Welcome To The Furnace...

It is September and it is hot as boogers here! (Is that an expression?) Don't get me wrong, it's pretty toasty year round, but now it is just sweltering with no escape: it's hot morning, noon, and night both inside and outside.  Just a couple more months until the rains come...

Last weekend we went out of town to the capital city of Goiania.  Our friend, who is expecting in November, is staying there for the month with her husband and mother-in-law (who lives there) for doctor appointments and asked us to come visit.  We left Friday afternoon, with our friend/her brother in tow, and stayed until Sunday afternoon.  We all stayed at her mother-in-law's apartment and had a great weekend of visiting and deepening our relationships with them.  We were able to share a lot more about what believe and why we are here and were able to field a lot of questions and hopefully clear up some confusion they had.  During our stay, we walked to a local park (where Carter spent a lot of time filling his shorts with sand), visited the feira (a HUGE market full of clothes, jewelry, and shoes - I was in heaven! Well, almost...since we were with a large group and it was late at night, I didn't get to 'get my shop on' as much as I would have liked...), had two churrascos, watched Carter splash in the apartment pool, and visited...wait for it....MCDONALD'S and WAL-MART!!! It was a good time :)

We're added to our family since I last posted: we are now the proud new owners of a betta fish.  He is blue and goes by 'Boba Fish.' 1) Because my husband loves Star Wars and 2) Because for some reason, Carter thinks fish are dinosaurs and always says 'D!' (his word for dino) when he points to one.  I thought maybe with the repetition of Boba Fish every day, he might get it down...

Now for a few interesting tidbits:

• They don't call ocean/lake water salt/fresh water, but instead salty/sweet! haha
• The other night a friend was over, and she didn't know how to use a ziploc - she had never seen one before!
• There is a model statue of liberty in a department store parking lot in one of the bigger cities of our state...strange.
• If a baby/toddler is crying, people will do anything to make them stop! (Whether they're throwing a tantrum, whining, tired, anything).  This includes giving them candy, offering to do what the parent is saying no to, etc.  Yes, this happens frequently with us...
• One of the girls from our church has a friend who recently got married...she is 13 years old!!!
• Brazilian planning and time looks like this: mention wanting to do something, not talk about it, not plan it, eventually throw together some lose details, then visit, visit some more, wait, wait, wait, and THEN do something.  Every day is definitely a lesson in patience :)

And now for a few pictures of my cute bug: