August 20, 2012

15 Months

Johnny is 15 months old and definitely more of a toddler than a baby. He goes a million miles an hour and gets into everything. And he's definitely too smart for his own good. He has figured out the baby gate and how to open the front door. He has to be watched very closely. But he is the cutest little boy!

Weight: 20lbs 6.5 oz

Height: 30.5 inches

20th percentile for both.

He may be small in stature, but he sure is big in smarts and personality.

He says 10-15 words. His favorites are "what's this," "hi," "bye," "head," "shoes," "cheese," "yes," "six," and mimicking animal names like cow, horse, and sheep.

Playing XBOX with Uncle Jordan

Johnny is so much fun! He can play on his own but he definitely prefers playing with someone. He loves when someone builds a tower and he can knock it down. And he especially loves it if you count while you build it.

Grandpa and Johnny. (with Adrian walking in front of the camera)

Johnny LOVES to be outside. He goes to the door at least 3 times a day begging to go outside. And the first time he sees my parents in the morning, he has to go on a walk.

Johnny loves macaroni and cheese, spaghetti, lasagna, cheez-its, grapes, pears, sweet potatoes, chips, and desserts. He's such an amazing boy and we love him so much!

Monday, July 16, 2012

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.