Let Me Explain. No, There Is Too Much. Let Me Sum Up.

It's been a long while since I have posted, unless you count my last post about something that happened a year ago. We've actually done a lot since the Piece of Cake incident.

First, we returned to live in the United States. It's been an interesting six months full of football, school, driving all over town, family, holidays, vacations, and adjustments. If someone would have told me that I would be just as culture shocked moving back to the country of my birth as I had been when I arrived in Paraguay, I would have said, "Cra-zy!" But it's been an adjustment. The sheer volume of ready to eat breakfast cereal in the grocery store is ASTOUNDING! Seriously, a whole aisle devoted to sugary goodness. And that's just cereal. The driving here is generally more polite and restrained, but I am doing tons more of it, we lived in a hotel for three months, and I have two kids attending high school (which makes me feel old, which is an adjustment, but not necessarily because I am living back in the United States; it might just be that I am old). We did make a detour in Florida to visit Mickey and friends, and had a fantastic time.

Second, we have played and watched a lot of football. Chris, Sam, and Marcus all played last fall, we had approximately ten practices and three games each week. I love football!

Chris's football injury.

Sam is out there, I promise.

At the championship game.

Third, school. I mentioned the two kids in high school; my other two are in elementary school at the Open Classroom: ocslc.org. We love school (right boys?) and especially love that we are back to attending with cousins and friends. I get to spend two mornings a week with the younger two boys, and we stay busy driving from school to school to school to home. Noah is going to the McKee Language School, http://www.mckeeschool.com/, to keep up with his Spanish skills. It's been a challenging year for me because kindergarten is half-day in the morning, and then Spanish in the afternoon. I get to eat school lunch with him, then drive him to Spanish. I love kindergarten, but I am looking forward to having all the kids at school, all day long.

Reading.

Finally, the house. I'm not happy about the house right now. I think I'm going to live out of the moving boxes forever and ever. I don't want to unpack, I have put it off since the end of October, and now I am used to the chaos. I'm not used to the chaos; I don't want to deal with the chaos. My one New Year's resolution is to get the house in some sort of order. Fortunately, I have 10-plus, months to worry about it.

There's more, but it's all details: field trips, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, birthdays, I ran a marathon, my sister had her first baby, and vacation. Oh, and Kevin working (living) in Mexico City since October. But details, right?

At Great Salt Lake. Salt is bad!

Corn maze!

Charizard.

Baby Oliver.

Christmas morning.

On the road to Hana, Hawaii.

Punta del Este

An entire year ago we visited Punta del Este, Uruguay. We hung out at the beach, got sunburned (wearing sunscreen, strong sun), saw a fun Carnaval parade, and had a generally fantastic time (if you like, you can ask Sam about the cute and tiny jellyfish, as a rebuttal to the fantastic time statement).



Hanging out on the giant hand in the sand.


These boys LOVE the ocean!