Sunday, October 26, 2008

Our little toddler

Rachel and her "bling". She plays with her necklaces all day long.



Rachel is quite the little walker now. She got really good at it while we were in Brazil. Now that she is walking she can wear dresses a lot more. It made her pretty mad to try and crawl in a dress. So for our last month of summer she wore a dress several days a week. Winter isn't quite as convenient since her little legs get cold without tights, but September was great :) It's so fun to see her toddling around. She still falls over A LOT, but is usually a good sport about it (unless she is tired). Her latest lovely trick is taking really big bites of her food, gagging, and throwing everything (and I mean everything) up. She did it 4 times last week alone. This morning I made the rather stupid mistake of taking her out of her chair to try and calm her down so she wouldn't do it. She puked all over me, herself, and the floor. Lesson learned: it is a lot easier to clean it up of the high chair tray. Don't worry, though, I didn't take a picture of that!

Rachel enjoying some tasty ravioli.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

A Weekend of Gluttony

My little sister Jen visited us this past week. We did a lot of stuff: went downtown, shopped for nail polish (she's a reformed nail biter and now enjoys painting her lovely long nails), played with Rachel, took naps, read books, watched movies, played monopoly, annoyed each other, birthday doorbell ditched, visited a pumpkin patch, etc. But mostly we enjoyed my personal favorite of the seven deadly sins: gluttony! We ate ourselves sick. It was the best visit ever, despite the severe overeating. I hated to drop her off at the airport this morning. Luckily we get to see her again at New Years! See you soon, chum! Thanks for having so much fun with us.
** Note about our Brazil posts: Matt's parents in Portland watched Rachel for us. She had a good time with them and actually cried a little when she saw me for the first time after getting back. We were glad that we could vacation happily knowing she was in good hands back in Portland.


Bedtime story. What a cute pair of redheads!


Jen getting her workout by swinging Rachel up and down.


Jen (going in to get Rachel from her nap): Michelle, do you think Rachel's crib will support my weight?
Me (in the other room): Probably not, so let's not test it.
Jen (a few seconds later): Michelle, come look!


The pumpkin patch! The pumpkins that we got to take home ("included in the price of your admission!") were considerable smaller. As in Rachel can easily hold hers without any help and there is no way we can carve them.


Rachel didn't love the slide...
I wanted to add another picture of Jen petting the goats, but the darn computer won't let me. Let's just say that Jen loves goats and the goat pen was almost the highlight of her visit. Rachel was just mad that we wouldn't let her play with the goat poo.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Brazil: Part 3 of 3

For the last leg of the trip we went to Iguassu Falls which roughly translates into "a whole bunch of water falling down a cliff" or something close to that. Notice our matching park sweatshirts that we had to buy since we were not prepared for the cold. The first two pictures are on the Brazil side, the next two are on the Argentina side...and here they are:


Michelle and I near the falls.

Cool isn't it


Up close and personal at the "Devils Throat" I think the Portuguese sounds more ominous "Gargantua do Diablo" either way it was big and cool.


Your two favorite people on San Martin island. The falls consist of 2.6km of cliffs with over 206 identified falls. Doesn't that just blow your mind.


Michelle's shoe or a tasty snack? This toucan sure could not tell the difference.


And Michelle with a Macau on her arm. And the rest is history.

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Brazil: Part 2 of 3

Next stop was in Rio de Janeiro. Our first day was spent just hanging out at the beach and finding our way around the town. Both of Rio's famous beaches were near our hotel and the first day we went to check out Copacabana (pictured below). After spending some time in the tropical sun we went in seach of some grub and went to an italian resaurant recommended by the tour company which was alright. Mostly it was cool beacuse it was right on the boardwalk directly across from the beach.



The next morning it was up bright and early for a full day city tour. The tour took us around the nicer neighborhoods of Ipanema and some of the historic areas from the colonial period which were interesting. There was one street where there were period buildings from Brittan, France, Germany, and Portugal. There was also quite a heated debate on the tour bus when the tour guide pointed out the school for the deaf and dumb and one of the people on the tour tried to tell him that it was deaf and mute since the people are not "dumb"; it was never resolved as the guide quickly found something else to talk about. The bus then dropped us off at the train that took us up to see the famous statue of Christ which is built on teh highest point in Rio. The artist that designed it found he did not have the know how to complete his plan so he went to Paris to study sculpture for several years before returing to construct the statue.



On the way down there was a Samba band to entertain us.



Our last stop of the day was sugar loaf hill which offered some better views of the harbor. When the Portuguese arrived at the harbor they figured there must have been a river flowing into it and since it was January 1st when they arrived they named it "River of January" I'm sure they were surprised to find there was no river at all but the name stuck. We rode the cable cars up to the top and took in the amazing vistas


There were lots of these "monkeys" called saguis that are something more like a cross between a squirrel and monkey. Anyways, they were cool looking and were all over the place.



The view from Sugar Loaf hill


The next day we took a tour of the Tijuca Rain Forest in the morning and below is a picture from one of the stops. One of the best parts of the tour was a species of tree that grow hollow in the middle and usually has a colony of ants living inside so when the guide hit it with a stick the ants had swarmed out and were all over the place in a few seconds.


On our last day we just hung out at the beach and (fortunately for you) did not take any pictures. Although we did get a good deal on a couple of beach chairs and drank coconut water straight from a whole chilled coconut.