Fridays

Fridays used to involve us picking up the children from school and heading straight up to Caldas where my family has our home. Occasionally when we had something on we would stay in town. But most of the time we were out of here. And people, that’s how I liked it. It’s not a bad place to be at all. I just love going home.

However, this first term the children are enrolled in Saturday sailing classes. (I know, how very kiwi of us.) So rather than race away on Fridays, the kids each invite a few friends over and they have a play. It’s crazy, but I love seeing my children enjoying themselves with their friends. I may be losing my mind in the madness of they play dates, but my heart is at peace that they are happy.

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Mornings…

We have a new morning routine these days. Lana has started swim practice for her new swim team. I would never have believed it, but here we are. Three days a week my kiddo gets up at 6:10am to get to the pool by 6:30.

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I think she is such a cutie. I especially love her Stars and Stripes swim cap.

Since I’m here anyway I have decided to try my hand at swimming. Good Lord it’s a tough workout. I swim half the time, actually less than half the time she does, and at a slower pace, and I am definitely knocked out.

One for the bilingual crowd

My apologies, but this little story will only be funny to those people who speak both Portuguese and English, sorry.

lana

So Lana sails in Portuguese. Her lessons are in Portuguese, her girlfriend she sails with is Portuguese and her vocabulary for sailing is in Portuguese. She knows the words for the parts of the sailboat in English, but when she tells you about her day, even if she is speaking in English, the vocabulary she uses is Portuguese. So the other day, my very literate child, while telling me about her return to land, instead said when she was ‘coming back to earth’. It was so funny because she is so precise with language, but she kept making this error by literally translating the word as ‘earth’ meaning land. It was a simple mistake, one that if made by anyone else would not elicit a chuckle, but made by this young lady had us all in stitches.