May Little Things

We waited for the rain to let up all day so that we could go get food at Lido Bar (restaurant with the reputation of having the best Paraguayan food in Asuncion). It never did let up, so we went anyway. We were fine on the way there, but got mighty wet on the way back.

The food was so worth it.

Yummy empanadas.

 Darin got a milanesa sandwich.

 I got marinara (beef covered in a yummy flour and egg breading and then fried).

 We couldn't figure out the buses on the way home, nor could we get a taxi. We ended up wading through lots of rivers in the street (drainage is not the best here) to finally get to a bus that would take us close to home.

 We still had to do our Sunday grocery shopping (oh the adventures of not having a car!), so the kids and Darin hung out at the McDonalds right next to the store while I did that. After all that we went through trying to get there we felt like we definitely deserved some playtime on the structure and dollar ice cream cones. 

 Darin made Mexican tortas for Cinco de Mayo. Complete with homemade refried beans. 

 We spend a good amount of time at Parque de la Salud (Health Park).

 They are usually always covered in sand and sweat by the time they are done.

 Most nights she can be found "pregnant" with a stuffed animal after falling asleep. 

 Singing a Mother's Day song to me.

  Shae is always completely drenched in sweat when I go check on him at night. I tell him he shouldn't get so wrapped up in that fuzzy blanket, but he just can't help himself. He's obsessed with soft, fuzzy things.

 We started doing themed weeks in May to try and add some more spice to school and life in general. Our first theme was dinosaurs. 

 Making fossils.

We decided later in the week that we also wanted to paint the fossils.

 So impressed with the kids dinosaur drawings.

I love that Belén named this dinosaur a Queenasaurus.

We did a pizza movie night on Friday to end our theme week by watching the Good Dinosaur. She's such a fun pizza helper, trying out the dough as a drum before we turn it into a pizza.

Waiting for the bus after church. 

 Our next theme was emotions/feelings (so that we could watch Inside Out for our next Pizza Movie night...I only based the first two themes on movies I wanted to watch but would be lying if I said I'm not trying to think of more :). 

Love Belen's little emotion drawings.

 Shae did a few Art for Kid Hub challenges last month. He has become quite the artist the past few months. Most days he spends drawing and creating. This was for the challenge, "What is your favorite ocean animal?" He chose shark.

Belen's favorite ocean creature is a dolphin.

 Hanging out at the grocery store while we wait for a taxi.

 Shae being the Kid Art Hub teacher for the sister missionaries. 

We brought 4 big jars of peanut butter with us. They lasted just about 2 months. 

Luckily, we found a grocery store that carries PB. Only reduced fat crunchy, reduced fat creamy, and creamy PB and honey mix. They are the small containers and cost about $5.50 each, so not ideal, but sometimes you've just gotta have that Peanut Butter.

We don't buy everything at the grocery store next to us (we've had some bad experiences with their meat and produce), and they just don't carry everything we want like other stores do, but something we do love about it is this Felipe bread. They have these huge containers of them all day long and it is only about 20 cents for a big bag of it. We definitely eat way more of it than we should. It is just so good. No other store has pan (bread) Felipe as good as this one. 

 On our way to church and our bus took an unexpected turn, so we ended up getting off and walking 15 minutes to church. Got there right as it started and the bishopric was able to take a deep breath since I was speaking that day (4th talk in 9 months! Keeping my fingers crossed for a good break from speaking)

 So bummed that the temple is closed the entire time we are here. Still beautiful to look at. I get to teach English at the chapel right next to it once a week and always love seeing it shine bright in the night.

 One more art challenge. Favorite thing to do in summer. Eat popcicles and go on vacation. 

 So hard to look at the camera.

 She is our little goofester. Always cracking jokes and trying to be silly.

 Had a nice Mother's Day lunch with some other LDS American sisters that are here in Paraguay at one of the sister's homes. Three of the sisters are in our ward and the others attend a ward closer to the temple (a few of them have been here working on the temple reconstruction and are getting ready to head out as things finish up).