Been there, Done that

Bold the items you have done:

1. Started your own blog (Becca had to help me)

2. Slept under the stars

3. Played in a band (only a rhythm band and I got the sticks instead of the tambourine and I'm still a little bitter about it)

4. Visited Hawaii

5. Watched a meteor shower

6. Given more than you can afford to charity (Maybe just more than I thought we could afford)

7. Been to Disneyland

8. Climbed a mountain(if Table Rock counts and I think it should if Lucy is counting the Rexburg butte)

9. Held a Praying Mantis

10. Sang a solo

11. Bungee jumped

12. Visited Paris

13. Watched a lightning storm at sea

14. Taught yourself an art from scratch

15. Adopted a child (No, but considered putting some up for adoption, back in the day.)

16. Had food poisoning

17. Been to the Statue of Liberty

18. Grown your own vegetables

19. Seen the Mona Lisa at the Louvre

20. Slept on a train

21. Had a pillow fight

22. Hitch hiked

23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill.....back in high school. (Yes, but only once. Haaaaaa)

24. Built a snow fort

25. Held a lamb

26. Gone skinny dipping (see Lucy's blog for details)

27. Ran a Marathon

28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice

29. Seen a total eclipse

30. Watched a sunrise or sunset

31. Hit a home run

32. Been on a cruise

33. Seen Niagara Falls in person

34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors

35. Seen an Amish community

36. Taught yourself a new language(Working on it)

37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied

38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person

39. Gone rock climbing

40. Seen Michelangelo’s David

41. Sung karaoke

42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt

43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant

44. Visited Africa

45. Walked on a beach by moonlight

46. Cooked over a open fire

47. Had your portrait painted....sketched actually

48. Gone deep sea fishing

49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person

50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris (We were too cheap)

51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling

52. Kissed in the rain

53. Played in the mud

54. Gone to a drive-in theater

55. Been in a movie

56. Visited the Great Wall of China (truly amazing, I thought)

57. Started a business

58. Taken a martial arts class

59. Visited Russia

60. Served at a soup kitchen

61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies (No, but have eaten more than my share.)

62. Gone whale watching

63. Got flowers for no reason

64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma

65. Gone sky diving

66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp

67. Bounced a check

68. Flown in a helicopter

69. Saved a favorite childhood toy

70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial

71. Eaten Caviar

72. Tied a quilt

73. Stood in Times Square

74. Toured the Everglades

75. Been fired from a job

76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London

77. Broken a Bone

78. Been on a speeding motorcycle

79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person (only from an airplane, but it was a clear day)

80. Published a book(I'm not sure Parties from Scratch counts)

81. Visited the Vatican

82. Bought a brand new car

83. Walked in Jerusalem

84. Had your picture in the newspaper

85. Read the entire Bible

86. Visited the White House

87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating

88. Had chickenpox

89. Saved someone’s life

90. Sat on a jury

91. Met someone famous

92. Joined a book club (and vowed never to do it again at least twice.)

93. Lost a loved one

94. Had a baby

95. Seen the Alamo in person

96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake

97. Been involved in a law suit

98. Owned a cell phone

99. Been stung by a bee

100. Visited Italy

101. Fed chickens (I think Lucy added this one.)

102. Attended a sheep show (my addition)

I tag Myrna and Mardi and Merlene and Nancy ( I went with 4 because I don't know if Merlene and Nancy are still on the planet. It has been a while since they posted and the world wants to hear from them.)

Patience is a Virtue

Just a little update on my last post. I had told myself that as soon as I posted my rantings about being on hold forever that I would hang up the phone and try again another day, but I didn't.

I just started doing something else and after a while I finally heard a voice, a real human voice. It did have an Indian accent, but I could deal with that. I grabbed the phone and said hello, hello, but apparently the agent couldn't hear me. I kept trying... hello!....HELLO! He also kept saying hello and then he said, "I will hang up now. Apparently you are no longer on the line."

Alan could hear this because the phone was still on speaker. He said he wished he'd had a camera to capture the look on my face. I'm sure it was one of panic and despair. At that moment there must have been a divine intervention because I hit the TALK button. I didn't know why, I was just trying anything. That turned the speaker phone off, finally, and best of all the agent could hear me now.

Raul was great. He fixed everything. In the course of our conversation he asked me how long I had been on hold. I promise I didn't bring it up, he asked. By then it had been really close to 2 hours, but I said an hour and 45 minutes, just to give them the benefit of the doubt. He politely apologized and then said that he was going to see that I got an extra 30 days of virus protection for the inconvenience. Woot! Woot! I love free stuff.

Later I worked it out and I probably made a whopping 2.50 an hour by being patient. Oh well. At least I got the dishes done, some filing of pictures and had something to blog about. I guess it was worth the 2 hours.

P. S. I was going to try to find a picture on Google images to go along with this post, but when I went there it said that "using this site could damage your computer." It said the same thing on Yahoo image search and others in the list. Is that warning always there and I had just never seen it before? Has anyone else ever seen that? Do I have to call Raul again?

Freaking Dang it!

Freaking Dang it! is a missionary curse word combination I have heard one of the Brazilian elders here use. He is trying to learn English and this is what he uses to express his frustration. It makes me laugh every time I hear him say it.

But today I'm using it and I am not laughing because I have been waiting on the telephone for over an hour. It might be an hour and a half by now. I just had a simple question for someone about why Norton Internet Protection keeps sending me pop up things that say my subscription protection has expired and it doesn't expire until June 2009.

I really hate being on hold. This has gone on so long I feel like they put me on "mold." The "music" they have for you to enjoy while you pass the time is really getting on my nerves. It just isn't that enjoyable. The really sad part is that I decided to do the dishes and a few other things while waiting so I pushed the speakerphone button so I could hear it as I was working. I didn't want to miss it when the agent came on the line. Now I can't get the darn thing off speakerphone and the music is starting to bug Alan too.

So why don't I just hang up? Everytime I think I can't stand it anymore and I am going to hang up, a voice interupts the music to say, "We appreciate your patience. Please don't hang up. If you hang up now, it will increase your wait time as all calls are answered in the order they were placed."

Yes, I have it memorized, word for word.

I don't want to start over with this thing. I had already spoken to an agent in India who asked me all the initial questions before giving me this customer service number. Even though I had to ask her to repeat a lot of things I tried to be patient and nice because I understand a little about trying to be understood while speaking a different language and how frustrating it is when people don't really even try to understand.

Well, my patience is exhausted. The music track is cycling again and I just heard a really horrible instrumental rendition of "A Time for Us" for at least the 3rd time. I am through waiting. If a virus gets me, it gets me. I just can't take it anymore, freaking dang it!

The Party is Over...Way Over

We knew our way fun Christmas was over when, just a few days ago, Alan was eating the last cherry chocolate the kids brought down. Is that a sad look or what? But we had a great time with our whole family down here for the holidays. Here are a few pictures of how it went.

We were absolutely spoiled this year, not just because all of our family was here together, but they brought us 10 suitcases , full to the max, of mostly food items, that we had been missing.

The trip wore everybody out so the first day, I saw a lot of this.

The tables were turned this year. We were opening all the gifts......

The kids were looking on with hardly a thing to open. Sorry, kids.

Thanks for all the nice things you sent us. Dale and Angela sent Alan this sheep ornament and that put him in a festive mood.

We managed to have a really nice Christmas dinner with most of the things we usually have back at home and a few new things too.

As is usual during the holidays, we ate a lot. Our waiter took a picture of us after we finished a meal at the churrascaria. It is one of those places where they keep bringing you different meats to eat and you keep eating it until you are sick.

We all posed for a picture after a lunch we had with one of our elders that was leaving the mission a little ahead of his group. I was glad the kids got to meet him because he was a really great elder.

Of course we went to the beach. This beach has some pretty interesting colors of sand. I liked the contrast of the blue sea and the terra cotta colored sand in this picture.

We rode dune buggies along the shore and up into some sand dunes.

We had to stay out of the sun for a day or so after all day at the beach. Let's just say most of us got a little pink. So we played games, mostly a variation of Clue that Lee and Kim brought.
It probably doesn't look all that exciting to anyone else, but we had a really great time. I'm pretty sure it will be a Christmas we will all remember.

Recent doings/ Random Pictures

There is nothing quite like a missionary choir. This is one of the zones singing at the conference.

Alan has been busy making fudge. It is a hit down here. I really don't know how many batches he has made, but it is a lot.

I love this kid. Besides the fact that I don't understand Portuguese very well, he has a pretty heavy lisp. I don't understand hardly a word he says, but I always understand his smile.

We had to say goodby to two of our really great sisters on the same day. The one on the left will be back ,if everything goes well, after she gets her ankle fixed. The one on the right is headed for BYU.

This is a picture of some of the missionaries in the musical devotional getting on the bus to go to Sobral. They were a great group.

Alan is chatting with everybody after our lunch at the restaurant in Sobral. That long table of missionaries drew a lot of stares that day.


You can't go wrong with the candy bar game. Frankly, I don't think they make a candy bar down here that I would want to steal, but the elders had a lot of fun playing it.

This overturned truck was on the road to Sobral when we went out last week. It had a load of logs that were all over the place. It probably swerved trying to miss a big pot hole or a goat or something. Just another verification of the reason we don't like to drive that road. It was still on the road when we went back about 6 hours later.

I had to take this picture while we were cooking for the conferences. All six of the burners were on and the oven was on too. Can you say sweat? We were dripping.

It's Beginning to Look a Little Like Christmas

Although it really doesn't feel like Christmas to us here because of the weather and all, we have seen some pretty fun decorations around the city and thought we would share some of the things we see here. One good thing is that Brazil is a very Christian country so to have a nativity in the center of town is okay here. I really like this one even though it isn't typical. It is really pretty at night.
I got our own sorry little tree put up just in time for the new group of Elders that arrived a few weeks ago. It is a little lacking in decorations, but it looks okay at night when the lights are on.


There is a large round-about we drive through often with this large tree in the center. It is made of fabric on some large metal frame. At night, they have colored lights shine up through the middle and is really looks neat.I had to take a picture of the painted snowman on the windows of this mattress store, which, by the way, there are tons of in this city. I was surprised that a snowman would mean Christmas to people here since most of them have never seen snow. I was also surprised to see the painted windows like we have at home too.

I guess Santa doesn't come down the chimney here since there aren't any. He just sneaks in over the balcony.

This "tree" was colorful and caught my eye. I think it is at the headquarters for one of the groups of native people here. I don't know anything about them, but I thought the tree was pretty funky.

This big snowman is made of painted 2 liter bottles. It is actually sort of tacky looking, but I thought it was an accompishment of sorts.

I took pretty lousy pictures the night we were in the old Centro part of the city. I sort of liked the idea of the huge bow on the building though.

Another lousy picture...sorry. It was pretty in real. The lighting on the building is pretty and each balcony had a huge wreath on it that was lit up too. I don't know what the building is, but during December they open the balconies on all the windows and young people that are dressed in Christmas hats, etc. sing and dance. There are two in each window. I think they really might be lip syncing, but it is still really showy and sounds good. That actually got us in the Christmas mood. I think we will try to go again when our family comes down in a few days.

I have no idea what this guy was up to. He was just standing on the street as we passed by one evening. I don't know why he is wearing a green Santa suit. Maybe his red one was dirty.

FELIZ NATAL (Merry Christmas) everyone. It is still okay to say that in Brazil.

So Close and Yet So Far Away

I'll warn you right up front that I am going to whine a little.

We've been here for almost 5 months and still don't have the stuff we shipped a few weeks before we left Idaho. We were told it takes longer to get all the paperwork and approvals for shipments to Brazil and to expect some delay, but I was under the impression that 2 months would be the maximum. We have had some updates on the location of our shipment. Our first update came from Lucy. She asked me if I knew our stuff had gone to the Philippines. What?!!!? I hadn't heard a word about it. The office in Sao Paulo had called every so often to say the stuff had left Idaho, or that it was still in the United States waiting for clearance or something, but they us had not called about that. Lucy heard it from a lady that stopped in at Mini Bazaar who had just returned from her mission in the Philippines. That made me worry a little and I called to see if it was really even true. They said it was true but not to worry because they had located in in Manilla and it was on its way to Miami. Great.

About a month ago we heard it was in Brazil. Then we heard Rio de Janeiro. At least it was heading the right way. Then we got a call that it would be here, in Fortaleza, on Mon. November 10th. Yippee!! I waited all day. Nothing. Nothing all week. Two days ago we find out it is here. Yippee again! But wait...it is sitting at the airport and won't be released until someone pays $RS700, about $370.00, in state tariffs or taxes or something. Our state just happens to be one of the few that requires it. *#/@*# &*# Curses! Sao Paulo office tells us that they think we can get around it if we can find a lawyer that knows about such things. Great.

At this point I am wondering just how bad I want my salad spinner anyway. I mean it's really only 4 boxes of stuff and this would give me an excuse to buy some new clothes that might actually be better for the climate here anyway. But then I remember there are some pretty important things in there, like my recipes and family pictures and my sewing machine and Dangit!...............

I want my stuff!