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

My Birthday Boy

My little baby boy turned 1 today! It's one of those situations where I can't believe he's already one but at the same time, I feel like he's always been a part of our lives. We are so lucky and blessed to have such a happy and healthy baby. Here's Johnny at 1 year old:

• He is so funny. He knows what he can do to get people to laugh and we fall for it every time.
• He is such a flirt. We dropped Marcus off at the airport tonight and while we were waiting in line to exchange money, he was flirting away with the ladies in front of us. He chats to people, bats his eyes at them, smiles, giggles- the whole shebang! And people love it. But seriously, can you blame them? He's adorable.
• He is getting so close to walking. He will take several steps on his own at a time but only if he decides to do it. He won't take steps when I try and get him to and he still prefers to just crawl. But he is getting closer every day.

• Johnny is a Momma's boy. It melts my heart with how much he loves me. But he definitely loves his dad, too. It took him awhile to realize that Marcus was an important figure in his life but now he really loves his Daddy. It is so awesome.
• He LOVES music! He gets so excited when people start to sing and he'll dance to music all the time. It's adorable and one of my many favorite things about him. He loves singing Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, Patty Cake, If You're Happy and You Know It, and the Itsy Bitsy Spider.
• He inherited his mom's social personality and love of sweets. He loved that everyone was paying attention to him at his birthday party and singing Happy Birthday to him. And he LOVED the birthday cake :)!

 

•  Johnny loves to eat whatever you're eating. He prefers any table food to baby food. He'll eat the baby food every now and then but if you are eating something else, he will beg for your food. He likes cows milk which is nice since we are trying to ween off breast feeding.
• He is a water baby for sure. He loves to take a bath! And he gets super excited whenever we go to a pool. He will get right in the pool and splash around. I have never seen him more excited than when we go to a pool.
• He has 8 teeth but he still takes forever to chew. He will shove a ton of food in his mouth (which can be easily stored in his chipmunk cheeks) and then slowly chew and swallow it. We have to control the amount of food that's on his tray at a time because he will cram everything on his tray into his mouth.
• Johnny enjoys flipping through books but he gets impatient if I try and read them to him. He just wants to keep turning the pages.
• He loves to put things inside of other things. He will always transfer toys to buckets. One time, Marcus went to pick up his drink cup that he had left on the floor and when he picked it up he saw that Johnny had transferred all of his Cheerios from his snack cup into Marcus' cup.
• He is the sweetest, most loving, adorable little boy ever. Marcus and I are so lucky we get to be his parents and so blessed that we get to spend eternity with him

HAPPY 1st BIRTHDAY, JOHNNY. WE LOVE YOU SO MUCH!