What I Will Miss and What I Won't!

I guess by now most everyone who knows me, knows that our time in Paraguay is coming to a close.  We have about 3 short months left in Paraguay.  In many ways, I am saddened by this.  There are SO many people and things that I am going to miss.  I have loved living here for the past 7 years.  I love our church family here.  My children were all three born here and for them, this is home.  I love this country and always will.  Yet, on the other hand, I am SO excited in many ways about returning to the U.S.  We will finally be closer to our families.  We will finally get to be a part of family Christmas's, Thanksgivings, birthdays, Easters, etc.  And we are going to finally get to buy a house after being married for 11 years!  There are many things that we look forward to.  Every few days, I come across something here in Paraguay that I am going to miss like crazy.  And every few days, I come across something that I can not wait to not have to see again!  So, as I think of them, I am going to try to start blogging about them so that even the tiniest of my blessings/annoyances will be shared and remembered.  After all, I have grown to realize that I have an absolutely terrible memory.  The other day, I had decided I was going to blog about the fact that my memory was really not as bad as my husband claims it is.  My reasoning was that about 200,000 thoughts go through my little brain every minute and I have to try to sort them all out and keep up with 3 little kids all at the same time.  But, after almost blogging about it, I sat down to play the game of Memory with Emma, my 5 year old.  She beat me 4 out of 5 games.  And I did not let her win!  So, I decided that blogging about the fact that my memory is really not that bad, just might not be that true :) 

And now for one of the things that I will miss from Paraguay:  orange juice!!!  I was drinking orange juice this morning and realized that I am going to miss that stuff!  Florida has nothing on Paraguayan orange juice.  Fresh squeezed, pure and absolutely delicious, is the orange juice here.  And I think I am going to just miss fresh squeezed juice of any kind.  Paraguayans know how to make juice!  And almost everytime we sit down to a meal with someone here, there are several different pitchers of juice on the table, and always all home made.  Carrot, pineapple, pear, peach, watermelon, orange, apple, strawberry, grapefruit, yum, yum, yum- they are all fabulous.

And what I will not miss:  bags!  Bags are everywhere here!  Let me explain.  First, I will start with trash bags.  Now, of course, we have trash bags in the U.S.  But in the U.S., the trash bags are in boxes.  And inside those boxes, the bags are neatly rolled up so that when you pull on the end of the roll, a bag rolls out.  And it either neatly slides out or you tear it off when you see the dotted line.  Nice and neat and easy.  Now....bags in Paraguay are a bit different.  First of all, they come in bags.  And once you open the bags, they are also neatly rolled up inside.  However, when you pull on the outside, nothing happens.  And it never will.  Because that neat roll is not intended for any one single trash bag to be pulled out.  Nope, you have to open the entire roll, unfold it, pull out your bag of choice and then refold all of the bags, try to squeeze them back into the tiny bag and then put them away.  I honestly do not understand this system!  When we moved here, I actually bought plastic boxes and would undo the plastic bags when I bought them, lay them out, fold them each individually and then stack them in the boxes so that when I needed one, I could just pull it off the top of the pile!  Yes, I know that this sounds absolutely ridiculous.  But, when you need a trash bag in a hurry, it just is not going to happen! .It takes a good 5 minutes to get that trash bag out of the bag and the wad that it is sure to be in.  But, now that I have children, there is just no time for that.  So, I just fight with my bags and throw them back into my cleaning closet.  And every time I open the closet door, it irritates me. 

But, I also want to take the bags thing one step further.  Not only do garbage bags come in bags, everything comes in bags.  For an organizer/stacker, this is a nightmare!  Milk comes in bags!  Spices come in tiny bags.  Rice comes in bags.  Popcorn comes in bags.  Beans come in bags.  Pasta comes in bags.  Cookies come in bags.  Most cereal comes in bags.  Yogurt comes in bags.  I could go on, but I think I made my point.  I am constantly taking things out of bags and putting them into some kind of container.  Not only do they not stack well, they don't keep fresh very well in these little bags.  The weather here is just too hot and humid and most everything here is so fresh and natural, that it goes bad quickly.  (And I will have to do another blog on whether or not I will miss the fresh food here.)

So, miss the juice and not miss the crazy bags!

It's Christmas Time!

We put our Christmas decorations up this past weekend!  We thought we were going to be traveling for Thanksgiving weekend and wouldn't have time to put them up, so we decided to do it a little early.  And why not since all Christmas decorations in Paraguay have already been put up!  It has all caused me to officially catch the Christmas spirit!  And being finished with my Christmas shopping has increased my happy spirit considerably!  We didn't get to put our tree up last year because we were in the states, so the kids were extra excited to get to sort through the decoration boxes to see what all they could find. We had a great time!

Chris and Emma got to put the star on top.

Olivia rolled around on the couch and giggled and got into stuff.

Toby snoozed.

The final product- Emma posed sweetly and Walker posed as...well, Walker- silly.

And I took pictures!

Missing in Action

It has been so long since I have blogged!  I have so much to catch up on and so much to share, but so little time!  So, I will start by sharing my "happy" for today.  And then this week, I will work on "catching up" on my life over the past few months.  It has been a fabulous whirlwind!

Today, I could not have been prouder when I told Emma that she needed to write a thank you note for school.  I asked her who she was most thankful to and she said, "Jesus".  So, she wrote a thank you note to Him.  Here is what it said :

"Dear Jesus,
I love you Jesus.  Thank you for everything that you did for us.  I am excited to go up to heaven with you. 
                                                                                                Love,
                                                                                                      Emma

Does it get any sweeter than that?