The girls are really loving softball now!!!

Salto do Yucuma on Saturday afternoon

Our crazy friends--too close the edge for me!!!

Throwing a stone from Brazil to Argentina

Andrew and Makaela enjoying the view

Friday nights with a Max Lucado video and their favorite "stuffed" animals

Friday afternoon at the Tres do Maio fair

This rickety old thing was a little too rickety for our tastes

This was the girls' first ride that took them anywhere off the ground. They appreciate that I'm loosening the apron strings a little bit!!! lol

Five weeks until we leave for home!!! Last night Makaela was talking about going home, and she said, "it feels like forever (until we leave), when I think about how it's like heaven there (the U.S)."

All of us, except for Makaela, are nervous about going home. We are so pumped and ready to resume all of the little details of life that we miss, and yet are a little uneasy about going through the transition from one culture to the next again. There are weird little things that start to seem normal, and some habbits that you're not sure if it's universal, Brazilian, or American--whether it's how you drink water out of a water bottle, to stopping at stop signs--to how you greet your friends, so many things are different. We are also afraid of forgetting all that has happened here, of forgetting all we have learned. We are planning on continuing Portuguese lessons weekly, and a good friend of mine from here will be moving to Moline, with her family in September. It will be so awesome to have her in town. She has two kids the same age as my girls, so it will be nice for all of us to stay in touch with our Portuguese and the culture the girls have assimilated into.

We aren't planning anymore trips in South America. Our last trip to Argentina left a bad taste in our mouths. :) Everything is harder to facilatate here. Makaela is right when she says the U.S. feels like heaven. It does in comparison. Brazil is gorgeous--the areas that God made that is. Illinois doesn't really compare to it's tropical beauty, but the infrastructure back home, is a paradise in and of itself. Our trip to Buenos Aires, left us stranded between angry tobacco farmers blockading the road, and a ferry that had already closed for the day. The police and milatary were useless, and were wholly at the mercy of the farmers. So, we sat for 3 hours on the road while a lot of the folks around us decided to get drunk and party--what else is there to do, right? So, when the farmers were pleased with themselves, and felt that they had sufficiently disrupted transit, they moved the blockade, and let 100 angry cars, half of them drunk pass by---oh, my word--that was pretty freaky to be driving down a one lane unlit highway in the dark with everyone trying to pass everyone else!!! And, the story continues...but, it's too long...but the moral of the story is we will enjoy the ease of traveling in the U.S.!!! :)