Happy Birthday Marcus!

Marcus turned eight February 1. Eight years old. He is such a grown up, good boy. He is also lucky. Each winter we try to take a vacation to get through the cold and snow. Although this year, being in opposite-land, we needed to get away from the heat and humidity. Anyway, he spent his fifth birthday in Hawaii, and this year he got to celebrate his birthday on a cruise ship, somewhere in the South Atlantic Ocean, between Puerto Madryn, Argentina and Montevideo, Uruguay. I think he had a good day. We hung out on the ship, went to the "show" after dinner, and then attended the chocolate buffet, which I believe was planned just for his birthday.

When we got home from our trip, our maid had decorated the dining room with balloons, flowers, and fun decorations. He got to open his gifts from everyone, and we took him out to dinner.

We haven't decided whether we are going to wait to go home, or have him baptized here. He kind of wants to wait, but also thinks that it would be cool to be baptized in Paraguay. We need to figure it out.

Happy Birthday Noah!

Today is Noah's birthday, he is now four years old. He is the funniest, craziest boy in our family. He asked for a Nintendo DS, which we didn't get for him, because I thought he was too little. So we bought these crazy chairs/hats/pool toys/scoops/step stools for the crazy boy!

We went to dinner at one of his favorite restaurants, La Paulista, and then had chocolate cake and ice cream.

He loves all of his gifts, especially the truck that turns into an ape. And the really big shark, and the other truck, and the Diego stuff...and where's his DS?

Happy Birthday, Noah!

Happy Birthday Sam!

Sam is now eleven. That's only a year away from twelve, and a year from then I get to have two teenagers in the house. How lucky can I get?

Sam asked for a cello for his birthday, and we looked all around this town and could not find one. You would think that a city of around a million people would have at least one cello to buy, but no, we could pay someone to go to Argentina to get one, or wait a few weeks and see if one shows up, or just go ourselves to buy one, but we cannot get one here, where we live. I even spent hours on the internet trying to see if I could get somebody to ship a cello to us. Everyone online would be happy to, except that the post office size limits prohibit it. How difficult does it have to be?

Thank you to everyone for your gifts and cards.

What?!

Yesterday was my birthday. This is Noah's gift to me:

"Mom, you drive me nuts!"

I drive him nuts?

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.