Cooool!

On this cold, rainy afternoon. I took a tour around the world! Check out this site by TrekEarth on travelling the world through pictures. I went to Paraguay and Indonesia. It's cool.
I originally came to this site to find out about a flower I posted earlier. It is from the Samu'u or Palo Boracho tree and I wanted to find a picture of it. That's how I got distracted, anyway, the third picture of my recent blog about flowers is Samu'u...
Well, I enjoyed my travels...now, back to work!

Today's Weather - Rainy

Well, its in the 50's! After a BEAUTIFUL, warm summer, we are finally getting fall weather! It's cold and rainy. Brandon woke up today (they have a friendly-soccer tournament this afternoon) and said, "mom, when is it going to stop!" It has been rainy ever since last Saturday and the weather reports say it will continue until Sunday. I dry clothes in the living room under the ceiling fan at night. We fixed up a major roof leak by the stairway...we soaked up the 'lake' with 2 towels one morning.
We needed the rain badly. So far...I'm not complaining. The outside looks green again.

Beauty

Once again...thanks to Nancy. Aren't these just beautiful?

The Four Little Boy Cousins

Memories of our cousins...

Passion Fruit Juice

I found some links to the Passion Fruit. We can usually get the yellow kind. I can't really describe the flavor, but it is another one of my favorites.
I usually make juice out of it. Some people make mousse or other desserts. In Paraguay they always say it is a natural sedative...good for slowing kids down at night...we thought!
We tried that when my sister was here, but it slowed HER down instead! I think it wired her kids up even more! We drank the delicious juice at lunch time and by evening, she was dizzy and had a headache. That's when I remembered what we drank at lunchtime.
Another site on Passion Fruit mentioned this..."2 glasses of juice will naturally calm down the most hyperactive child, and for this reason it is highly valued by Brazilian mothers."
It has a super flavor, but just drink it when you're ready to relax!

Memories

I just found these pictures. I don't even know whose they really are or who even took them.. They seem to have been passed around to many... anyway, they appeared on my desktop.

These WERE my boys 3 years ago.

Gaby is now 183 cm. (6.0)

Brandon is 180 cm. (5.9)

(We just measured 2 days ago.)

The Birthday Party

Yesterday was Stephen's birthday, but we had a "Cousins" birthday party one Sunday afternoon. It was so fun and I believe the boys LOVED it. Martha and I enjoyed preparing for it!

We made a cake, used Winnie the Pooh decorations, bought some party favors, had lots of cookies, candy and lolipops, played games and popped balloons! It was fun! Here are some memories to share.