I Obviously Don't Know How to Dress Appropriately

Last night/this morning, Chris left on a trip to Brazil with his school basketball team. I am both nervous and excited for him to go. He's flying alone (with 55 other students and 7 chaperones), to the world's stupidest airport (Sao Paolo), to a foreign country where he won't have cell phone service. Not that I'm worried or anything. I'm sure he'll have fun, and like he says, anything is better than a week of school. As a parent I can think of some things worse than a week of school, but I'm not going there right now.

His flight left at 5:45 AM, which meant that we had to be at the airport at 3:45 AM, which meant that we had to wake up a little after 3 AM, which meant that I should not have gone to sleep. In the US, if I had to take anyone to the airport early in the morning I would get up, pull on my comfy pants, put on my glasses, slap my hair in a ponytail and go. Right? Well, I assumed that's how it should work here. But you know what they way when you assume...that's right something about....

Anyway, I get to the airport in my early-morning-it's-way-to-early-to-be-awake-and-showered-and-cute clothes, and notice something very strange. All the moms at the airport are dressed to the nines. Their hair is done (at the salon), make-up is on (again, at the salon), they are wearing fancy clothes (sparkly, dressy, furry, satiny). I am feeling like a huge slob, I am wearing no make-up, my thick glasses, my sweats, and a Green Day sweatshirt. Soooo cute. Well, next time I will know better. I'm telling you though; I honestly didn't know that going to the airport at 3:45 in the morning was a formal occasion.

Top Five Text Messages From Chris

Unedited and direct from my cell phone! These are all from one conversation, one sunny afternoon in September.

5. If u love me then ud lev me miss bball.

4. Please can i come hom i mean football practice is better then this.

3. Mom maybe u shudnt text me back cuz this phone is gonna be smashed into a 10000000 pieces

2. Srry chris cant text u back his phone is smashed into 1000000000 pieces

1. All he said was blah blah blah and i said so i can go hom and then he said blah

Just so you all know, he went to basketball practice. Because I am mean. And I like it.

Happy Birthday to Chris!

Yesterday was Christopher's birthday. We went over to our friends' apartment to bake Chris a birthday cake. Bakery cakes here are weird, they taste pretty good, but a lot of them are frosted with dulce de leche, and they are much too sweet. Chris asked if I could try to make a Grandma Anderson chocolate cake, so I gave it a good try. First of all, there is no Crisco here, or anything else that is like vegetable shortening. And the lard is smelly. Much smellier than at home. Plus it's lard. So I tried butter. I think that this cake is kind of temperamental anyway, and I was very worried that we were going to be eating large, flat, chocolate disks. The cake was kind of flat, but turned out pretty good. What do you think?

Chris got a guitar, a 20 Questions game, some gum (we found Bubble Tape in the American aisle of the supermarket), and a jar of peanut butter. I think that he had a good day.

On a more serious side Kevin and I now have a teenager. Yikes! We now get to deal with teenage boys for the next seventeen years.