Just be kind...

If you want to know why the title of this post is "Just be kind" you will have to scroll all the way to the bottom of this post.  Between here and there is a quick update of our life in Brazil.

First, an update on my battle with United Airlines.  When I received their final correspondence denying any compensation and them saying that they consider the case closed, I filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Transportation, Aviation Consumer Protection Division.  Now I have to wait patiently for up to 30 days to get a receipt of acknowldegement and up to 60 days for a substantive response to the complaint.  Meanwhile I am still out of pocket over $3000.  Grrrrrrrrr!

Homeschool is getting better, for the most part.  We cannot wait for our shipment to get here for many reasons, but a big one is that all of Adam's workbooks are in it that go along with his CD lessons.  Some days his lessons are VERY short without the books.  I'm sure he will go through another adjustment period when school really starts for him.  Evan is now working hard to learn Portuguese so that he can go to "real" school next year.  I'm prett sure Adam will go to real school as well.  Hopefully the girls too, but that is up to them.  Online school is not very fun for them and I'm not sure they take it too seriously.

We continue to see lots of wildlife around the farm.  When I go out for my morning runs I see a lot of birds.  One morning a flock of toucan lined the driveway and another morning a group of blue macaw flew by.  We are watching an emu and his nest for the babies to hatch.  The kids have named him Bernard and the eggs should be hatching any day.  One day Mark, Adam & Kehli were out driving around and saw some wild pigs and a taper.  A taper is a big animal that looks like a big pig with longer legs.  They are good swimmers.  Another day there was a hummingbird outside of Mark's truck window, so he rolled the window down.  The bird flew in and hoovered right in front of Mark's face for a short time.  It was amazing, but for some reason I can't get the picture to upload!  Adam is always catching something.  This is the biggest lizard he has caught so far and I was glad that I could talk him into letting it go before it got too stressed out.

This week we found some ticks on Adam - 4 in total, and one on me.  They are little ticks and not the kind that carry disease.  It scared the boys enough that they let me buzz their hair, which I was happy about.  Adam had two on his head, one on his back and one in his armpit.  Mine was just below my cleavage which seemed like a weird place.  I think it must have fallen down my shirt when I was hanging laundry on the line.  Now we search for them daily.  Yuck!

Kehli was asked to demonstrate something at youth group that is from the United States.  She chose peanut butter cookies, which everyone was happy about.  They don't really make cookies here, and if they do they are very overcooked.  So Kehli introduced them to our kind of brown sugar, shortening sticks, cookie scoop, silicone baking mat and that the cookies need to be removed from the oven before they actually look done.  She also took some chocolate chip cookies that were already made and told them about the different chooclate chips that we brought with us (semi-sweet, milk, and minis).  She google translated everything and seemed to do great!

 Evan is always building or creating something outside.  This week it was a bike jump made out of the neighbors old dog house that they tore apart.  He put one of our water jugs underneath and then borrowed bags of rock from the gardner to support the wood.  He jumped his bike a few times then decided he better stop before he bends something on his bike.  Mark told him that if he breaks it from carelessness, he wasn't going to fix it.

Yesterday Mark and I decided to go do some grocery shopping.  When we left there were three neighborhood boys here swimming and the girls were watching after them.  When we got home, this is what greeted us:

I'm pretty sure it was caused by rough housing, but neither of the boys will admit to anything.  Adam just says that he slipped and fell.  It looks a little better today but I'm sure it is going to be a wicked bruise in no time.  I asked Evan if the other boys left because they were scared that Adam got hurt and Evan said, "No, I told them to leave."  When I asked him why he said, "Because they were being mean to Vitru (spelling?)."  While they were all swimming another boy came and wanted to join them.  Vitru isn't as thin as the other boys and they started picking on him.  They pushed him in the pool before he could change his clothes, were calling him names, and throwing his shoes.  So Evan told them to leave if they couldn't be nice.  Those original 3 neighbor boys never came back that day, but Vitru came back later and wanted to swim some more.  

Whenever the kids ask me what I think they should be when they grow up, I always stop and think.  All of my kids are brilliant (and I'm not biased, right?) and can be whatever they set out to be.  What always comes to my mind are things like: happy, successful, respectful, hard-working - things of that nature.  But my final thought is always "I just want my children to be kind."  Evan has proven that he is just that and I couldn't be more proud of him.