Back in Brazil!

After being inspired by my sister-in-law, Natalie, and my crafty best friend, Erin, I’ve decided to start a blog. Not only will it give me a chance to share all of my thoughts and our adventures in Brazil, but also it will be an easy way to stay connected to friends and family. I’m not the most computer literate person in the world, so Erin is the one who designed this awesomeness that you are seeing--I’m just the written word on the page. Thanks, Erin! :)

Well we left on Sunday night to head back to Brazil. With me, I had three large trunks, one suitcase, one car seat, two carryon bags, one wild man in a monkey leash (Yep, I’m the mom who puts their kid on a leash. Judge me if you want, but only after you yourself have had to chase him down in a crowd full of people), and a partridge in a pear tree. When I got to the airport in Houston, the lovely people at Continental told me that my bags were too heavy to put on the plane. So I spent the next thirty minutes, with my belongings strewn around the check-in desk as I tried to move things around. I finally got everything re-packed, and off went our luggage. As we went through security, Jake kept trying to run through the metal detector while I’m attempting to put all of our things into the scanner (Thank you, monkey leash). Thankfully, the people working that night were very helpful, and somehow as our circus tried to get through security, I managed not to irritate too many passengers waiting impatiently behind us. It wasn’t too long of a wait to board the plane, thank God, and we got to board first. Yay! Unfortunately, the flight was sold out, and Jake and I did not have seats next to each other. I asked the a-hole flight attendant as we boarded the plane if he could help me with that, and he just humphed at me and said, “You’ve got the two worst seats on the plane. Good luck with that.” Thanks for nothing, and like I said, he was an a-hole. As we walked to our seats, a more helpful flight attendant took care of us. She spent the first 20 minutes asking everyone on board if they wouldn’t mind switching seats with me. I would have loved to have seen someone else try to deal with Jake on a 10hr flight, but finally, a nice man agreed, and Jake and I were seated in the last row with me on the aisle and Jake in the middle. A nice older man was seated next to us, and he was so sweet to Jake the entire flight (he even let Jake wear his noise cancelling Bose headphones to watch The Karate Kid). Jake couldn’t hear anything other than the movie, so he kept screaming at me saying, “Mom! These are so COOL!” lol Thankfully, Jake soon fell asleep, and after 10 hours and 15 minutes, we made it to Rio de Janeiro.

Copacabana Beach--Bad picture but it was taken from the car as my driver was going 100kph!

Christ the Redeemer statue on Corcovado above Rio

Somehow we slid through customs without having our trunks opened! I still can’t believe it, considering the amount of stuff that we had with us! I think the man could see that I had made it to the end of my rope, and took pity on me by waving me through. Thank you, customs security guy! Jake was so helpful too. I pushed 3 trunks on one cart, and he had a suitcase and a car seat on another. He pushed his cart all the way from baggage claim, through the long, snaking line at customs, and out to the exit. He just followed behind me, and we played red light/green light through the lines so no one got run over. We had two drivers pick us up. One for the luggage, and one for us, lol :) , and after a 4 ½ hour drive, we made it to Macae! Sweet Gabe was waiting for us with lunch ready at the condo, and Jake was so excited to see his daddy! We spent most of the afternoon resting/napping, and Jake was thrilled that all of his “wo-bots” (Transformers) were still here, and that “they missed” him.

Today has been the first day in over a month that I’ve had a moment to just sit and relax. There just always seemed to be something that I had to do at the new house in Spring. Thankfully, that headache is over, and we got moved in (THANK YOU, MOM, ERIC, FRED, SHAWN, and CINDY)! I think I was a little nervous to come back to Brazil, especially after such an awesome summer back in Texas, but now that I’m here, it actually feels really good. I’m currently sitting on my porch, drinking coffee while watching and listening to the ocean crash into the beach. Not a bad way to spend the afternoon. I missed the ocean, and I missed my husband, so altogether, it’s really good to be back. The negatives about Macae are still here, but I’m concentrating on the positives, and taking every new day as a gift to enjoy and explore a new country.

View from my front porch :)