Grandparents & Registrations...

So about a week after Leine was born, we were Skyping with Nick's mom and stepdad, who are affectionately referred to as Mimi and Pawpaw by our kiddos.  Months ago, they had offered to come down for Leine's birth, but since we'll be in the states so soon for a visit, we didn't want them to go to so much trouble. (Plus there's always the difficulty of not knowing exactly when a baby will arrive to make travel plans).  Don't get me wrong, we would have loved to see them, but since we didn't need them, we told them we could wait until October to see each other.  However, during our Skype call, Nick joked about them coming down in August to stay with our two boys at our home in Arapiraca while Nick, Leine, and I traveled to do her documentation work.  After hanging up, they researched tickets, and two days later had their flight booked to come be with us just two weeks later!

You see, since Leine is both an American and Brazilian citizen, we had to travel to register her with both the American Consulate (in Recife - about 6 hours away) and the Brazilian Federal Police (in Maceió - about 2 hours away).  It's never fun to travel on Brazilian highways, haha, but we were especially dreading it with THREE kiddos in tow.  It was SUCH a blessing to have Mimi and Pawpaw stay at our house with Carter and Oliver and allow Nick and I to travel with just Leine Mae (who did AWESOME during the long car trips).  We went to Recife first and were able to accomplish everything at the American Consulate without a hitch.  We traveled to Maceió that afternoon and went to the Federal Police the next morning.  Unfortunately, their internet wasn't working while we were there so we were not able to register Leine.  But we made another appointment for the next week and were able to complete everything then.  At least it was the closer city in which we had difficulties...

While Mimi and Pawpaw were here, we were able to do a lot of fun things.  Of course there was a lot of grandkid bonding:

  Bowling (on a super short lane that had a ridge in the middle, and pins connected to strings, haha):

The indoor play park:

 And the beach:

It was a super fun week and we definitely made some fun memories together :)