The Day's: 2012

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Andrew & Lainey swim Comp

This was Lainey's first swim competition and it was great she was so nervous to start and emotional that she didn't swim the back stroke. It took her watching Andrew do his butterfly and watching the back stroke before she thought "I can do this" and then she was ready for the front stoke. She did amazing she dove right in and killed it and won the GOLD medal! She was so happy and proud of herself as were we =).

Andrew was doing the butterfly for the first time in a competition and he was a little nervous but he did amazing just like every other time. He swam it really hard and won the GOLD, he is truly an amazing swimmer and it makes me so proud to get to watch him swim and succeed like he is. He then had to wait for a little bit to swim the front stoke and he did such a good job of cheering on his teammates and Lainey. Then it was his turn and his goal was to beat his old time of 18.49 and I don't have the final time yet but from what I could tell with the video he beat it and won the GOLD.

Both of the kids did such an amazing job I couldn't have been prouder of them both. Here are some pics from the comp and a link to the videos on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/user/reenaday1213/videos?flow=grid&view=0

Cooper really felt like he won too.

The champions!

Not ready to swim yet.

So ready to swim now.

GOLD!

Ready to swim

GOLD!!!

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

We just had are annual Halloween party here in Brazil and here are the pics from the day.

Ready to bake Cupcakes, brownies, chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter cookies,

almond cookies, sugar cookies, and Reese's pieces bars

The two best assistants

Done baking..longest two days ever

Robert is such a good artist, Lainey takes after him

The spider webs looked so awesome we had them on all the doors and cabinets.

Lainey working on her trick or treat box

Andrew working on his

And Cooper on his

Cooper as Captain America he didn't want to wear the outfit long but Robert did face paint for him

All the kids getting ready to trick or treat

Door to door

Vanessa put on a Santa beard and the kids thought it was so funny they kept saying no its Halloween

Lainey as Merida from Brave

Andrew as Hulk

Just being silly

Robert painting a snake on Cooper

Done

The kids playing after all was done

This was an intense Mario Kart 64 game

Cooper made up his own face paint he wasn't sure what he was but he was so proud.

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Update

So not a lot new but I will fill in the blanks for the last month. The kids are loving school and learning Portuguese Lainey is learning quickly mostly because no one in her class speaks English but the other kids are learning too. Lainey wont speak to us but her teacher says that she speaks to her and to the other kids. Cooper says everyday that he can walk himself to class and he gets so excited when we see his school that he starts running toward it. Then at the end of the day when we ask him about his day he says "it was bad I was missing you the whole time." Its nice he misses still and he says that he says"but everything thing else was great." Andrew has made a really good friend named Lucas and he speaks some English which has been really nice for him. School for him has been a work in progress we have had to ask the school to do more than they have been. I have been doing some homeschooling stuff with him just to make sure he isn't missing stuff for 5th grade. Overall school is turning out great for all 3 of them and I think makes this experience even better for them.
At the end of September Andrew had a big swim competition and he did wonderful, he really swam hard and ended up with two gold medals and in the 3rd one he disqualified. That was hard to swallow for him and me but we don't quite know all the rules for swimming yet and he is looking at that as a learning experience. I will post some pics from the last month including the swim competition.

Andrew's 11th birthday

Pizza place fun

If Coop wasn't frowning this would be great Andrew and Lainey look so cute

Coop is swimming like a pro no he is almost ready for no arm floaties

She is a regular fish

Such a cute picture

Andrew's swim comp backstroke

Gold medal

1st place winner

Ready

Set

Gold number two

Friday, September 7, 2012

School 2012 Uberlandia, Brazil

Cooper he wants to be a "clean up the world guy" when he grows up

Lainey wants to be a Artist

Andrew goes back and forth between a video game designer and a doctor...totally opposite ;)

Cooper in his class

Lainey on her way to her class

Day two... the kids are so cute

I think I was way more nervous then any of the kids, I thought for sure Andrew would be nervous being the oldest he would know the most about what is happening and how hard it is to not be able to talk to anyone but he wasn't nervous at all. Once we got to school we took a tour of all the kids class rooms so they all knew where each of them would be. Then as school started we took each one of them to their rooms and one of the English teachers introduced the kids and for Andrew and Cooper that is all it took and they were off. For Lainey she needed us to stay for a while but 2 hours later Robert and I were home with the kids in school. Weird feeling that moment was. Well its the end of the first week and Cooper came home once and Lainey and Andrew have a ton of friends and the people at school say that the kids love our kids so much and Cooper they call "super". They are all happy and I just feel like in two months they will be fluent in another language and just really able to learn and grow. Anyway here are a couple pics from the first day.

Our Trip to Brazil

Well this time was a little different there are some things that every time we go to Brazil we can count on, like the time we spend in Sao Paulo is horrible, the flight from Portland is good etc. Well none of that happened this time, Portland was horrible we were late and the flight attendants were so rude that I was crying and it was my actual 30th birthday which probably made me more emotional and then when we got to Dallas Lainey got really sick and throw up everywhere and Cooper had diarrhea. To say the least it wasn't fun. But then normally this would be the point that things get bad but this is actually where things started to turn around we got the row with 5 seats and no one was in that last one so we had a whole row and at one point Andrew and cooper were sleeping on the floor and Lainey and I had the whole row to completely lay out in. Again right now as we land in Sao Paulo life would suck but we had some one pick us up right from customs (which someone helped us push the carts with 10 bags through) and then we got on a 14 passenger van and took all 4 of us and 12 bags to the national airport to make our final flight. Not with out one more bout of throwing up, this time all over her clothes, so she had coopers extra set of clothes on from that point on. In the new airport we had sometime which let us sit and eat and just relax a second which was really nice to do. The last and final flight was short and smooth and we were here final spot Uberlanida Brazil. I think this was probably the worst set of flights of all of them with two of the kids getting sick I don't know what I would have done without Andrew he is my solid I can always count on him. Anyway we are here and life is settling into a great routine and the next post will be about school. YEAH!!!