Penelope's Pad

Wonderful Week

noreply@blogger.com (Cheltz) — Sat, 08 Jan 2022 12:04:00 +0000

We had a good week.

Sunday was the day Herbie, Moses and Linus would be ordained. It ended up being our family only, in a classroom, so we took off our masks and spoke English.

Woo read to us from the general handbook. We sang a song of two, maybe prayed, then Woo ordained Herbie.

Herbie was able to help ordain Linus. Linus sat with a wide grin on his face during the entire blessing. It would twitch to even wider at points.

Then Herbie ordained Moses, with Woo helping. Herbie got to give Moses a blessing, which was a surprise for him when he found out on Saturday, but he was very excited.

Woo was emotional afterwards as it was the first time he’d gotten to give a blessing with his son.

Ruby was very supportive and had a big smile on her face also, complimenting and congratulating her brothers.

Penelope and Archie were very reverent also, but they eagerly ran off to primary for the last twenty minutes.

For the next two nights, Herbie would say, “Goodnight to my favorite teacher!” to Moses before going to bed.

Herbie, Moses and Linus have all been noticeably trying to serve in little ways at home.

Herbie was watching out the window so that as soon as Woo and I came home from the grocery store, he ran down the stairs to help us bring groceries up.

Linus sacrificed his green settlers pieces (that he NEVER backs down on) so that Archie could have a color he liked.

Moses tried to encourage upset kids to forgive or leave the situation or come up with another solution.

Reading the general handbook had been such a hit before the ordinations that Woo read it again for his YMs lesson, and then read more to all of us (for a couple hours?) while we sat in the park, warming in the sun, until it got cold. It was surprisingly interesting for all of us.

Archie spent a lot of the time trying to stand up a piece of wood in the grass, but he eventually came to join us and stayed.

We were all fasting, which might’ve contributed to everyone sitting and listening so placidly. Linus asked again what a chiasmus is.

Archie gave what was in Woo’s opinion the “fast Sunday comment of the year”: Chiasmus is a sandwich!

I occasionally bring up chiasmuses during scripture study and had once described it that way. Archie and everyone else get it, but Linus has been perpetually confused. Finally, was able to draw him a chart after Archie’s explanation. He gets it now.

Archie turned nine! He’s now lived half his life in Portugal. As always, he was just thrilled to do anything on his birthday.

His car kit kept him and his brothers happy for quite awhile. Having his older brothers help is something Archie loves.

Archie (reading out loud): Caution. That’s the battery brand.

He, Ruby, Penelope and Woo went out to lunch for birthdays. (Penelope’s birthday lunch was long over due.)

Archie’s birthday dinner didn’t turn out perfectly, but he was happy anyway.

I went to a different store than normal and accidentally bought mini burgers and maxi buns. I’d also bought a new pan for the rice pudding and because we’d never used it before, gauged the cooking time wrong. It was a little under done, but we threw in some cooked rice Herbie had made in the morning, and it was okay.

We watched a virtual tour of Carthage jail. It was wonderful. Possibly the best one yet.

Woo (pontificating during Come Follow Me): blah, blah, blah Zeus—

Someone: Who’s Zeus?

Penelope (in a know-it-all voice): Don’t you know? Dr. Zeus!

We tried out some new beef sticks. We laughed about its claims of “noble mould” on the packaging.

Ruby took a big bite and chewed carefully. “This reminds me of Uncle Tyson’s wedding.”

Wednesday we all drove down to Lisbon. It would be Linus’ first time doing baptisms in the temple. Herbie’s first time performing baptisms. And Ruby’s second time as a 17 year old (Herbie reminded us.)

Moses had carefully coached Linus step-by-step from entering the doors of the temple to being confirmed. A concern was whether they’d have baptismal suits in Linus’ size. Another was whether the water in the font would reach to his neck.

Again, we were the only ones there. All other appointments had for some reason canceled. It was just our family and a handful of temple workers, who were excited about little Linus.

There was no XXS suit, although everyone thought there would be. Linus was dressed in an XS suit, which was gigantic on him.

Woo said the reveal in the locker room reminded him of the scene from Frog and Toad where Toad wears his swimming suit.

Linus (from inside the locker room): Don’t laugh.

And when he came out, Woo and Herbie chuckled (it was impossible not to) and Moses let out a laugh so loud, Woo feared it was heard throughout the temple.

All of the temple workers referred to the puffiness of Linus’ suit as “músculos.”

Woo baptized Linus first. The water did not come to his neck, but was below his shoulders. Ruby and Moses were witnesses. Linus had a wide smile on his face except for when he was wiping water out of his eyes.

Woo baptized Herbie, and then Herbie baptized Woo. I thought Herbie would be all confidence, but he seemed a little nervous.

I thought Woo would be the most difficult for Herbie to baptize, but he said it was Moses. Moses’ head didn’t go all the way under once.

Linus was a witness at that point, but it was the recorder and Ruby who pointed it out.

Moses was thrilled to be baptized by Herbie. He looked way more excited about it than Herbie, who I assume was trying to get it all right. Then Herbie baptized Ruby.

Archie had requested that we go to the Vasco de Gama park for his birthday, but Woo was tired of a eating celebration every other day, so we ran to Lidl to pick up a quick snack and spent a lot of time at the park until it was time to drive home in time to make dinner.

Archie made it to his Covid vaccination this week. Because of a mistake I made, we sat there for an hour longer than we needed to, but Archie was a champion waiter.

When I got my first vaccination the health workers were kind of rude, but by the time they were on the 7-9 year olds they were bending over backwards in their kindness. They played happy music, had a dressed up cartoon character dancing in the front, a lady blowing balloons and twisting them into shapes. Archie received compliments on his lack of reaction to getting a shot (I had done the same thing!!), and then he got to pick out his favorite sticker.

Someone complained about not having seafood for New Years, so Woo bought a giant tub of shrimp, that all the kids ate some of, but Penelope was the real shrimp lover, who helped Woo finish them off to the end.

Also, Penelope and Linus got their glasses! Penelope is happy about hers. Linus’ gave him a headache.

One day at the park it started to rain pretty hard. There was even some hail in some part of the park? I was afraid all the kids would be mad, but no one was. Ruby, surprisingly, had had an especially fun time. She kept asking Woo and me if we’d ever rode a bike no handed in a hail storm, and was pretty pleased that she had.

Covid cases here continue to rise, but deaths and hospitalizations are very low. About 90% of the population is vaccinated and 90% of hospitalizations are those who haven’t been vaccinated.

So… restrictions are actually being eased. The kids are going back to school on Monday. They won’t be required to test on the return, and will not be required to isolate from school unless being positive themselves.

And that’s our week! Hope yours was great!

Leaving Babylon Behind

noreply@blogger.com (Cheltz) — Sat, 01 Jan 2022 10:55:00 +0000

We had a nice Christmas. On Christmas Eve we read the Living Christ, Luke 2, Matthew 2, 3 Nephi 1… and the kids complained that we were staying up too late, and they wanted to go to bed.

So we were going to only sing one Christmas hymns, then two, but I think we ended up singing them all. The kids went right to sleep.

Per our Christmas tradition, during the day on Christmas Eve I wrapped all presents, but one (for each kid), and they placed them under the tree. They knew what everything was (all our usual Christmas snacks and one book for each that I’d bought over the summer, but hadn’t given out).

I tried to convince them that that was all there was. And if it weren’t for Woo, that would’ve been all there was. Woo had grabbed seven RC cars or drones or helicopters during a grocery shopping trip back in November.

The kids refused to believe me. First, I apparently try this trick every year, and also, I asked Linus for his “oh happy day” sack (I planned to throw them in sacks as soon as the kids were asleep and call it a night). So he knew something was up.

It ended up being the perfect amount of gifts and excitement. Usually it ends up being too big, even though we try to keep it down. I guess the secret is to feel completely under the mark.

Even Ruby, who got a note with her drone explaining a trade could be made, was excited about it (a complete surprise to us) and decided to keep it.

I did include a note for books from grandparents and 25€ from us (a lot of them spent some of that on rechargeable batteries). On Monday or Tuesday we got that figured out.

Ruby gave me a fuzzy hat that reminded her of Grandma Marva’s hat from the 50s (?) that I used to wear in Huntsville. She and Archie also made nice cards.

Penelope crocheted a small thing with our initial on it. To save time and material she dismantled her compass rose for four of them.

Most of the kids got each other little hot wheels cars.

Herbie and Moses additionally gave lots of service and sacrifice for their gift on Christmas Day. Herbie was especially excellent and noticeable.

Woo gave us all Christmas blessings. A tradition he started last year.

We had a baptism on the evening of Christmas Day, a primary girl turning eight.

Archie, Penelope and Linus gave the talks. Herbie held the camera to Zoom for relatives in Brasil. Penelope surprised us by singing a duet with the primary president. She sounded very nice.

We were a little afraid the baptism might be a super spreader event as it was originally announced to us as a party with like 50 people, but we were relieved that they’d followed the stake leaders’ counsel for gatherings this season.

There were about 30 people there, all wearing masks, keeping distance, and cake was handed out in little tinfoil packets to go.

We had an hour of church the next day. Moses stood up and sang a solo (The First Noel). It was very sweet.

The next morning (Monday) the kids ran off to the park with their new toys and returned looking very solemn.

Moses had flown his quadricoptor as high as it would go; he couldn’t see it. Nor could he control it anymore. It had flown from the park, over the neighborhood behind us, over our building, and fallen in the street in front of the dunes, where it was promptly run over by a car. It was totaled and a tough lesson for Moses.

We’ve done a few virtual tours. During the summer they were all done by sister missionaries. Now they’re all senior missionaries!

I personally prefer the senior missionaries. They’re all sweet, but a couple are awesome! One old guy at Liberty Jail had all the kids riveted for like 20 minutes showing nothing but a black and white line map.

We did finally get the five remaining passports. The embassy was dead and so was traffic. I guess everyone’s out and frantic before Christmas, and everyone’s relaxed and at home after Christmas.

Woo had taken Ruby, Herbie and Moses camping one night in the Pinhal over the summer, so he still owed Linus, Penelope and Archie.

Now was ideal as the weather’s been pretty nice and it’s still getting dark early. Woo asked if they’d be happy with a campfire and “late” night, as the sleeping and morning are the worst parts for him. They readily agreed.

Ruby, Herbie, Moses and I played Seafarers while they were gone. Herbie manned the youth music and all three felt like they’d been given a treat of a night too.

This will probably pain Woo a bit…

Herbie: Dad doesn’t like youth music. He likes… actually I don’t know what music Dad likes.

The others didn’t know either.

Herbie: He likes that music like he played when Ruby was a baby.

We have watched a bunch of old videos of Ruby as a baby in honor of her birthday. A couple have music playing in the background that Woo and I know, but the kids have no idea.

Sometimes Moses mixes up his name meanings.

Moses (about to win Seafarers): Yes! Israel!! Destruction is eminent!!!!

The three younger kids and Woo came home about 8:30PM. Linus, Penelope and Archie were all elated and smelled strongly of campfire and hotdogs.

Woo: I told scary stories about giant balloons popping (for Archie), and big, scary dogs (for Linus), but I didn’t have anything for Penelope. Nothing scares Penelope. Well, except H-E-double hockey stick. That scares Penelope. I tried to incorporate a little of that into my scary stories…

Woo got this as reward for his efforts.

“Good thing I wore two pants, Dad.”

“Why?”

“Because I peed my pants.”

We’ve been doing some cleaning. We found an old keyboard of Ruby’s in a closet that we handed to Penelope. She’s really loved it, figuring out all sorts of songs. She said yesterday that it was her favorite Christmas present.

One post Christmas order came in and we got a book shelf! All these books were previously living on the floor.

We’ve had some really nice family scripture studies lately in the book of Ether.

Arguing over chairs is a problem before scriptures for Herbie, Moses and Linus and sometimes Archie.

During one discussion, Linus surprised me by offering to give up his chair and sit on the floor. I never would’ve dreamed he do that.

The next day Moses, Linus and Herbie worked out a system themselves that they’re happy with and Moses happily sacrificed for a day or two until the system comes into effect.

We ordered glasses for Linus and Penelope before school started, but customs laws changed within the last year and the back up there has become even worse.

We learned their glasses had been sent back about a month ago (?). I looked for another online place that would sell discount glasses, but all of them were coming from outside the EU, so I never made any orders.

This week we finally just went to the optometrist and ordered them glasses. They cost six times as much, but they’ll be here next week.

Covid cases are extremely high and growing. Deaths are not exorbitant, and there are currently no plans to close schools… we’ll see…

We’ve had a tough morning today. Hopefully, we can keep everyone happy if we’re locked down again.

Herbie, Moses and Linus will be ordained this week. Linus is super excited to pass the sacrament and even more excited to do baptisms in the temple.

Herbie has been counting down the days until he can perform baptisms in the temple.

He wanted to baptize Linus, but so did Woo. I think it’s been agreed that Woo will baptize Linus and Herbie will baptize Woo.

And I think that’s our week! Happy New Years!

Merry Christmas!

noreply@blogger.com (Cheltz) — Fri, 24 Dec 2021 10:43:00 +0000

The last two weeks have been spurts of way too much, broken up by lulls of way too little.

Ruby turned seventeen! It started out a dull, rainy day, and sometimes we’re sad that Ruby doesn’t get a job or dating (or really any friend time outside of school—she did go out to lunch with her two best friends the last day of school—we were happy about that!) or a drivers license.

However, whenever I’ve prayed about it I’ve learned that I should trust in the Lord and because of the lack of some things, the kids will become experts in others.

She did a lot of reading that she enjoyed. Woo showed an episode of “The Private Life of Plants” that was enjoyed by all, and I saved the gingerbread houses for the Christmas activity for the day. She was excited about that.

I bought gingerbread house kits (hilariously called witches' houses in both German and Portuguese—Hansel and Gretel reference) from Aldi this year. They were by far the best gingerbread houses we’ve made here, due to the high humidity and lack of powdered sugar.

The problem was they only had four left. Ruby (and Penelope) immediately offered to make the sacrifice in return for another Christmas activity and treat. They’re good at making sacrifices.

But it was Ruby’s birthday and I know how she loves gingerbread houses. I negotiated a trade with Herbie for a Christmas lantern, almost a full bag of spiced biscuits and a can of peaches.

Woo spent a lot of time with the soldering iron this week. After many, many hours, he did manage to fix the printer.

He came into the living room where I was reading to Archie to tell me. The look on his face made my heart sink as it looked like something had gone terribly wrong, like someone had diedsa. But no, he was there to announce that he’d done it. The printer was fixed.

I prepared several pdfs to print names for baptisms that night, but didn’t print them. I wanted Woo to supervise, as he stressed that the fix was very precarious.

The next morning the cord to my laptop was split into two. It had been accidentally sat on by a child who shall remain anonymous.

All our electronic devices are getting pretty old, and all seem to be holding on through miracles. My laptop won’t start without being plugged in. Buying a cord would be extremely difficult.

Once again, Woo got out his tools and some nail clippers and his stubborn obsession with seeing a job through, and had the cord fixed in a couple of hours. We got all the names printed.

I was initially heartened to see that the prophet was going to put out a Christmas message. I knew it was going to appear to be nothing or like something I’ve heard a million times, and *could* mentally check off as “Oh yeah, I’m already doing that.”

But my first reaction (that I quickly recovered from) was disappointment. It was so short! (Also, I hated the idea the images gave me that I constantly have to be baking casseroles or doing yard work or visiting the hospital to bring people the Light of Christ!)

However, I had been prepared all day with the repeated message that faith proceeds the miracle.

I knew what to do. I immediately started the clip over, without the sound, paying no attention to the film, but frequently hitting pause as I closely studied the subtitles.

I came up with six calls to action in that short clip. I still had close to an hour until kids came home from school, so I immediately got to work, figuring out what those six calls meant for me.

Long story short, I ended up writing many, many personalized Christmas letters with my testimony of Christ. I started with Woo, then my children, and family and put the most effort in those, then worked out to the branch, friends, people we know here, the kids’ teachers and administrators, some people in the stake… It was exhausting!

However, I do believe it was worth it, and that I did what I was supposed to do!

A smaller thing we were led to do was go caroling as a family. That was also the right thing to do. Everyone was touched. Some very much so. In one place there were loud barking dogs in the neighboring yard, that suddenly stopped barking during the middle of the song, and stayed quiet through another.

When praying specifically about gifts for the kids (remember their Christmas is still currently VERY small), I remembered there were a lot of church history tours we still hadn’t done. They’d been too difficult to schedule during the school year. I immediately scheduled eight. One every couple days for the next two weeks.

And then there were a handful of smaller things to give good gifts and share the Light of Christ this Christmas.

Wednesday we had a baptismal appointment. We took everyone because later we had a dinner and white elephant gift exchange planned with a family, who had graciously brought me back some progesterone cream from the US.

The party was on, off, on and finally off. Which ended up being a good choice as they ended up coming home three hours late from the dentist, and our finished passport pick-up ended up taking far longer than we expected, and we only ended up with Archie’s. (We got an email the next day saying all the rest were now done.)

Woo was a trooper managing all the kids while Ruby and I waited in a small, fortified room in the embassy (listening to people with far more difficult problems than us in line ahead of us) and driving winding European streets with a headache.

The first day of Christmas break we slept in and I walked into Herbie and Moses’s room to find Herbie had cleaned his room very well, swept, done his chore, was reading his president Nelson talk for the day, and had inspired Moses to get off to a similarly good start.

Herbie is very good at knowing what needs to be done and doing it.

While not 100% perfect, Moses has continued to try to be his best in getting along with his siblings and preparing for Christmas as if Christ were coming.

He helped almost all his siblings find inexpensive gifts for each other and helped them wrap. He’s continued to deliver the secret Santa gifts, even as other kids get tired of it. He delivered them both himself once!

Vaccinations for Linus and Nelpea became available. Woo set up the appointment. I don’t have time or interest to research that stuff anymore. Woo didn’t have many misgivings and I simply said a prayer that if it wasn’t right, it wouldn’t work out. That’s always worked for me in the past :).

We completely forgot our appointment, and when we realized, for a second it seemed like it was the wrong thing. Woo was out running errands with Ruby and texted me at home. I got our documents together and drove to the health center.

We had a shorter wait than normal because we were so late, which was a good thing, because Linus had a terrible time waiting! He was standing, tapping stuff, wriggling, complaining, etc. He could not sit still!

He got his shot and then the nurse quickly put a bandaid on him. So quickly, she placed it below the needle puncture. We had to reapply it.

Archie has an appointment in two weeks. If it’s wrong, I’m sure it won’t happen :).

Penelope was finishing up her family history one day when she told me her eyes were acting weird. (Not vaccine related, but excitement related.) Ruby and I both recognized it as pre-migraine and had her lie down. She also ate an apple when she recognized she was hungry after a few minutes of lying down.

She walked slowly with me in the park while the other kids played and brought her mattress down to sit on while doing Christmas crafts.

I don’t think she ever got a bad headache and by late afternoon she was feeling well enough to go play in the park with Woo and the other kids while I made dinner.

Also excitement related, Linus had a bad night of sleeping. He did everything within his power to correct it the next night, and he has a special plan for Christmas Eve night.

Archie (proudly): “Israel” rhymes with “let god prevail.”

And it means that in Jewish.

Moses (praying): Help us to not play any ping pong but avoid all compliments… er, rude compliments…

We had a used string of Christmas lights someone in the branch gave us. Archie blew a fuse plugging them in one night.

Later, when the little kids were in bed, there was an argument that I had to go up and investigate.

Me (texting Woo): Archie was scared to turn off the fan up here… he thinks he has too much “energy” now.

Woo (working on his word play): Chelsey, but talks of botoxed oxen buttocks

Archie (holding a pink lady apple): I know why they’re called ladies! Because they’re big, and ladies are big!

Ruby set up an indexing group with her Woolley cousins. She very optimistically set the goal at 1 million names for 2022. Or so she thought.

Her cousin Caleb pointed out that she’d actually set the goal for 1 billion names. We all had a good laugh about that. After consulting with Herbie, they changed the goal to 35,000.

And that’s our two weeks. Or part of it. I hope you’re all having a wonderful Christmas!

Bottom of the Barrel Pictures This Week

noreply@blogger.com (Cheltz) — Sat, 11 Dec 2021 11:27:00 +0000

(The red cabbage I threw in the fried rice gave the whole meal a weird Halloween effect.)

Last night I remembered something that had happened to us that we had told the kids about, and I had told my mom, but I didn’t write it, and I don’t think we told anyone else.

Not quite a year and a half ago, before the start of the 2020-2021 school year, Woo and I decided on a plan to move back. It was a Saturday night and we had finally decided on something that we thought could work. It wasn’t going to be easy, and there were parts we weren’t looking forward to, but we were going to do it.

And the very next morning, Sunday, the stake president showed up in our branch. We had never met him before, and we knew he was going to ask us how long we were staying (they always do), and the whole meeting, I was fully determined to tell him that we were leaving as soon as possible.

He stood up to speak at the end and I didn’t understand a lot of what he said, but I had the conscience thought “safety.” And I had a feeling that was roughly: This man, the stake president, he holds the keys of the stake. I can trust him. He means safety.

Then after the meeting he met personally with Woo and I. It was kind of an amazing interview. It wasn’t really anything he said (because some of the things he said didn’t work for us—he spoke English so I got it all), but it was the feeling.

We did not tell him we were leaving immediately. We told him we didn’t know, because the Spirit in the room completely changed our hearts. Woo and I never spoke about our plan to leave again. We knew we were staying… for the time being.

Since then, there’ve been other opportunities to leave, but they’ve all felt empty after that very powerful plea to stay we got from the stake president.

We’ve also looked at several houses and apartments here (Woo and I looked at three this week), but they’ve never been right.

So we persist in a transient state, which is often very trying.

We have one more week until Christmas break. This school year has been MUCH better then last year (answer to prayers). I am not counting down day by day, but we are looking forward to the break.

Except that I am not prepared. We have hardly any presents (we’re usually done long before now). Also, we get three weeks off of school. (There’s an extra week to try to stem the spread of Covid.)

We have no idea how we’re going to spend that three weeks. We briefly thought of flying home, but since the extra week is a Covid measure, there are new travel restrictions and a host of other hurdles… Anyway, we’re staying here. I’m sure it will all work out :).

Moses was excited one evening because he got revelation that instead of only thinking of Jesus’ birth this Christmas, he should prepare as if Christ’s second coming were this Christmas. He’s been doing his best.

Woo came up with an analogy talking to Herbie that has been very effective at stopping bickering.

He said we’re playing dodgeball, not tennis or ping pong. Whenever anyone makes a remark that is contentious or distracting or not literally 100% true, we’re not trying to hit it back in a never ending back and forth, but we’re trying to dodge it and let it die.

Several kids have started including it in their prayers (please help us to play dodge ball not tennis), and it’s common for someone to mention ping pong, tennis, or dodge ball when there is a game of ping ping going on, and for it to die.

The current Seminary challenge is an indexing challenge and the ward or branch that wins gets a pizza lunch after a baptism session at the temple.

Whoever issued it must not have been aware of the current indexing situation in the stake, or maybe they did, but wanted to incentivize others while buying fewer pizzas.

Ruby and Herbie have been doing just what they always have. Here’s a screen shot of the family group Herbie started and is running. Look at his cute, encouraging note on the right hand side. (Lots of exclamation points!!! :)

Sometimes I think the kids aren’t making or reaching goals in anything worthwhile, and then I realize… oh, actually they are.

We recommitted to consciously making goals for Children and Youth about a month and a half ago.

This got Herbie started on learning programming in a better way than he ever has before. He works on it almost every morning before school (as his first class starts at 9:15).

And Archie started a personal revelation journal, and Penelope sent interview questions to Grandma Sandy, and Moses is reading all of Elder Bednar’s talks. These are all good things that wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t sat down and talked with them about it.

But otherwise, all the kids really are forming their own goals in all the areas. We just don’t write them down anywhere.

For example, Penelope and Archie are working on a book together—“How to be a Princess.”

Penelope is working on the story. Archie is doing the illustrations. They do a lot of giggling at times.

Linus now loves indexing, for example. He looks forward to it everyday and proudly announces his progress at the end of each session.

He had problems at the beginning, none of his batches would actually submit, but he’s figured that out now, and was super pleased to finally pass Nelpea in the numbers.

Ruby didn’t go to the temple with us this week because of a cold that gave her congestion. It wasn’t Covid, but she didn’t sleep well that night and it was one of the symptoms they ask you to stay out of the temple if you have. She’s over it now.

Woo’s been on a photo labeling kick, frequently calling kids over to help identify kids and people in photos from our past. I think they all enjoy it.

And that’s our week! Hope yours was great!

December

noreply@blogger.com (Cheltz) — Sat, 04 Dec 2021 12:11:00 +0000

In January it will be two years since Woo got the revelation for us to overcome contention and rudeness. We’ve come a long way. I started out wanting to overcome contention and rudeness, but as time went on, I learned more about what truly eradicates contention and rudeness.

We’ve overcome a lot of things (some of it not fun), while my goals and prayers for my family keep stretching higher and higher as I learn something new.

They’re pretty high now. My tiniest prayers are answered almost immediately (the wind changing when cigarette smoke or exhaust gets blown into my face, for example), so I know that my Heavenly Father is hearing and answering me.

And we keep on keeping on.

One evening we were reading 3 Nephi 19, when Archie raised his hand and said that what we were reading reminded him of Moroni 2.

We questioned that it had much of a connection when he couldn’t tell us why, but had to turn to Moroni 2. And then when he started reading Woo and I smiled at each other. It was an exact match and perfect addition to our discussion. Thank you, Archie for knowing Moroni so well.

Ruby and Herbie had another super seminary activity on Saturday. We thought Ruby would have a better time if they road the bus with the other kids and we weren’t there.

(Couldn’t happen last time as it was here.)

[edited]

(Ruby and Herbie are directly behind the templar knight)

Woo did a lot of extra driving and wrangling and texting to meet the bus coming from Oeiras and heading to Tomar. The kind of thing neither Woo nor I enjoy doing, but he did anyway.

The bus passed the pick up point the first time, and Ruby was apparently unhappy about that, but she ended up having a great time. She says she hung out with a boy that always hangs around Moses at stake activities even though he’s 16, and his sister. We’ve never known his name until Ruby hung out with him: Leonel.

Herbie also had a great time. It’s unclear who he hung out with. Ruby, mostly? Occasionally some other kids? It’s possible to just mill around in the big group of kids. There’s one leader he also really likes from boys camp.

Linus said there was nothing to do and went up to his room, where he folded some paper and figured out how to make a Christmas tree. (He had been inspired by this little tree his primary teacher made.)

Everyone was pleased with his work and the next day, Moses taped sheets of paper together to make a wider base and used Linus’ technique to make an even bigger Christmas tree for us.

Herbie took up juggling. He’s gotten Moses and Linus on board. Woo gave them some expert advice a couple of times. The kids were surprised he knew how! He helped Linus move that difficult step from 3 to 6. Moses can do 15, and Herbie’s in the 60s.

Penelope often talks about tests as if she’s worried about how she did on them, and then comes home and says she got a 5 (the highest grade) and is completely surprised.

Thursday she said she had a test in music, ran into Ruby’s room to play the piano for a few minutes to “study.” And again pulled off a surprising (to her) five.

Linus (trying hard to control his language): Archie, if you don’t stop, I’m going to… kiss you!

(Warming up to his threat): If you don’t stop, I’m going to kiss you! On the lips!

It was a highly effective threat and had the added bonus of making Linus smile and forget what he was mad about.

And that’s our week, hope yours was great!

Thanksgiving at the Embassy

noreply@blogger.com (Cheltz) — Sat, 27 Nov 2021 12:05:00 +0000

First of all, there’s a correction from last week on the kids here not knowing their own schedules. Herbie says that they know, but are constantly asking each other as a way to make conversation.

Something that has completely eluded Linus, who would never dream of asking anyone anything he already knows for the sake of conversation :).

We had our embassy appointment this week. It was a sacrifice for Archie who cried the night before.

He was winning in behavior points at school, five points ahead of Matilde (who won last period), and missing school one day meant she would likely gain back that five points on him. (He was only ahead because she’d missed a day earlier in the period.)

He had a bad night at scriptures, which was obnoxious until I talked to him and found out why he wasn’t feeling well. I explained why we had to go to the embassy and why he needed a passport. He agreed it might be more important, and he felt much better.

I was kind of looking forward to being surrounded by a bunch of Americans. We saw dozens of people, but only two of them were American.

The embassy was guarded very heavily by a Portuguese security company. There were Brazilians waiting in the room with us (one child had been born in the US). One guy behind the desk was actually from Peniche.

Ruby was talking to me, told me the couple behind us were Brazilian, then leaned over and asked them in Portuguese if they were Brazilian. She abandoned me, and about thirty seconds later I heard her talking about the gospel, which the women was very interested in talking to Ruby about. Ruby spent the rest of the wait there talking to the woman, and left with her number and lots of ideas for further contact.

Ruby is such a natural missionary. I’m often amazed.

We anticipated that getting to the embassy would be a little stressful. We’d never been there before, didn’t know where to park, didn’t know how bad traffic would be, and we had to leave much too early.

Woo drove us perfectly to the pin I’d dropped when I looked ahead of time for a place to park. There were a few instances of slow traffic, but nothing too bad. We got out of the car. I thanked Woo and told him it hadn’t been nearly as frustrating as I’d imagined, and at that moment a security guard stopped us and told us we had to move the van. We’d parked in the Brazilian embassy’s parking spots.

Woo offered to find parking alone while I took the kids on ahead, through security and started.

He found a parking spot two or three blocks down and I’d only just gotten started handing in applications when he came in.

We were there about two hours? With everyone being quite pleasant and patient. Woo talked a bit with a man from New York who was in Portugal for a week and had had his passport stolen. (Some one broke the window in his rental car.) He also was surprisingly pleasant for having to spend a couple hours of his vacation at the embassy (and who knows how much time with the police and car rental company…)

When we walked out of the embassy a lot of the kids were for driving straight home, but Woo was in an exploring mood, and suggested we walk around, so we decided to make the day our Thanksgiving vacation.

The zoo was nearby, and we were able to see crocodiles, zebras and many birds in the front entrance park. There were four peacocks just hanging around the McDonalds.

After lunch (at Lidl), we went to our favorite park by the temple. When we first got there, we had the pump track all to ourselves, and it never got too crowded.

Herbie stayed there the entire time and would’ve stayed longer. He and Woo loved it, but Woo wished he were in better shape. Apparently, it’s exhausting. Herbie did no complaining. He just kept going around and around and around.

Linus preferred the skatepark, which only had one or two other people on it. Unfortunately, one of those people was always smoking and Linus left because of it.

The bar park was most kids’ favorite. Under the bars is super springy poured rubber. It really is nice to walk on. Moses took off his shoes and dribbled a soccer ball in and out of all the posts, bounding with every step.

Thanksgiving day was a usual school day for us, but I decided to make a roast, mashed potatoes and gravy and two pie-like items for dinner.

Pie crust has always been a struggle since we moved here. I don’t have the right tools, the dough always ends up too moist, and I don’t make it often enough to get it right.

I got frustrated in a way I haven’t in a long time, and considered crying and maybe throwing the dough, but said a prayer instead. I managed to make two “pies” in cookie sheets that weren’t disasters, and that the kids and Woo all loved, Linus especially. At least he was the loudest about it.

The day before the embassy I had a lot to prepare. Penelope came to my rescue by washing several potatoes, spearing them and throwing them in the oven.

She was very, very pleased to have practically made our baked potato dinner all by herself.

Many Portuguese people compliment the kids’ Portuguese. It appears that foreigners speaking with native or near native accents are rare. I’ve even had people tell me that other Americans have lived here, but their kids don’t sound like our kids. (Maybe because they often put their kids in the international schools, not straight into the public schools?)

After our trip to the embassy, I wondered if any of them could actually pass as Portuguese. In Archie’s opinion only Penelope could.

I think it’s universally agreed upon that Penelope speaks the most Portuguese Portuguese in the family. And that I speak the least Portuguese Portuguese :).

Moses was under strain a lot of the week. He’d ordered a new pair of shoes and a watch from Decathlon last week. Normally our Decathlon orders come very quickly, sometimes even the very next day.

There was a false alarm on Saturday, all day on Monday, and finally the package came on Thursday during Moses’ lunch break, but at the very end, on his way out the door, when he was already running a bit late and didn’t get to open it.

We've been through our President Nelson talks one time, and are reading them again (per the invitation). Woo is taking a week off of surfing for his sacrifice to the Lord (The Hope of Israel--not a conference talk, but a bonus talk I printed for the packet). He's doing indexing instead.

And... here's a picture of my buzz for those who've asked.

And that’s our week. I hope yours was great!

Christmas

noreply@blogger.com (Cheltz) — Sun, 14 Nov 2021 14:31:00 +0000

About two weeks ago my morale was sinking. At dinner I said something along the lines of, "Can’t I have a Christmas tomorrow?"

"Or maybe my invitation to Hogwarts can come tomorrow?"

Which Ruby scoffed at as I’m forty-four, not approaching eleven.

“They want me to teach.”

She shrugged.

“Muggle studies, I guess.”

And the very next morning I DID receive a Christmas present. I learned that Sister Cordon and Sister Porter were coming to Lisbon, and we could listen to them speak in person. I was immediately excited, and even more touched when I realized that it seemed like a special little present just for me after my plea the night before.

I did a lot of things I don’t normally do, or don’t think are worth it, or that I know are going to be exhausting, or that are going to produce a day or two of fall out from the kids to get my present.

Ruby, Penelope and I went to the women’s meeting Friday night. I also gave rides to three branch members and a baby. It was a late night for us, and I had a handful of surprises driving around an unknown European town in the dark while being shouted instructions in Portuguese, but overall we had a good time.

Ruby, Penelope and I had fun dressing up and having a girls night out, and I assume the boys had fun too. Woo let them all stay up a bit later and showed them some clips. Also, they ate some candy.

For me, it was such a treat to hear good talks in ENGLISH, where I understand every word and every thought and expression. There was a sentence or two just for me.

There was a meeting for children and youth and their parents on Saturday at 4 pm. We already had a temple appointment on Saturday for baptisms at 9 am, so we planned to hang around Lisbon until then.

This was, of course, a bit stressful. We had to get up just as early as a school day and get ready for the temple and a day in Lisbon.

The reception building near the temple was closed (it always is when there are visiting authorities… I think they use it for meals and rest…), but we arrived just when the stake president was walking into the stake center, so there was a safe place for Linus, Penelope and Archie to wait.

There were many people in the baptistery, so they only allowed us to do ten names, but I was a witness, sitting by the recorder, with a stack of names in my pocket. Whenever anyone didn’t have ten names, the recorder would turn to me, and I would supply him with however many names he was short, and I think we did the usual amount of names, maybe more.

We were there with branch members who also officiate in the temple every time they go, so we took their daughter with us to the park until they got out at lunch.

Ruby was, of course, a good friend to Mariana, helping her to not feel too out of place in a group of loud and crazy Americans.

The park was crowded, but there was still fun to be had at the skate park, bar workout area, and (everyone’s new favorite thing), the pump track.

Except Woo fell and got a painful scrape on his hand that bothered him for the rest of the day.

Ruby and Moses asked two kids with a ball if they could play basketball with them, and the kids agreed. The kids said they were from Russia, but that didn't seem right. They simply said, “It’s a long story... during the Cold War... ” so talking could end and basketball could be played.

Herbie joined them a few minutes later, and when I went to take pictures he was smiling.

I called, “Herbie! Aren’t you traveling?!”

He smiled even bigger and put a finger to his lips.

I tried again, “Herbie! You’re traveling!”

He laughed, shook his head and said, “Shhhh!”

I gave up.

There was trouble waiting for Mariana’s parents. Our kids were hungry and jumping around the temple grounds (and getting increasingly grouchy). We were making security very nervous. They frequently kept tabs on us, and in one instance told us they didn’t want the kids to get hurt. (They weren’t climbing on anything, just being antsy and jumping around.)

Woo finally came up with the wonderful idea to leave Ruby with Mariana and the rest of us go to the Lidl for lunch.

That took some time, and we all were very hungry when we returned to Ruby. My plan had been to eat in the temple parking lot (I had seen people do it during the open house, and there is a somewhat secluded upper part), but when we entered the temple grounds, two security guards strode purposely behind us, and I knew they wouldn’t let us.

We kept right on walking through the temple grounds and out the gate, onto a small alley.

The alley wasn’t the ideal spot for a picnic. Woo had to steer the kids away from a crack pipe that they thought was a pen, and there was nowhere to sit.

Linus was especially grouchy. And loud. And shouting. Archie joined in. Ruby did some complaining. (Moses and Penelope were goodnatured 95% of the time.)

The thought flickered across my mind that maybe this had been a mistake. This meeting would be a disaster. We still had to take all our food back to the van, get back into the stake center to change our clothes, read scriptures as a family, and get everyone settled into the meeting. I was sure there’d be trouble with the security guards at some point, maybe even the second we tried to come back in the gate.

Woo kept his cool and complimented and kept the peace. I got a little grouchy, which moved Ruby to repentance. We came upon the idea of having the kids act as spies to tiptoe to the van, which they did pretty well.

They calmed down quite a bit, and also there were a lot more families milling around. We hardly stood out anymore, and the security guards forgot about us.

We found a spot on the other side of the temple and were just about to start to sing, when members from our branch approached. We sang anyway.

We sang “I’m a Child of God.” Penelope and Archie stood in front because they were practicing. (They had the special musical number on Sunday.) It was very nice.

Fearing the branch members would want to chat until the meeting started, I immediately told them we’d just started our family scripture study and they smiled and nodded and walked on. Whew.

We were threatened a couple of other times, but finished our scripture study on the temple grounds and walked back to the stake center. We were all in much better moods.

We’d been in and out of the stake center a couple times, but this time we had to show our vaccination certificates and disinfect our hands (we always wear masks in public buildings).

We don’t sit in a regular chapel very often, but we all remembered that we walk straight to the front. Also, I was concerned with Penelope being able to see. Her new glasses still haven’t arrived. (Customs, we believe. Customs laws were tightened even more since Covid.)

The center front seats were taken, so we tried the side. There was a scuffle for a few minutes where we at first thought we wouldn’t all fit, then several rearrangements until everyone was happy. The meeting started.

Sister Porter asked for comments several times, and we were right by a microphone. Archie, Linus, Ruby and Penelope each went up at least once. Nobody said anything profound, but it was fun for them, and Archie was upset once when Linus got to the microphone with his answer first, but it didn’t last long.

I believe it was a wonderful meeting for everyone.

After the meeting, our boys surrounded Sister Cordon’s husband. Ruby helped Penelope brave the crowds for the bathroom. Woo and I ducked as we realized we were in way too many people’s pictures, but also we were kind of trapped in our row.

Suddenly, Sister Cordon was talking to me.

"Who are you guys??"

I said the most enlightening thing possible.

"Um, we’re Americans."

Then the visitors were whisked away (I'm sure it all is exhausting for them), and we almost made our escape, but found a few more people in the stake and branch we had to talk to.

We left later than we wanted. I drove us out of the crowded (with people, not cars) parking lot (tires squealing, like they always do for the first 30 seconds of any drive), and from the passenger seat Woo handed out breads and fruits and carrots and waters (leftovers from our Lidl lunch) for dinner.

Woo and I missed half of the leadership meeting getting kids home and in bed.

Woo (when it was over): I hope they have a recording. If it was all that good we missed out!

And that was our weekend. Of course we’re all kind of tired. One little fun thing from our week was when Moses came home after completing his music class assignment.

It was basically karaoke. He tried out several youth songs and picked his favorite at home.

When he came home, he was obviously walking on clouds.

“I could do that every day!”

So I guess it went well.

And that’s all. Hope your week was great!

Starts and False Starts

noreply@blogger.com (Cheltz) — Sat, 06 Nov 2021 16:15:00 +0000

Woo (drinking the leftover currant berry sorbet mixed with soda that’s sat around the house

for over a year): I feel like I’m at a wedding reception.

Herbie: at MY wedding reception we’re going to have kangaroo, ostrich and snails!

Woo: I hope you’re planning on paying for this—

Herbie: And everyone has to have two snails!

Woo: This doesn’t sound like a wedding reception. This sounds like a dictatorship.

Herbie: Okay. Everyone only has to eat ONE snail!

[edited]

Monday was actually a holiday, so no school. We had a branch activity, which went better than expected. At least better than past family history activities (from my and the kids’ perspectives).

Monday night Moses’ teacher sent an email: don’t send kids to school until I know for sure!

Tuesday morning, Linus started online class, and Herbie happily returned to school.

He was back two hours later. His DT had run into his second class and sent everyone home immediately; they weren’t supposed to be there. He was not happy about that, and there were some rumors that everyone in his class would have to be retested.

Linus diligently attended online school. Moses was unable to log on until Woo came home from the post office (wrong wetsuit is finally on its return) and did it for him in a second.

Herbie had virtually nothing. Maybe one or two emailed assignments?

Tuesday afternoon Linus got a certificate from the health department saying he was in isolation until Thursday. Luckily, he’d already been to church, the activity, numerous stores and the park several times after he tested negative and before we knew that.

Tuesday evening Moses’ teacher said class would start Wednesday. A couple hours later he sent a longer email with several options, but it still looked to us that Moses would be returning on Wednesday. He’s vaccinated and tested negative.

Wednesday Moses and Nelpea walked to school together, but Moses was home two hours later. He’d been the only kid in his class to go to school, and his second period teacher sent him home to do school online with everyone else.

His first class was PE, with the teacher who’d tested positive and started this whole thing. He was already back in school, and he and Moses played badminton, basketball and soccer (in the gym, with another class on the other side).

Wednesday afternoon we finally heard from someone for Herbie. He could return to school on Thursday. We got official word from Linus’ DT that he would start on Friday.

Wednesday evening we received Herbie’s official isolation statement from the health department, his isolation had ended on Tuesday.

Woo brought home “a casserole” from a member who recently got a job at a restaurant. He put it in the fridge and reminded me to heat it up for dinner.

Neither of us looked at it, but Woo was pretty excited. As fish is so prominent here, I had my doubts and prepared another, easy meal as a back up while the tinfoil package heated in the oven.

It was lucky I did. The “casserole” ended up being a pan of assorted seafood leftovers, and it had been frozen, which neither of us knew, so it was still cold. Woo made a valiant effort to eat a few things, but they weren’t very good, and the whole thing ended up in the trash. It was sad for Woo, who’d gotten his hopes up.

But, in good news, by the end of the week he was in possession of the correct wetsuit.

Ruby had an excellent missionary week, again. She always talks to an inactive sister whenever she sees her around town, and Ruby always invites her to church or an activity or whatever.

Last Sunday this sister came to church for the first time in three or more years? She just popped in for a few minutes, but she got a welcome from everyone, especially Ruby.

There was a lady sitting outside the church for a lot of sacrament meeting. Woo thought she was listen to the music. He sent Ruby out to talk to her, and Ruby did. We could see her through the window, talking to the lady and another guy who happened by.

There was a downs girl sitting by herself in the temple baptistery. She was sitting by her mom (I think) when we first arrived, but then her mom left. The girl gave me a big smile and wave, as we’d previously “met” in the locker room just minutes before. This intrigued Ruby and she was soon sitting by her, keeping her reverent and occupied for the rest of our time there.

Penelope went to school alone a lot. Usually I walked with her, but sometimes Woo. I drove her and Ruby on a rainy day, but most days, the downpours happened when none of us were outside and cleared up when we were. (I had prayed for this.)

Penelope seemed to adjust to the time change best. I think this is something she always does. I have written in my blessing list for Wednesday that Penelope was cheerful ALL day long, and also that she was the only one (for the whole day).

Archie was excited to have a family history unit in school immediately following our family history activity. He told his class that he sometimes did family history on the computer. He filled out a family tree with his parents, siblings, grandparents, his aunts and uncles and all his cousins, and was confident he’d have the largest family tree.

Archie had a few unhappy days when a new kid joined his class. At first he was excited and tried to be the new kid’s friend.

But then he came home upset occasionally and one night he burst into tears telling me that the new kid was “ruining my relationship with Junior!”

Junior is one of Archie’s favorite friends and the new kid wouldn’t let Archie play with him. We said a prayer together, and Archie hasn’t mentioned it since, nor come home from school upset.

Last week in the temple baptistery, Woo baptized a young man who was from an area that Woo had opened as a missionary. That was kind of a fun moment for him.

Which reminds me that while being baptized Moses goes under in a new and surprising way every time. This makes Woo and I smile, and when we mentioned this to him, he shrugged and said something along the lines of: well, I’m being baptized for a different person each time.

I filled out and printed forms for the kids’ passport renewal and also printed vaccination certificates for everyone who has them. We have no plans to go anywhere, but it made me ridiculously happy anyway.

Woo and I walked into the temple planning on doing our scheduled iniatories, but they told us we could do endowments. It was a pleasant surprise. They've opened up a few more seats every session. Now we only need a better day for baptisms.

And that’s our week! I hope yours was great!

Covid Strikes Again

noreply@blogger.com (Cheltz) — Sat, 30 Oct 2021 15:25:00 +0000

Just when I’d almost forgotten about Covid and was feeling like this would be a pretty standard school year, a PE teacher at the middle school tested positive.

We got an email from Liney’s DT informing us that he was to stay home until we were contacted to go in for testing.

Later that night we got another panicky email without name of teacher or student, from a general school account.

Since Moses has the same PE teacher, we figured it was from his DT. It was.

Linus was excited; he’d prayed the night before for a day off of school, but he was thinking more of a trip to Lisbon to the US embassy for passport renewal (which Woo and I’d been discussing).

Moses was not happy, and assumed the worst.

Halfway through the morning Herbie surprised us at the door. His class had been let out immediately as news had come in that a boy in his class (the PE teacher’s son) had also tested positive.

So we had Moses, Herbie and Linus quarantined at home for three days. They weren’t able to be tested until Friday afternoon and were very restless.

Although, Herbie and Moses improved as time went on.

Linus had online school Thursday and Friday. Moses discovered belatedly that he did too. Herbie had nothing.

Ruby, Penelope and Archie went to school as normal.

I played Seafarers once a day with Herbie, Moses and Linus and read 101 Dalmatians (which we all found surprisingly delightful) and Rangers Apprentice 4 out loud when everyone was home for lunch.

Our biggest concern was that we had a temple baptism appointment scheduled for Saturday morning. We were not contacted immediately with a testing time, but did eventually learn that they’d all be tested Friday afternoon, which was theoretically enough time to get test results back.

We did get them all early Saturday morning—negatives. So we were safe for the temple appointment. (Of course we were praying for that.)

After the temple, all the kids went to the park to play soccer. After about half an hour it began to pour rain, but they didn't care, they just played and played and played and played and played.

Herbie and Moses head back to school Monday because they’re vaccinated, but Liney’s class is a bunch of eleven year olds. We think they have to be out 10 days. But at this point none of us know when they’ll start counting that ten days. He may be another week at home, even though it’s already been nine days since they had contact with the teacher who tested positive.

Penelope had a few sad moments. One, where I dropped her off at school and she quickly ran out crying to tell me that she’d had her art class that morning and she’d missed it. (Her teacher had never once come all year, and everyone had permission to come in late, but suddenly there was a teacher, and while most of her class got the message the day before, we did not.)

I gave her a big hug and explained it would be alright. One absence is not a big deal. (The kids are all very concerned with any absences. The school must make a big deal of it.)

The other was when she discovered right before going to bed that she did not know where her music assignment was. Again, I explained she would feel better and think better in the morning and likely come up with a solution. We said a prayer together; she calmed down, and yes, she had a solution in the morning that worked perfectly.

Ruby was a little disillusioned at the seminary get-together last Saturday. I don’t know what it was exactly, but almost like she’d been expecting dozens of kids just like her, and instead found dozens of kids a lot like everyone else. It also might have been that she wasn’t feeling great that day.

She said she felt out of place, and I wonder if she’ll have a similar feeling in college. At least until she has time to really get to know people as individuals.

That hasn’t stopped her from participating in morning seminary. Sometimes Ruby and Herbie are banned from answering too many questions. We can hear them laughing and having a good time with each other. Not necessarily with the rest of the class. They’re possibly the only other kids in the class so comfortable with being up that early in the morning.

We saw one of their seminary teachers (there are three) today at the temple. He's their favorite "crazy" one.

The temple was crowded (there were two buses in the parking lot), and every one had family names they wanted done. Some with large stacks of names that they were asking all the rest of us to help with, even though we had our own stacks of names.

I ended up praying that somehow all of us would be able to get all our names done, either our personal schedules to open up or the temple's schedule to open up, or really anything. I'm not picky about what the miracle is, it just seems that some other solution is needed here.

Archie was more than happy to have all his brothers home whenever he was home. He read his President Nelson talk alone one day because he wanted to read it earlier than I was available. Then he immediately wanted to read another.

Woo asked someone else to plan the branch party for November, but ended up doing a bunch of the prep work himself. The reason was that when the question was asked, “Who can do this…?”

He immediately had said, “I can!”

He regretted that later, as he’d originally been trying to delegate.

He also manned repeated phone calls from the school and the health center to get all of Herbie, Moses and Linus’ info straight. (They still had Linus' phone number wrong and Moses' email wrong... It's a miracle we got their test results back... )

Woo was looking forward to getting a package on Friday--a new wetsuit, but the company sent the wrong one, and now it's turned into an obnoxious effort on his part. He didn't take the wetsuit to a place that could ship it back the first night because of a storm. He tried a place today after the temple, but they won't take it. He has to take it to the post office, which won't be open until Tuesday.

Rain started on Friday. I wasn’t sure that Ruby had taken an umbrella, and I dashed out the door to meet her on her walk home and bring her one.

I shouldn’t have worried. I saw her at the end of the street, skipping a little, then tossing her umbrella up in the air, then spinning it and spinning it, clearly little more than a little girl having fun in the rain.

Most of these pictures are not from this week. We went to a park in Caldas for our anniversary (which was a Saturday), and had the missionaries in the Pinhal a week or so ago.

Here’s another thing from last week: Kangaroo waterfall salad.

We’ve never liked the beef here, but Woo snatched us up some kangaroo and ostrich steaks (some of the luxuries offered for the holidays at the Lidl) and also had a hankering for beef waterfall salad… it had been soooooo long since we’d had it…

Woo and I each had a taste of the kangaroo immediately after cooking and it was a bit strange, but doused in lime juice and fish sauce (and everything else in the salad) it was quite nice. The end.

And that’s our week. I hope yours was great!

Beautiful Weather

noreply@blogger.com (Cheltz) — Sun, 24 Oct 2021 17:35:00 +0000

I went to bed Sunday night feeling a little stressed that Monday was going to be a very busy day, and I’d be lucky to get it all done.

Then, Monday morning I read the invitation Sister Wendy Nelson had given in her talk that Sunday, and I dropped everything I’d previously planned to make a packet of talks for every single child (and Woo, who requested one when he saw them—I kind of wanted one too, but decided to stay digital). It took all morning. I did finish the other things too, but many of them waited until Tuesday.

When school started we were excited to see that all our temple baptism-aged kids had the same afternoon off to go to the temple. It was the same afternoon we’d gone to the temple before the pandemic. But when we looked at the temple schedule, it was closed that afternoon, and they had no plans to open at that time in the near future.

Woo, “When I was thinking of the kids’ schedules, I didn’t think the temple was the one that would be in the way!”

So we were left to schedule on Saturday, which is very busy, and we were only able to get one appointment for the kids for the rest of the year. Then after conference, every single endowment session on any day and at any time for the rest of the year was suddenly gone.

Part of our family fast for the month was for increased temple opportunities. In my mind, the solution was something along the lines of the temple changing its schedule or something even more drastic, like us moving, but the solution is never that.

We’ve had people invite us to their scheduled baptism sessions, and the temple contacted us to be the witness couple in an extra endowment session for temple workers (mostly women). My mind has also been opened to other, personal things, and suddenly walls blocking our way have become no walls at all, and we have increased our time in the temple.

Ruby was extremely excited about her packet and read something like 18 talks in the first two days. She took it with her to school and marked it all up, made all sorts of goals, and had overdone it by about Wednesday. Now she’s taking it more slowly, a talk a day like the rest of us.

I read Archie’s talk with him. We trade off paragraphs and he marks things that he likes. He enjoys it and sometimes reminds the other kids to read theirs before they do other things.

I should say we started by trading off paragraphs, but he keeps reading more and more and he read the whole last talk out loud to me.

Penelope’s class had their class elections. She was excited to be elected to secretary. Penelope has also spent a great deal of time writing backwards.

Some kid at recess to Penelope: What are you doing? Other kid before Penelope can answer: Probably writing backwards again, come on.

I finally had to tell her I wasn’t going to read anymore backwards-written repentance lists, and she hurried and whipped one out written correctly.

Linus got to work on his crocheted compass rose. His first effort turned out very badly, my idea for a second try was also a bust. Finally, we decided he could easily crochet four long, pointy triangles and connect them in the middle.

He crocheted a small square to attach in the center to cover the hole, and left that for the morning before school, which made for a stressful morning for him. He doesn’t usually do that, but Moses has come up with some new car race tournament that his brothers are all greatly involved in.

All brothers, but Herbie (who’s getting older and losing interest). During family prayer one night, Moses prayed for Herbie who was “dwindling in car races.”

When I came into their room after that, they were sitting on Moses’ bed together, pouring over Moses’ car race notebook with his spreadsheets.

Moses often uses scripture words when speaking English. “Inasmuch” and “heretofore” are some of his favorites.

All the kids are missing a lot of English slang.

Linus likes to say, “Yikes!” Which I think he got from the Hardy Boys? Anyway, all the kids say it now, and it feels like I’m living in the 50s when they do. For a long time Linus would also describe things as being “like a cow.”

Ruby, and I guess probably none of the kids, knew what “homies” were when talking to the Elders.

They do know Portuguese slang, though.

Archie was very excited to make a crown and wrap it (along with a rectangle of bright pink that Penelope had crocheted) as a birthday gift for his teacher.

Archie also got ahold of some heart post-it notes, wrote “I love you” on them and stuck them in assorted places for people to find them. He stuck one on the bottom of the stairs for Herbie to see when he laid down.

Herbie still sometimes makes lunch for everyone. He enlists his little brothers to set the table and put out napkins, and all the kids are excited to sit around the table eating a meal they worked on all by themselves.

You can't see the computer screen, but this is Herbie showing off 5,000 indexing batches + 5,000 review batches=10,000. A few minutes later he had 5,005+5,005=10,010. He was pleased with the pattern of the numbers.

Woo has been surfing a little more. Not as much as he once did, but more than he did over the summer. It’s still crowded in the water, and the waves aren’t always good, but he needs the exercise and diversion.

Our water bill has been in the landlady’s name all this time, but Woo had to change it to ours this week. It was promising to be an annoyance, but went better than expected.

Despite taking everything he might possibly need, he was, of course, missing a document that he needed, but the lady at the desk miraculously waved it, and he got to share the gospel a bit with her too.

Unable to find any at the grocery store this week, Woo whipped up a delicious marinaded olive mixture. After letting it cure in the fridge for a couple of days, we were all very pleased with his work.

This was a while ago, but Woo transcribed Archie reading the states out loud (most that he’d never heard of, and reading some letters as if they’re Portuguese)

MERRY-LAND
VOMIT? (Vermont)
ILLINOISE
MISS-EARIE - oh missouri
MICk-GAN
FLOR-AIDA
AWA (Iowa)
NEBER-ASKA
IDUH (Idaho)
ORZANA (Arizona)

Saturday we had a big group of seminary students from the stake here for a Super Saturday activity that all of us hung around with, and Woo and I ran a few errands for.

And that’s our week! Hope yours was great!

The Marquis' Son

noreply@blogger.com (Cheltz) — Sat, 16 Oct 2021 06:37:00 +0000

Last week Linus, Penelope and Archie had a primary activity at the stake center. They were very excited, and it proved to be everything they’d hoped for, I think. At least there were bouncy houses at the end (representing Utah at the end of their pioneer trek), and they were some of the last to leave them.

The stake center is an hour away, and someone in the branch asked for a ride. This would mean half the family would spend a dull and likely depressing Saturday without the other half. Woo let me decide.

It was a tough decision, but I decided that at this point the family’s need was greater. (Or at least I had a greater responsibility for their need), and other than greeting a few stake members before and after, the rest of us explored Oeiras. The Palace of the Marquis of Pombal was within walking distance, and we walked right in.

Herbie and Moses had fun imaging what the Marquis' son would do. Ruby reverted to her old grouchy-about-family-outings, but she thawed eventually.

There were a lot of workers sprucing the grounds up and a lot of tents up on the grass; they were obviously preparing for some event. Many workers looked at us strangely, but no one stopped us, and when we were done, we found that we were locked in. We never should been allowed in, but we escaped when a service vehicle entered.

(Admittedly, we’re not super familiar with machinery, but we always laugh at the ones that appear miniature or strange to us.)

Archie remembered he could make popcorn on the stove one lunch break and he’s been making that, which turned into him taking a baggy full of popcorn to school for a snack, which turned into him taking several baggies to school for his friends, which turned into him taking requests from the rest of his class.

He started the week feeling like the other kids weren’t interested in being his friend anymore, but he prayed about it, and this might have been the answer to that prayer.

Linus has a history project that he’s working with a friend on. They’re supposed to make a compass rose and there’s a contest between all the 5-7 grade classes.

Linus spent an afternoon with his friend planning in the library, and among other things, Linus is going to crochet part of it and his friend is going to make part of it from the traditional lace Peniche is “famous” for. I bet the judges will like that.

Moses has a “fun” thing for himself planned everyday of the week. Monday is his cooking day. Wednesday is not a fun day, but the day he does the bulk of his homework. Thursday is the day he plays soccer with one kid and Friday the day he plays with another kid (during school breaks).

Moses is getting tall. He’s as tall as Ruby and gaining fast on me. I guess maybe it’s been a blessing that we live in a place where our boys wear shorts all year long? We’re not constantly buying pants. When Moses does wear pants, they’re joggers, so they’re pretty flexible in length.

Penelope also worked on her compass rose, but unlike Linus, she did not ask for a pattern, or get a partner, or hold planning sessions. She whipped it all out in about an hour and was done. Penelope is definitely a speed over precision artist.

Penelope has enjoyed PE. She had a lot of fun playing table tennis. She has not done her first vaivém yet, but we are all anxiously awaiting to see how many laps she’ll get. It’s a hot topic amongst all the older kids. (Especially this year, when Moses stopped at 84 because someone told him he was at 94, and then Linus got 96 the next week!)

Penelope went on a quick shopping trip with Woo. It looks like they snuck in a peek of the beach and a trip up the elevator.

With Herbie in high school now, he and Ruby are sharing the school phone. I wasn’t sure how that would work, but apparently fine. Ruby’s only needed it once or twice, and Herbie needed it for the first time on Friday. They are also sharing the graphing calculator, and I haven’t heard of any conflicts yet.

Ruby has had a few online assignments that we’ve just printed out. She said several other kids in her class do this, and she prefers it.

Herbie started surf club again. He said he wasn’t going to do it again, and the night before he decided to. I think there will be competitions this year.

Woo went surfing in a new place a couple times with a few acquaintances. The first time was super gross as workers were sledging the bottom of the bay. The water was yuck and stunk. Woo was not impressed.

The second time he went with them and ended up there again, but this time it was more fun. Except he couldn’t figure out why both guys he was with were taking sooo much time, and being so indecisive until he learned that both their wives and children were out of town visiting the countries their wives families live in… they were killing time.

This week I realized that I’m the leader of the Relief Society, and I can actually ask the sisters to do stuff. I’ve been trying it out this week.

And that’s our week! Hope yours was great!

A Week

noreply@blogger.com (Cheltz) — Sat, 09 Oct 2021 14:18:00 +0000

This week seemed kind of quiet. Nothing big. Some good moments, some bad.

We watched conference, of course. We were also about ready for a grocery shopping trip, but I decided to stop by the store after dropping Nelpea off at school on Friday to get us through the weekend.

I was prepared with two backpacks and three large grocery sacks, so I happily filled the cart with apples, bananas, oranges, three packages of cherry tomatoes, two large butternut squash for Sunday’s dinner (I didn’t want to carry a bag of potatoes, but I don’t think the squash ended up being lighter), a couple cans of olives, about 50 rolls of assorted types, a stapler, 2 packages of spare staples, pants for Archie, 2 packages of our favorite Christmas cookies (that they were stocking for the first time), 10 frozen pizzas (our Saturday evening Conference tradition—your Saturday morning), and probably some other things I’m forgetting.

Long story short, it was VERY heavy, and I made it home, but it was extremely uncomfortable, I had to take a few rests, and I said a lot of prayers.

When the kids got home they thought I’d gone on a full shopping trip, and when I’d told everyone that I’d carried it all home by myself, there were lots of comments while eating an apple or sandwich about how I’d carried it home under extreme conditions, or lengthy gratitude prayers (by Moses, mostly) somewhat exaggerating the way the food had arrived in the house.

But, it was a good thing I’d bought so much. Everyone was so hungry and by Sunday evening it was all gone.

Conference was good, and gets increasingly easier to do as the kids get older. President Nelson’s talk has some interesting things to fast and pray about.

The school schedule this year is easier on our family, but I do a lot more walking. I spend significant time walking with everyone except Moses (and only a little with Ruby).

But it has been nice to talk to everyone more often in more of a one on one setting.

Linus likes to ask a lot of questions. Penelope and Archie and I sang “Hope of Israel” on our walk one morning because Archie wanted to memorize the words.

Moses is sleeping much better. Last year he had mornings free and school until 6:30 PM. I think it was difficult for him to unwind, and he had no pressing reason to get up and get going in the morning. Now he’s relaxed and tired enough when it’s time for bed. He’s going to sleep very quickly.

Ruby has been wanting to get her patriarchal blessing for several months. At first we were slow about it because we weren’t sure about her getting it in Portuguese, then there was another lockdown, then forgetting what to do, forgetting to get an interview… and finally! She had her recommend and could make the appointment.

She, Woo and I held a quick council on days that would work (the patriarch lives an hour away), and Ruby summoned her courage to make the phone call.

She returned with a funny smile on her face. The patriarch only took her name and told her there was such a large backup of people already waiting that he’d have to get back to her. And so it continues to not happen… :)

We had one day of no school this week (national holiday). Woo and Herbie went surfing in the morning, while Linus had a rough start. It was a dull, drizzly sort of day, and everyone wanted to read, but Linus wanted to go to the park.

But Woo and Herbie came home soon and we decided to go on a bike ride. A lot of kids were grouchy about that, but not Ruby! She used to be the grouchiest about this kind of stuff, but she was excited.

Woo spent some time in the basement pumping tires, aligning tires, fixing flats, and finding eight bikes that would function for a couple hours. Herbie helped. I helped, and Ruby tried to smooth things over with grouchy kids. Penelope and Archie were generally happy.

The chain on my bike snapped about fifteen minutes in. Several kids wanted to turn around then, but Woo volunteered to ride the broken bike, Ruby volunteered to tow him, and we went on a regular length bike ride, where by the end, all kids were having fun and were glad they’d gone (just like they always are).

Woo had some pain (arthritis and the tow cord being wrapped around his hand), so he rested when we got home, and I played Seafarers with five kids (Herbie read nearby and made occasional comments) until it was time to make dinner.

Penelope has a family member assigned to each day of the week where she tries to secretly serve them and be extra kind to them. She is burning through books she’s checking out from the school library.

Archie got revelation to play with a girl at recess that he often sees playing alone. He likes to race home from school, up the stairs, throw his backpack off and dash to the window so he can call to his classmates returning home more slowly on the sidewalk below.

Linus is working on a scripture case made out of cardboard and duct tape. Ruby introduced him to the idea, which is exactly the type of project he likes.

And I think that’s about it. I hope your week was great!

Personal Reference Email

noreply@blogger.com (Cheltz) — Sun, 14 Feb 2021 15:50:00 +0000

This was a quiet week. I started out not having anything to write about, but ended up writing a lot of details about our daily lives, so I guess this will be a personal reference email.

It rained a lot in the beginning of the week, leaving a giant puddle in the parking lot that the kids enjoyed floating “boats” on and playing Marco Polo.

We continue to refine our at-home routine. I have my 10 subjects that I read to the kids from for an hour total a day (20 minutes a subject): Poetry, History (The Story of Mankind), Literature (The Story of the Treasure Seekers), Geography (Japan), Biography (Columbus), Church History (On the Wings of faith), Old Testament, Shakespeare (The Taming of the Shrew), Natural Science, Temples (churchofjesuschristtemples.org), Biography (Washington)

I added a three question quiz at the end of each subject last week which has improved motivation a lot. The kids are actually upset if they miss something now. But a lot of the books are fun. We’ve really enjoyed The Treasure Seekers—lots of laughs—learning more details about Columbus and Washington is also enjoyable; our geography book has also been a hit.

Ruby was sad to miss the Taming of the Shrew for her online class. This was Ruby’s first week of virtual school and she spent some minutes after class was out Friday evening in bed crying. It is exhausting and uncomfortable, and some of the deadlines have been stressful. Friday is also the day with the most classes, and being at the end of the week is extra exhausting.

She felt better at dinner and for the rest of the weekend, but we are actively racking our minds and prayers for solutions for her. Maybe she just has to tougher. I don’t know :(.

Before Friday she had an enjoyable week, working on her own projects in the mornings before class. Her drawings are looking very nice.

Woo has been taking an hour a day also to show a documentary. He started the David Attenborough collection, which starts right at the beginning with the simplest forms of life.

Moses spent some time on our walk today closely inspecting flowers and mosses and telling me some things he’d learned over the week.

We don’t get the packets until next week, and Moses wasn’t doing enough work. Also, it was cloudy and dingy. He started to get bored, but improved later in the week when he stopped spending all his free time playing. On Friday he made some berry pancakes that made the apartment smell like a delicious donut shop.

Herbie and Woo went surfing everyday. They still complain that it’s crowded. Herbie said one day this week was the most crowded ever.

Woo got hurt spending a couple hours trying to fix a bike and also spent other hours missing snow. He does realize that probably all ski resorts have become just as crowded as the waves, and he mourns the fact that now everyone else is enjoying his cushy work-from-home lifestyle. It was a good 11 years 😊.

Here’s Woo’s foray into modern art.

Woman in repose: under a blanket

Linus had a great week. He went out of his way to play a castle game with Penelope and Archie for an entire morning. He doesn’t normally do that, preferring to hang out with his older brothers (or comforting Ruby if he’s been grouchy).

Penelope also left her coat back in the parking lot and he immediately volunteered to ride back fast and get it for her. It reminded me of when they were younger, and Linus was so kind to Penelope.

Penelope was the only one besides Ruby who had anything from the school this week. Building a castle from recyclables was one of her assignments. This is not the kind of thing she naturally does, so I was surprised at how excited she was about it.

Archie’s teacher was the most difficult to work with last year, before she finally agreed to help us, and she has been the most difficult this shutdown too. That was a day or two more stressful than I like, but things should be good now.

Archie’s English writing made big improvements this week, and his reading is noticeably better also.

He’s begun to get the hang of our family scripture study and always has things he’s learned (looking for answers to a specific question), while before he’d always say he hadn’t learned anything. A time or two he has gone to bed feeling really good.

We have over 20 questions like: how can I be less selfish?, how can I improve my learning?, how can I overcome pride?, what does Heavenly Father want me to be better at?, what question does Heavenly Father want me to ask Him?, how can I Hear Him better?, how can I improve my Sabbath day?, how can I use my time better?, etc.

This has really been good, as one person reads and we all concentrate on the question. All of us are taking notes and learning things. Rarely do we have kids not paying attention or distracting others. Many truly inspired things have been said by pretty much everyone.

This isn't really what I'd like to write, but I guess I’ll also talk about “command your children to repent.”

Many months ago I asked when we’d overcome contention and rudeness. I got an answer that I did not understand. A couple months after that understood that part of the answer was when the kids (also Woo and I, probably) would repent. Now I understand the answer was when I would command the kids to repent (however, I have no idea how long we’ll need to work on this.)

Anyway, what’s been working well is after evening scriptures having the kids go to their quiet place, and ask: what do I need to repent of today? Then ask: is there anything more? And again: is there anything more?

Then, I’ve asked them to write down anything they got about how they’ve treated anyone in the family. Then I go around and read it with them individually. For some reason, many of the kids don’t really repent well without this, and also I can tell if they’re sincere or not.

Herbie was really the leader here, catching the vision of it right away and humbling writing sincerely repentant things every evening. He’s not perfect yet, but he’s has become must less bossy. He has a special notebook that he keeps a running list in from day to day, also a special pink pen that he MUST use for this and also his scripture study notes.

Moses resisted passively for awhile, and we could tell he was just writing random stuff down, but he’s gotten it now. He writes big, long lists, all of the items on the list requiring some humility to write down, and he hands the paper to me with a smile.

Like Ruby said: Moses, don’t you know that repentance is fun?! And there have been nights where the kids have walked around to each other, apologizing for the things on their lists, and giving each other hugs, with lots of good feelings all around.

The kids have become more humble, and have stopped a lot of things they’ve done for a long time. They’re also learning what are sins and what Heavenly Father thinks they could be better at. Penelope once wrote on her list that she hadn’t complimented any of her siblings all day. I always laugh when there's something like "called Mom names in my head" because I can tell they're doing exactly what I hope they're doing, and writing it out a couple times seems to be all it has taken to be aware enough to stop.

I think this was a big reason why Linus started to be nicer to Penelope, for example. One night he wrote that he hadn’t told Penelope thank you for something nice she’d done for him. The next day he was willing to do nice things for her.

Anyway, I’m sure this is long enough. I hope you all had a great week!

A Bit of a Ramble

noreply@blogger.com (Cheltz) — Sun, 07 Feb 2021 14:54:00 +0000

We heard from all the kids’ teachers this week. I was so confident that the kids would be able to do packets again that I didn’t worry too much, but there did come a point where it was in question enough that I began to pray (but nothing near to the stress of last time!!). We did hear on Friday that Herbie, Moses, and Linus would be a go for the packets. Penelope and Archie have the same teachers and didn’t object when I answered that we’d like the same arrangement as last time in answer to their questionnaire, so I assume they’re good too.

We also got Ruby’s online schedule (she’s now in high school with completely different school administrators), and it was not horrible at all. Only 2 hrs a day (3 hrs on Thursday and Friday) in online gatherings (none of which disturb our family schedule), and the rest of the school day to be spent working individually on assignments.

However, during the course of my prayers for the packets and everything to work out, I began to wonder if there wasn’t something better for us out there. I’m doing my own stuff with the kids, but maybe there was more, an opportunity or something already prepared for us.

Really, if ever there was a time for the kids to be randomly selected for some surprising educational opportunity, now would be the time! When I suggested this to Woo (as a joke, of course) that maybe we’d soon be getting a notice from Kraft that the kids had been chosen to enter their prestigious school of the culinary arts for young chefs in New York City (not that I want the kids to be chefs, or for us to live in New York City, or that Kraft would really be the company with the prestigious culinary arts program...)

When I left the room Woo secretly sent me this email:

Dear valued mother:
You have been selected and your children to win. Yay!
Love,
Secret admirers

Anyway, our real hope is in fasting, and that’s what we’ve been doing today: fasting for the kids’ education.

Incidentally, the last time we fasted about the kids’ education we got the revelation to move to Portugal a few weeks later. It exceeded our expectations for what we were fasting about, but clearly the kids’ education needed to include many things beyond school work (which, while not perfect, I also think improved here). Still, time to fast about it again.

Ruby’s teacher (who begins all emails with URGENTE or MUITO URGENTE), informed us that the authorities were finally taking notice of Ruby’s class, and they were all scheduled for testing 13 days after the last day of class.

I was ready to walk her over, but Woo thought it was a waste of time and possibly even putting her at risk of infection, heading into a bunch of people who suspected infection. He texted the health official, who said that in his opinion Ruby should still be tested, but other than that they left us alone.

In the afternoons, we’ve returned to our old friend the parking lot. Ruby spent one entire time there hopping and skipping from one painted line on the looong crosswalk to the other. It was really quite cute and looked fun. Penelope joined her for much of the time.

Herbie keeps getting hurt. His hands are fine now, but his scooter slid out from under him in the park and he fell hard on his nerf gun on his hip. The nerf gun survived, but Herbie cried for a while and has cried a couple times since then when his hip gets knocked or he falls on it again.

Moses found his nerf gun and a handful of bullets, which is mostly annoying, but Woo has a stash of nerf guns and bullets that he keeps for special occasions. He took Herbie, Moses, Linus, Archie, and later, Penelope, down to the garage/basement for a nerf war. They all loved this, but no one more than Moses, who now wants only nerf guns for his birthday.

Linus turned eleven! He put on a pair of footy pajamas and wore them all day. I thought it was only for old times sake because footy pajamas were the ultimate comfort for him for many years. But I think he originally put them on to hide flip flops and several pairs of socks to make Woo and I think he’d suddenly grown taller for his birthday. We didn’t even notice.

Linus got a maze ball and he and his brothers did that most of the day, while his sisters started on the Hardy Boys set he also got.

Linus asked for rice crispy treats for his birthday, but we’ve only seen marshmallows here once. (We bought like 10 bags, and they were already long gone.)

And then, the day before his birthday, Woo and I went grocery shopping, and there they were! Two boxes of McKennedy marshmallows. (McKennedy is Lidl’s American cuisine brand. Lidl rotates through ingredients and foods from different nationalities every month or so. The marshmallows must be a new addition in the last year.)

We had cornflake treats, though, because while not impossible to find, crisped rice is rare and expensive. They tasted fine. Maybe better.

Penelope is the child most eager and willing to run an errand with Mom or Dad. She paid some bills and bought a few odds and ends with Woo. She biked to the pharmacy on a windy, rainy day with me. The first blast of air was not fun, but we got over it after that and had a good time.

Archie still writes anything in English exactly like he did 3 1/2 years ago, yet he writes full sentences, spelled correctly, in cursive, in Portuguese. He wrote out his own talks for the primary program, for example, without help and all correct.

Anyway, I’ve been trying to bring his English writing up to par this week by having him write in English for half an hour every day. He now understands that things he learned in Portuguese also apply in English: capitalize only the first letter of a sentence and proper nouns, indent the first word of a paragraph, etc. Also, cursive works in English too! His English spelling is very slowly improving.

One thing we’ve also noticed about the prevalence of cursive here is that the kids very rarely have a problem reading cursive in their indexing batches.

Woo took us all to Burger King this week. He was feeling good when he suggested it, then had a headache by the time we left (I don't know why Ruby's so mad...). Woo's headache lasted 3 days (?) and was unrelated to our Burger King trip. It finally started to get better after taking some ibuprofen (the purpose of Penelope’s and my trip to the pharmacy).

We were only allowed to use the Burger King drive thru, could not order drinks, and could not eat anywhere near the restaurant. We parked in the parking lot of a nearby grocery store and ate in the van. Luckily, we also had 5L of water and some cups in there too.

Anyway, sorry for the ramble. I hope you had a great week!

Love in the Time of Quarantine

noreply@blogger.com (Cheltz) — Sun, 31 Jan 2021 13:15:00 +0000

Overall this was a relaxing week. I do love when the kids are home.

Woo and Herbie have surfed everyday, which is mostly fun for them, but they complain that it’s too crowded. Much too crowded for January, and it’s been crowded all year. Woo blames covid and people either out of work or working “from home” (out of their vans?). Woo fears the school shut down will only increase the amount of people in the ocean. (We did hear this week that in person class is down for the foreseeable future.)

On the upside, they some times get photographed.

(Woo says the photographer took plenty of photos of him like Herbie’s, but chose this one to hide that Woo’s on a giant foam board :).

At other times it feels like the pandemic was heaven sent just for us. Remember all our struggles with SEF and getting visas? Woo renewed his with three clicks of the mouse this week, and it’s good for 3 years too.

I received a lot of revelation this week and one of them was to “command your children to repent.” Apparently the nightly reminder was not enough. It’s more work for us in the beginning (like everything), but already has yielded some nice results.

Herbie discovered (in a complete surprise to me) that he needed to stop complaining about his cut hands.

He has two slices on his index fingers from the fins on his surf board. These cuts make things like washing dishes and peeling oranges difficult, but he needs to stop complaining about them anyway :).

A true repentance session makes everyone feel better, and Moses felt fantastic one morning, spending a lot of time creating a treasure hunt for his little brothers and sister. (Archie won; he would like everyone to know.) Moses also organized a costumed forest warrior game and a hide and seek in the dark. (We have fantastic blinds here that shut out all light and can make the apartment completely dark even in the middle of the day.)

Moses had his temple recommend interview by zoom and Mario delivered the recommend by mask, outside the building, to Woo a few days later.

We never heard from “the authorities” about the positive in Ruby’s class, so we assumed along with Ruby’s teacher that we were “in the clear.”

Another girl in her class tested positive, but no one’s been in school since the 21st.

Ruby has been happy at home, reading, working on her little projects, doing family history, seminary, and running to help everyone and anyone who is upset or hurt.

On Monday I woke up with the revelation to write out a daily schedule for myself so I could get more done than I thought with the kids home. It was great and I was able to return to some things I’d given up for many months.

I felt so good doing them again that I didn’t even mind that we were living in a cloud this week with condensation mold sprouting on every wall and ceiling before our eyes. I also had time to start cleaning ceilings and it was not as exhausting or painful as I remember. (Woo did clean two rooms at the end of the December, but it was too early in the winter to avoid doing again... It seems February is the end.)

Of course later in the week, I realized that the kids needed to make their own schedules themselves. Linus and Penelope gave this their best effort, and on their own, blocked out time for prayer, reading the doctrine and covenants, their fathers blessings (which they’ve already been doing), exercise, cooking, writing poetry, crocheting, looking over their goals, etc. There’s still plenty of time for fun reading, playing... everything kids like to do anyway.

Archie is loving his time with his brothers and sisters, of course. He’s read stories with Ruby, played maze ball and legos with Herbie, played forest warriors and legos with Moses, Linus and Penelope... he and Nellpea also worked on their book: Adventures in Meligamar.

And that’s our week! Hope yours was great!

Ferias de Emergencia

noreply@blogger.com (Cheltz) — Sun, 24 Jan 2021 13:20:00 +0000

And... school is out.

I thought they’d wait until after national elections (today) and close school next week, maybe even make it through the entire week, but in one day (Thursday) rumors began and yes, by the afternoon there was an announcement that school would be closed for everyone in the nation for 15 days.

Also, complete lockdown again.

Thankfully, they’re taking the school days out of Carnival, a couple other holidays and a week of summer, so we’re not bombarded with online school.

Also, Woo and I went on a big grocery shopping trip on Wednesday (the day before). I kind of thought we’d be out of school soon, if not an official cancel, then with someone in one of the kids’ classes testing positive, so I bought a bunch of food the kids enjoy making themselves, and we’re comfortably sitting here, waiting it out.

Woo thinks they’ll use these two weeks to gear up for online school again, but we’ll take that hurdle when it comes.

We have our science documentaries; I found a new series to read to the kids (The Green Ember—a lot of fun so far); Christmas presents are still new enough to be highly interesting; outside exercise rules have been relaxed from the last lockdown (March/April); so all-in-all we feel pretty prepared.

Moses and Linus are sad school is out; Ruby, Herbie and Archie are happy; and Penelope’s happy with whatever.

The kids were pretty creative this week (I guess in their own personal inspiration to prepare?), so when school did let out they were very busy on their own projects.

Archie made his own “maze cube” from a kiwi container, paper and a round lego.

He and Linus made their own fuss ball table, which inspired Moses to spend even more time on a bigger, sturdier one. This is the one all four boys spent quite a lot of time playing the last couple days.

Woo also tried to play once, but the game had to go back to the shop for improvements based on his feedback.

Herbie’s hands are chapped, or are maybe having an allergic reaction? to the hand disinfectant at school. He’s happy to have a two week break from that so his hands can be in less pain. I learned this for the first time today.

On Friday (when we were already all home), we learned that a girl in Ruby’s class tested positive. This girl didn’t sit by Ruby, isn’t her friend and also hadn’t been in school since the 15th. We were told we’d be contacted by the authorities with what to do, but no one has contacted us.

It doesn’t seem to matter either way, as we’re under lockdown and won’t be in contact with anyone other than ourselves for sometime.

Also, we found several bags of Woo’s beloved tortilla chips at the store, and he and Nellpea made salsa for her daddy day, so Woo has everything he wants for the next couple weeks too.

And that’s part of our week. I hope yours was great!

Waiting

noreply@blogger.com (Cheltz) — Sun, 17 Jan 2021 13:25:00 +0000

Usually, it seems, January is blah and boring. Not this January. The four older kids kept hearing rumors that school would be closed again for everyone older than 12. Some of them were for it, some were against. I’m sure it was a topic of great interest in all of their classes.

I was barely paying attention. I had no feeling that they’d close the schools. I did notice Moses prayed that the schools would stay open the night before the day appointed for closed door meetings, debates and crucial decisions, and when the doors were opened—school was not cancelled!

There are, however, some new school restrictions. For example, Herbie is no longer allowed in the high school. This is a problem because all the surf club equipment (wetsuits, boards, etc.) is stored at the high school. Surf club now consists of skateboarding and other dry land training in the gym of the middle school. He still had a lot of fun though. Herbie always comes home excited to talk about what happened in surf club.

Shortly after Christmas I was suddenly seized with a desire to improve our living conditions. It was a fun diversion as I made small changes here and there... I bought some bath rugs, a table cloth...

Then, this week I thought it would all be over—we’d be moving to a fully furnished place! I made all sorts of plans, stayed up too late in excitement... and then it didn’t pan out.

Logically, I knew it was okay. Logically, I knew it didn’t matter. Logically, I knew I was being irrational, but I was exhausted and needed a day to mourn emotionally. I tried really hard, and I did a lot of praying, but unfortunately for Woo, I’m pretty sure I went through all 7 stages of grief in that one day. (Again, thankfully, I had eaten no chocolate... what a disaster that would’ve been!) The next day I was fine.

Woo tried really hard to help, and we’ve racked our brains for every possible solution, but truly improving our living conditions seems to be tied completely around whatever it is we’re waiting for. Nothing else is right. So we continue to wait.

Some time ago a mold began to grow in Archie’s room that had a dirt smell. I moved him out of there and kept the door closed. (Thankfully, we have plenty of space so this is no problem.) I used bleach; I painted over it, but it always returned the next day.

A guy from the condo association (I think that might be what it’d be called?) came to look at it this week. He found that the clay tiles on the roof above were not broken, but disintegrating, becoming soft like sponges. He also found a few other leaks into Liney’s room. He said he’d inform the association and they’d discuss it at their next meeting... so there’s that too :).

Since we read poetry over the lock down Ruby has been writing a lot of poetry herself. Her poems are pretty good. She’s actually working on a series that she works on regularly. Penelope also set a goal to write a poem every week.

One morning Ruby was reading several of her poems out loud.

Herbie: Your poems are better than mine!

Archie (who often co-writes poems with Penelope): Your poems are better than Nellpea’s!

Then he quoted from a poem of Nellpea’s titled “Wisdom.”

“If you want knowledge, you have to go to college!”

No one laughed louder than Nellpea. Apparently they’d giggled over that line together earlier.

Ruby also writes poetry in Portuguese. Woo thought she should read some to her Portuguese teacher, since most of them are inspired by the Book of Mormon.

We discussed President Nelson’s Liahona message instead of a conference talk a couple of weeks ago. One of the changes Woo has made is to intentionally find a quiet place to pray out loud every day. This means going down to the garage and into the van once the kids go to bed.

There have been some kind of fun results from this: a doorbell ditch with a bag of groceries, and Woo drawing up a daddy day sign up sheet and list of suggested daddy days to get those going better again.

Friday morning Woo played maze ball with Moses then they fixed bikes together.

He made paper airplanes with Archie and went to the park to fly them in the afternoon.

Saturday he made waffles with Penelope and Ruby.

Herbie gets plenty of daddy days surfing. Linus is up next.

Getting Linus to take a quiet time in the afternoon has been no problem, but it isn’t working. We’ve been back in school two weeks and he gets a little worse (more tired and cranky) each evening of the week and then a little worse each successive week.

I have two more ideas to try this coming week. We’ll see how it goes.

Also, Archie and I set up his FamilySearch account this week and I started sending him names to reserve. He’s very excited to get started.

We had sacrament meeting at home today for the first time in about six months.

And that’s our week! Hope yours was great!

Getting On With Our Lives

noreply@blogger.com (Cheltz) — Sun, 10 Jan 2021 21:03:00 +0000

Monday was a horrible day. After we put the kids to bed I was completely frazzled. Afterwards, when trying to calm down, a thought flickered across my mind, but I blew it off because I’d been careful. Woo suggested it again later, which meant, yeah maybe, which grew into probably...

Chocolate.

I’d eaten 5 small dark chocolates from a box someone at church gave us. Even worse? I’d given 5 to each of the kids.

The next day I was transcribing blessings Woo had given me from the previous year so I could remove them from my phone. I had a couple mention blessings I would receive from obeying the Word of Wisdom. At the time, it seemed slightly odd. I’d never had a blessing mention the Word of Wisdom before, but in relistening it clicked.

I’d received revelation to stop eating chocolate only a couple weeks before the lockdown. I’d never associated chocolate with the Word of Wisdom, really, but there it was, and what a wonderful blessing it has been to have been warned and to be mostly free from those particular problems for almost 10 months. (We did make a few other discoveries during that time such as no brownies or no vanilla/chocolate/almond ice cream bars after dinner on Sunday nights...)

January is normally a difficult month, but I’ve been fasting and praying and other than Monday a few small miracles have happened: Ruby and Moses decided to run home from school, I decided to start serving dinner before they get home, and we’re getting kids in bed 45 minutes earlier!

I got inspiration on how to help Linus and Archie cope better with their long days, and I’ve gotten inspiration on lots of little projects for myself that are quick, doable and drive away that blah January feeling I often get.

Archie was baptized on his birthday, which was exciting, but it was also a Sunday and a fast Sunday which is less fun for a kid’s birthday.

Archie figured out the situation months ahead of time and proposed himself to eat his birthday treat (breaking his fast) for lunch and opening his presents after dinner. He was so good and so patient, waiting until Monday morning to play with his presents, and then having to leave them for school, to be reunited at lunch, to again be separated... he got kind of grouchy about it on Tuesday, but that was the only day.

Woo was on the ball with yearly interviews this week. He prepared a list of questions and pulled everyone aside to record at different points during one day. He would’ve been able to check it off his to-do list that day too, but I still needed to interview him and I couldn’t get to it until the next day.

All the interviews start with him asking the kids (and me) the exact same question, but I decided to ad lib and ask a question of my own first, so that one’s out of sync... darn it!

Also the DVDs Woo’d ordered in November finally came! But he finished showing kids a documentary about the planets on Saturday. Herbie and Archie thought it was the best thing of the day.

It was cold this week. Woo and Herbie still went surfing. When they got home Wednesday, Herbie looked to be in shock, stiffly holding out his bright red hands. Apparently, during the surf, all was well, but on the bike ride home he endured great pain while his wet hands froze on the handle bars, and he experienced the other extreme with his body burning up and sweating under his new warm wetsuit.

They continued to go surfing every afternoon after that, walking through the door with Herbie holding out his hands, barely being able to walk and a different expression of discomfort frozen on his face. My favorite was the time the wind had also slicked his wet hair down in the middle and fluffed it up on the sides so he looked especially woebegone.

Meanwhile, Woo thought it was funny that I wore four jackets to pick kids up from school.

We took advantage of after Christmas sales to order the kids some new clothes. They arrived this week and Penelope got the pair of boots she’s been dreaming about and is so, so happy to wear.

Despite her efforts to be ready for school early one morning, she was thrown for a loop on her homework and left for school in tears, further compounded on the walk there when she realized she’d forgotten to put on her new boots (that she’d planned her outfit around) and slipped on her old shoes. She rallied when she realized she could put her boots on again when she came home for lunch.

Ruby has had a great week. She’s been very content at home with her new, warm sweats, fun books and better keyboard. She’s been doing an excellent job on her chores (the apartment continues to be much cleaner).

She wanted to do her book report on one of her new Christmas books, but it didn’t exist in Portuguese, so she read Journey to the Center of the Earth instead. It was easy to find a free Portuguese version online.

Today for our conference talk discussion, she took most of the time herself, with genuinely great insights, and was humble and appreciative. Near the end she praised me and told me she loved me... sometimes it’s fun to think about how far she’s come :).

I decided to enforce a quiet time for Linus in the afternoons in an effort to improve his evenings. However, it didn’t need a lot of enforcing. He was very excited to lie in bed and read one of his many new Christmas books. He and Moses both feel that they went from having nothing to read to having tons and tons of good books to read.

For Portuguese Linus practiced reading 110 words in 1 minute. He shouted excitedly when he did it. Then he shouted my name each time he whittled off another second. When Woo came home Linus was thrilled to report he could read 110 words in 51 seconds!

Moses’s maze ball was also a big free time hit. Moses has been good at sharing it with both Herbie and Linus.

How Moses speaks to and treats his siblings is highly influential on most of the rest of the kids. When he is being kind the other kids are anywhere from over the moon to content. When he is muttering insults they range from upset to shattered. Almost everyone but Ruby and kind of Penelope seems to live or die on his approval.

They built a new Aldi in our town. Woo had been really looking forward to it because there was a chance they’d have a constant supply of tortilla chips. He was a bit depressed when he found out they wouldn’t. He waited in line at the grand opening anyway, and came home with a bunch of new snack food to try, but not the dreamed of tortilla chips.

Both Ruby and Herbie have kids in their class who tested positive for Covid, but they had no contact with their class since before Christmas. For now school continues as normal. Except that Ruby and Penelope both have one teacher in quarantine and they both got to come home early on Friday afternoon because there are no substitutes.

And that’s our week. Hope yours was great!

2021

noreply@blogger.com (Cheltz) — Sun, 03 Jan 2021 14:30:00 +0000

This Christmas break was not the most relaxing I remember. The kids only settled on New Years Eve into a comfortable, school vacation mode, but I think this was probably the cleanest Christmas break I remember.

It was Penelope’s job to hand out each gift to be unwrapped this year, and of her own initiative, she waited to collect the wrappings, which she brought to me and the waiting garbage bag, before picking up the next gift to be unwrapped. Also, everyone’s gifts were gathered and carted off to individual rooms by dinner.

The kids were not calming down during evening scriptures like I thought they would as soon as school was out and we could do it at our old time again. Linus was the worst—so grouchy and constantly talking! I thought he’d gotten stuck himself in a bad habit. But really everyone was off.

I had all the kids pray about it and I also did and realized that it was time to change things up again. We had read five verses each for many years, then in preparation to move here, we each read in Portuguese and translated our verses to English. About a year and a half ago we realized that wasn’t working for us anymore. After a family council we decided to read very slowly, one verse at a time and discuss it (discussion having been missing from our reading before... )

Anyway, after another family council, we’re having one person read straight for about 10 minutes while the rest of us take notes, looking for what those verses teach us about a very specific question (announced ahead of time—Woo has been picking the question each night from a list he and I made).

Then we each discuss one answer we got and talk about what we’re going to do differently because of it.

On the same evening I also decided it was time to revamp the housework and by next lunch had a new chart, specific requirements for reorganized chores (for example, some smaller chores that were getting overlooked are now grouped into bundles) ... everything, posted on the kitchen wall.

One of the biggest changes I made is that everyone washes their own dishes immediately after using them. We now have a clean sink all day! I didn’t know this was possible with 6 kids and no dishwasher!

But most importantly (and the motivation behind the change), the burden on the kid with the dishes chore is much, much less. Now they’re only washing the dishes used to make and serve dinner (and I’m quite economical in that area).

Also, each kid is doing their own laundry—Archie is no longer a baby and has the same chores as everyone else!

Another big help has been two five minute cleaning blitzes, one in the morning and one before dinner. The kids can move very fast and these have been really, really effective. This one earns a bean in a jar for every 10 things picked up—working towards a family reward like eating out or a special dessert.

Most importantly, the changes breathed new hope in everyone. Ruby said thank you in her evening prayer that things could change and not always be the same. And really, isn’t change a wonderful blessing that keeps us all sane?

Other things were good. Ruby and Penelope read the Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict out loud to each other for hours (thanks Williams!). Linus worked on crocheting his scarf, listening to Archie and I read every other page out loud in Mouse on a Motorcycle. Herbie and Moses tried to read the entire Fablehaven series and they all break for car races. (Almost all the kids got each other matchbox cars for Christmas so there are many new, untested cars... )

Only one gift never came... the David Attenborough collection Woo had ordered. He briefly considered getting a month of Disney Plus, but in the end we watched The Cokeville Miracle and then assorted astronomy (a recent hobby interest of Woo’s) documentaries with lots of input from Astro and Experimental Physicists. (Some of whom were clearly physicists, but one show appeared to have actors with fancy labeling under their profiles. They were all too good looking and expressive to be a sampling of everyday people.)

They had fun, documentaries that met everyone’s needs: accurate and technical for Woo, exciting explosions and nice pictures for the kids.

The kids might all know what quasars are now! Black holes continue to be a perennial favorite.

Herbie burned through his spiced biscuits and created several uneasy situations with the other kids as he tried to get more out of them. I think most survived by yelling at him loudly, but Moses gave up a few to get some things he wanted out of Herbie.

For some reason Archie’s teacher assigned a bunch of homework...

And... Archie was baptized today and received the Gift of the Holy Ghost!! (Also, he turned eight :)

He was baptized in the ocean because we couldn’t drive to Caldas (where the font is) under holiday covid restrictions. (We also had to be in the house by 1pm, but that didn’t really effect us. We had plenty of time.) Luckily, Archie had gotten over his fear of being dunked under water, even cold ocean water, ages ago.

He was not disappointed at all when we told him what his options were and he opted for the ocean with a smile.

It was a sunny, clear day, much warmer than expected. Archie was baptized in a picturesque spot under the fortelaza. I believe the water was cold, but he did not complain, only patiently listened to Woo and went under without any hesitation.

Penelope and Linus were witnesses. Ruby and Herbie gave prayers. Moses and I gave short talks, and Woo did the baptizing and conferring of the Holy Ghost. Also, Archie bore a cute testimony just before the closing prayer.

We’re all baptized now! No more sentences like: and because we all (except Archie) have the gift of the Holy Ghost...

And that’s our week. Hope yours was great!

Testimony Below:

This morning I read President Nelson’s message in the January Liahona.

He said: In this new year, I encourage you to take the necessary steps to hear the Lord better and more often so that you can receive the enlightenment He wants to give you.

As I read, I paused to pray and ask how I could hear the voice of the Lord more clearly and more frequently.

First I learned that I should have less fear in not receiving an answer. Then I learned that I should slow down. Listen longer.

These may not be your individual recommendations for improvement. I encourage each of us to read President Nelson’s message in the Liahona and ask our Heavenly Father what we need to do to hear the voice of the Lord more frequently and more clearly.

In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

A Christmas Cornucopia

noreply@blogger.com (Cheltz) — Sun, 27 Dec 2020 14:10:00 +0000

Drizzle

noreply@blogger.com (Cheltz) — Sun, 13 Dec 2020 14:53:00 +0000

We had kind of a dull week. There was a lot of rain. Since I've been trying to drive kids to school when it's been stormy, I rarely get it right. We drive to school when the rain stops and the kids get caught in a downpour when they're walking. We are all looking forward to Christmas break. I think Linus is the only one who still loves going to school every single day. Only one more week!

Woo got a blessing for his back while at church last Sunday. Over the course of the week it has gotten a lot better, and appears to be fine now.

In an effort to create more of a Christmas environment, I boiled some cinnamon sticks and orange peels in a small pot on the stove. This was a huge hit, and I would walk into the room to catch someone, even Woo, bent over the top of the pot, sucking in deep breaths. Several tasted it, but without sugar it's yuck, of course.

It is orange season and they have started to all be especially delicious.

We started our secret 12 days of Christmas today, made difficult by things like buzzers with cameras, people living in their cars instead of their houses, and so on. We're almost certainly found out by everyone on the first day. Oh well.

We were helped by Woo driving us around and most of the kids still loving the door ditching adventure. It will probably be fine in the end.

We went on a damp family bike ride which turned out to be fun. Ruby apologized about a hundred yards from returning home for complaining A LOT in the beginning and then ending up having fun like we all knew she would.

It has been wet, but not cold. Moses walked out of PE wearing shorts and a t-shirt. The woman next to me warned me he would get a cold. Herbie, Moses and Linus wear shorts all year long and they are the only ones. But Moses told me one of his friends tried to copy him this week and ended up with... a cold. He's wearing pants again.

Penelope and Archie spent a lot of happy moments working on a book they're writing.

Linus wakes up earlier than they do, because he goes to school earlier than they do, but one morning he heard Penelope whisper to Archie, much too early, as he came down the stairs: Let's go work on our book!

On the way to school Penelope asked me: Mom, do you think I can write books in heaven??

Herbie has some raw places on his knuckles from riding Moses' bike at the park. These have caused him a lot of grief as they get wet, he has to disinfect his hands, they accidentally get poked by brothers at the table...

And that's our week. Hope yours was great!

Senior Citizens

noreply@blogger.com (Cheltz) — Sun, 06 Dec 2020 12:58:00 +0000

One thing I’ve noticed as I say my prayers of gratitude is that I’m often inspired to know of other blessings I’ve received that I had not previously thought of. Usually, I had not recognized them as coming from the Lord at all, but in my prayers I’m assured, that yes they have, and it’s exactly what I had always wanted without daring to hope.

Part of the reason I don’t recognize them as coming from God, nor dared to hope (and something I’ve gradually learned since moving here), is that sometimes the Lord blesses me or my family at the expense of other people.

This is not something I’d have previously considered, but for whatever reason (probably because it aligns with the Lord’s plans) I am now sure that it is something the Lord does.

While surprising at first, it brings something of a feeling of being a favorite child, that I actually think everyone could feel if they really were alerted to everything the Lord is (currently!) doing for them.

Sunday was a rough day for us and hopefully the low. The kids were off school Monday and Tuesday, which I loved. I was apprehensive about Wednesday, but that was also a good day. It’s the day Ruby and Moses come home early and we can have a regular evening.

We have one more repeat of this 4 days off school, 3 days on, and then a dreaded full week of school until Christmas break.

Woo had troubles with asthma on Sunday. We never can predict it, other than it’s usually a Sunday, and usually in the winter. The asthma was not gone on Monday, but worse. On Tuesday his back went out while surfing. Herbie was with him and they slowly made it home with Herbie carrying Woo’s board.

Tuesday afternoon Ruby, Herbie and Moses had planned to film a video on Language (a topic in the For Strength Youth handbook) with the one other youth in the branch for a digital stake youth activity.

Even though he was in a lot of pain and having trouble breathing, Woo managed to drive them, film and direct that. Also he directed the film editing when they got home.

After the kids went to bed, Woo was in a rough state. He desperately needed sleep, but he couldn’t lie down without immense pain. He couldn’t breathe and fluid was collecting in his lungs (pneumonia). Advil and his inhaler were not doing a lot of good.

I’m sure he was praying, I also did. I remembered I could put his name on the temple roll digitally, which I immediately did. Within fifteen minutes he was lying still and breathing softly.

Me: Are you going to sleep?
Woo: I can’t sleep, I have too much to do.

And then he was asleep. He fell asleep very early, but slept well until morning. His asthma and the fluid were gone.

His back was running through a cycle of doing something routine and going out, spending the first part of his surf in pain, coming home with his back “healed,” doing something routine and back going out, spending the first part of his surf in pain, ...

Woo spent one afternoon tinkering on something in the garage, hunched over, sawing with a bread knife and pounding in repurposed nails with rocks... anyway, it didn’t help his back.

Also, he hasn’t been able to surf the past couple days because of giant waves, so he is currently in a lot of pain.

Ruby will be sixteen in 3 weeks. Her sixteenth birthday is not going to bring the things an American 15 year old might look forward to.

There will be no drivers license. 18 is the youngest age here. She is old enough for a scooter license, but she’d have to enroll in drivers school and we’d have to get her a scooter, which she (and Herbie, who is also old enough) would like, but there’s no where for them to drive to (everything we need is quite close), and scooters are no help in the rain.

Dating as far as she and I can tell is completely unknown. There is direct hooking up or things like the entire class going out to lunch on the last day of school.

I walked to school one morning with Ruby to get a sense of her feelings about this. She is not upset at all about not dating.

She did have a crazy fantasy about somehow going to the US last summer and coming back with a drivers license two years before everyone else, but once it was clear that wasn’t going to happen, she got over it and has been at peace with her situation for months. We both feel she is being blessed in her current situation.

Herbie passed Ruby height wise, with less gloating than I would’ve expected, possibly because he immediately raised his sights to me. He’s right about my height and I’m sure will be taller than me in the next month or two.

Woo and I went grocery shopping one of the days the kids were out of school. I charged Herbie with organizing a clean up and Christmas decorating effort that included the removal of his bed to a new place.

It’s a bit of a sacrifice for him, but he has done it without complaining.

Herbie missed having an experience like Ruby and Moses had in Greece and Poland because of covid, but he went to Croatia virtually this week! One of his zoom meetings he did at home.

I really shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t help but smile and sometimes giggle at ridiculous English (as I know I speak ridiculous, often unintelligible Portuguese).

Woo (understanding immediately): Finally! The tables have turned!

Herbie was much more mature and never cracked a smile.

However, I sobered up while the Croatians gave a tour of their school and talked about its history: “... and then there was the war. Everything was demolished...”

Oh, yeah. Croatia. That was pretty recent history. At that moment I realized it had been a reality with long-lasting effects for every school child there.

When the schools shut down in March and over the summer I read the kids all of the Fablehaven books (5) and as many Dragonwatch books as existed (3). They all love this (there’s something about being read out loud to... even when you’re older...), but I get the sense that Moses is REALLY enamored.

Anyway, the latest Dragonwatch book came out this fall. I looked into buying the kindle version, but wasn’t entirely happy with this option and saved it as a last Christmas resort.

The library didn’t have it, then it did and we put the book on hold. We were something like #41 in line for 6 available books, moving slowly. I looked one night and we were up to #36 and then the next day the book was available for us. What?!? It really seemed like a miracle, especially as it came the day before the kids would be out of school for a few days.

As expected, all are enjoying it, especially Moses.

Moses continues to study well and do well in school. His history teacher gave him a test different from everyone else in the class, in an attempt to stump him as he keeps getting 100%. He’s anxious to get that test back (she’s taking a long time), but he thinks he got 100% on that one also.

His oral book presentation in Portuguese also went well. He worried that he trembled too much, but everyone, including his teacher, loved hearing all the characters’ names pronounced correctly when he read a page aloud from the Order of the Phoenix.

Linus and Penelope got their glasses this week! This was more work than Ruby’s as they got stuck in customs, and once I straightened that out and paid, there was a missed delivery.

Ruby, Herbie and Linus arrived home from lunch at the same time as the mail man who couldn’t get our bell to work and also refused to hand them the package. Nor would he wait until they’d rang the bell and gotten me. They were so frustrated!

Linus had seemingly alerted the entire school as to his new glasses and kept saying that everyone wanted to know what he would like with them. When he got them he spent some time looking at himself in the mirror and then also with his mask on, and he came home from school that first day with the happy announcement: Everyone says I’m even cuter with my glasses!!

On day two, I watched Penelope shake her hair back and carefully place her glasses on her nose, her face tilted up and composed in a faint smile.

Me: Do you feel grown up in your glasses, Penelope?

Then her composure completely crumpled as she gave me a giant grin and a giggle: yes!

Later, when I announced to everyone that I thought Penelope’s glasses made her look more grown up and also reminded me a little of Grandma Sandy, she gave me the same giant grin and giggle and also a hug.

(Haven’t you had some reading glasses in that shape at some point, Mom?)

Penelope already has her Christmas morning outfit folded and waiting, patiently.

[edited]

Archie came home from school one day with the announcement that he and his friends had been telling stories and he’d told the story of Ammon, which no one believed was a real story and thought he’d made it up on the spot until he told them it was in the Book of Mormon.

Archie and Penelope spent a nice evening running around the house and writing a list of over 50 things they’re grateful for. They were very well behaved afterwards.

Just in time for Christmas, Lidl began a “Lidl fan” promotion where they’re selling t-shirts, hats, flip flops, shoes, socks, etc. all celebrating Lidl.

Woo bought the shoes and socks because they’re ridiculous, which is a sentiment shared by all as both Ruby and Herbie have had class discussions laughing about it. Many in Herbie‘s class have bought the t-shirts. Both Ruby and Herbie announced that their dad had bought the shoes which resulted in much laughter. Then someone in Herbie’s class announced they were going to buy the shoes too. More laughter...

I bought a tiny string of lights at the Lidl. Woo thought they’d only fit in a cup, but they were enough to string on our little tree. Archie loooooves the lights and moves them around, turns them off and on, etc.

They’re only tiny, but I’m pretty sure they’re magical to him.

It was Archie’s turn to read in Come Follow Me this morning. His scriptures weren’t even open yet, and we tried to get him to read off of Penelope’s to save time. But he said he didn’t need it. Then he surprised us all by reciting Moroni 1:3 perfectly. I guess he has it memorized, and enough of the verse before to know exactly what came next.

And that’s our week. Hope yours was great!

Snowflakes

noreply@blogger.com (Cheltz) — Sun, 29 Nov 2020 12:30:00 +0000

Per the prophet’s request, Woo and I posted things we were grateful for to social media. Woo’s posts were all substantial and creative, but also cost him a lot of angst and time. We both had some positive experiences, but we are exhausted and very excited to be going back to spending extremely little to no time on social media.

My prayers of gratitude were significantly more refreshing, and I was led to several changes there that I will be continuing.

Woo suggested to the kids (who don’t have social media accounts) that they raise their hands in class and express gratitude to their teachers.

Ruby did exactly that in her Portuguese class. I’m frequently amazed at Ruby’s bravery... this is the teacher that she has a strained relationship with (long story that I’ll probably tell sometime)... I personally would’ve picked a more sympathetic teacher, so I can only assume Ruby was following the spirit.

Anyway, Ruby thanked this teacher for coming to school and teaching them everyday (as some of you know, this is not always a given in Portugal). This teacher just gaped at Ruby speechless. And then didn’t come to school the next day or since! (She’s being super, super safe about a COVID transmission—so safe that doctors told her they weren’t going to test her for the virus when she told them the circumstances—but she’s still taking her two weeks :).

Penelope also expressed gratitude to her teacher and was rewarded with a big hug as expected.

Moses started out the week with some beautiful thank you prayers, but we are just tired by the end of the week. This school schedule is wearing us down, by Friday we are barely holding it together.

I’m so excited that the next two weeks have public holidays that would normally mean a day off of school each, but now each have been extended to two days in an effort to “save Christmas.”

Our Christmas is already taken care of. I’m looking forward to REST.

Herbie finished his poncho in time for surf club. He wore it on Friday and was not believed that he’d made it (until he showed them the inside stitching close up :). Then he was praised for transforming something he already had into something he needed.

This kind of thing is looked upon highly here. There are regularly contests for local artists and school assignments to create things out of trash. Both Ruby and Linus currently have assignments to make Christmas decorations out of recyclables. I do think that increased materialism is something we’ve escaped in moving here.

To be honest, every holiday season I recognize that being in Portugal is a personal blessing to me personally. So many things that were very difficult for me around this time, simply are not possible or don’t exist here, and I feel like I’m getting a warm, personal hug from my Heavenly Parents, saying: “Remember what we’re sparing you from? We’ve done it because we understand you and we love you.”

All the kids have been making snowflakes for use around the house and on our tree, but Linus and Archie have been especially excited about it. Archie also made this snowman.

And... that’s our week! Hope yours was great!

Gratitude

noreply@blogger.com (Cheltz) — Sun, 22 Nov 2020 12:50:00 +0000

I’m grateful that I felt an urgency to do the Christmas shopping and we’re 99% done! Besides the obvious stuff, I’m talking 2 cases of spiced biscuits, wrapping paper, tape, gifts for our secret 12-days of Christmas recipients... Woo even got some David Attenborough series to watch as a family over the break... everything! I definitely feel like “all is safely gathered in ere the winter storms begin.”

I’m grateful that Woo, concerned with Archie throwing his brain out the window since school started and his decreased ability to concentrate on scriptures or the instruction of his parents, devised a chart and reward system for Archie that they sit together and go over at the end of morning scriptures and the end of the day.

I’m grateful that Archie is really excited about it and goes to bed feeling that he’s successfully done well and wants to be good again.

I’m grateful that when Woo and I played pass with the frisbee that Archie sat between us and said things like “SUPER!” or “GOOD JOB” or “YIPPEE” or “EXCELLENT” or “MUITO BOM” or “PERFECT!”for every single pass.

I’m grateful that I have the opportunity everyday to pray and walk to and from school four times with just Penelope. She and I don’t often have that much alone time.

Once, when she was chattering along and I realized that I hadn’t been listening, I raised her hand (which I was holding) to my mouth and kissed it.

She loved that and when she asked why I’d kissed her hand I had to tell her that I hadn’t been listening, but I wanted her to know that I loved her anyway.

She said, “Oh, I don’t care that you weren’t listening, Mommy. I’m just happy you kissed my hand!”

I’m grateful that Ruby loooves PE this year. It’s by far her favorite class. She has a really good teacher that is really pushing her and there’s a knot of soccer playing boys for her to compete against. They run every class, increasing the run by a minute every couple weeks (?).

At six or seven minutes she started beating all the boys, but when they switched to eight minutes, one came from behind to almost beat her, so she’s keeping on her toes.

Anyway, she’s getting a really good workout a couple times a week which makes us all happy.

I’m grateful Herbie has been organizing games and playing kindly with his younger brothers and sister while they wait for Ruby and Moses to come home. He’s consciously working on keeping contention and his voice volume down.

I’m grateful that Herbie got revelation to make his own "Turkish poncho" for surf club out of one of the old TAP blankets we got on our flight here 3 1/3 years ago. (I’m grateful TAP let us take those blankets... we’ve used them in some form or another every day!)

Moses as soon as we were done listening to President Nelson: I’m grateful he didn’t ask us to fast again!

Moses had to make a digital presentation for Portuguese class and I’m grateful Ruby helped him with Google slides and his Portuguese. She had the same teacher for the past three years and knew what she would want.

I’m grateful Moses cleaned some fingerprints off the wall of his own initiative.

I’m grateful Moses says that when I play frisbee I look 22 instead of 43.

And then one of the Elders asked Woo and I if we were alive and remembered the launching of the first rocket. I’m grateful for that because it gave us a good laugh afterwards... the first rocket launch that began the space age was in 1926...

I’m grateful Linus has added an extra “reset” scripture read in the afternoon after school so he can be happy until the end of his long day.

I’m grateful that Linus loves school and is excited that he has gotten more “excelentes” (100%) on tests and assignments than “muito boms” (A’s).

And I’m grateful that sitting on my lap is still comforting to him. It’s nice for me too to have him sometimes be tired or upset and then calm down just by sitting on my lap. He doesn’t like kisses, but I usually kiss his cheek anyway.

I’m grateful that we have a prophet to remind us of gratitude which truly is a fast-acting, long-lasting cure to pretty much any negative feeling possible.

And that’s our week! I hope yours was great!

The Days Are Long...

noreply@blogger.com (Cheltz) — Sun, 15 Nov 2020 12:15:00 +0000

We’re tired by Friday, the week is long and Friday is a long day. It would really be the perfect day to wind down an hour or two early, but instead were all stuck waiting for Ruby and Moses to come home.

This week Woo gathered all kids into the kitchen to make tapioca pudding. He felt we needed something that felt a little celebratory or exciting. The kids loved it.

During a break making dinner, I saw that President Nelson was going to give a special message in a week. It was just the faint glimmer of hope we needed to make it through the evening.

Woo told Ruby and Moses at dinner about the special message.

Moses immediately said: “We should pray to prepare.”

Then both Ruby and Moses thought of who they could share the message with.

Then someone asked if we had to wear church clothes. There were many responses at once and I could only hear Linus who was exhausted, grouchy and loud, and didn’t think it was necessary. But later I learned that Ruby, Moses and Penelope were for it. (Archie and Herbie voiced no opinion.)

Ruby fasted today to overcome contention and rudeness and also to be prepared to hear the prophet.

Anyway, we are excited to hear from President Nelson, and while we know that he will likely say something that will seem small to the understanding of men, we want to be ready to recognize what he’s really saying to us and to do whatever he asks.

The primary program was this week. Linus, Penelope, Archie and I were the only participants, which meant the kids had four talks each. I originally said they could read them. It seemed like a lot of talk to expect anyone to memorize, but on Friday I decided they could do it. They only needed some motivation.

I took those three to the Chinese store were they each picked out 3€ worth of prize for memorizing their talks and also the songs (we’ve been singing primary songs in English since March and they needed to be in Portuguese for the program). Linus and Archie picked action figures and Penelope picked a pretty storage bucket and a bunch of fake flowers.

They worked on that for the rest of Friday afternoon until they got tired and on Saturday morning as soon as they were up. It was cute to hear them working together on the songs and drilling each other, and by mid-morning they had all gotten it!

Linus, Penelope and Archie did great in the program. But we only have three kids in primary and I used the same format I have the past three years... in that way the program’s getting dull. I’m going to have to do something different next year to breathe more life into it.

Herbie had an English project that he’s been putting off... interview someone about their job. He finally texted Grandpa Kip on Friday who answered with pictures.

Herbie had time to make a slide show before Monday and was excited to “have the best job in the class!”

That’s our week! Hope yours was great!