I think Josper has Joseph's mouth and my eyes. What do you think? But where did that red hair come from? We don't even have mail man or a milk man! But we are proud parents of our vitual little bundle of joy!
Our ward, along with the nieghbor ward had the annual July Festival and holy smokes, this is something that the United States could have. If we can celebrate Cinco de Mayo, why not Festive Julinha? July Festival is a party that is very popular in Brazil celebrating the country folk. Traditional costumes are worn by the children, but as you can see, we had a little share of it too. The decorations are the awesome flags and lots of music! Oh the music! I loved it. Joseph and I learned the very basics of Forho. We definately were Americans. We can't swing our hips for the life of us. 
The traditional food for a July Festival is right here: hotdogs in a tomatoe sauce (most important part), corn on the cob, and cake. This pot of hotdogs looks small in the picture, but I am not kidding when I say it is at least two feet across! I have never seen anything like it!
9:00 - 5:15 pm Reports, meetings, more reports, eat a delicious sandwich made by Kemper, more reports, and more reports. Yet sometimes, there are window washers hanging outside of the desk to get excited about...
Oh, man. This is cold.
Slowly...
A little bit more...
Ha! I did it! It was only a dip and that's enough.
We visited the Copacabana Fort - Military Museum last Saturday and it was very facinating. And a lot of fun. Several decades ago, the Brazilan military made this fort to protect their country - I can see why - it is beautiful!
Last Monday, I had a Bolo 101 class from our neighboors. They taught me how to make orange pudim cake. Joseph was still at work, but I was able to understand most of what they were telling me. It was so fun, especially because the language is really starting to become understandable.
Finally after two hours of baking, the cake is done! We spent most of the evening at the nieghbors eating cake and talking about life. It was really neat. They are innactive members who haven't been to church in 8 years. The mom was so excited to share with me her favorite scripture - Alma 37:37. It was neat because this is one of my favorites too. I even told it to them by memory in English. Well, we only have 4 weeks left but hopefully we are able to plant some seeds of faith to remind them of the truth. 
This is my dear friend Susi. She made this cake gluten free, as well as milk free because one of our friends can't have milk. It was a delicious chocolate strawberry cake! Yum! It was a great breakfast the next morning too.
And my favorite thing was for dinner: Brazilian hotdogs. Man o man, I love them. 
I got lots of great things: Natura soaps, heavenly lotion, kitchen things, and a new pink shirt. Even Joseph got a present - a tie to match my new shirt. It's PINK! The couple who gave it to us always coordinate what they wear to church and so it was kind of an inside joke. :) 
Joseph's Lunch:
Mirka and Vinicius let us borrow their bikes so we could go on a bike ride down Flamengo beach on Joseph's day off. It was wonderful to be on a bike again, but I will tell you what... my muscles have forgotten how to ride because they were screaming at me. But I ignored them. 
A while later, we decided to fly our kite that was given to us by some good friends. We bought the thread and we are excited! We love pipas! Joseph gave me a lesson on how to fly a kite the Brazilian way. I hope this movie clip works because I just laughed! Our pipa was in the air for about 5 minutes and CLEAR up there, and then this other kite came wandering over and cut us! Can you believe it? He intentionally cut our line! Well, it was pretty funny. Joseph went running after our kite which was no use because it was in the upper wind which took it way past the buildings. So I hope some little favela girl gets it when it finally comes down. Later we walked along the beach path and found this awesome guy building sand-cities like I have never seen before. It was amazing at the talent and time that goes into something like that.
Dinner was perfect too. I just love street vendors! Corn on the cob, espichinos (amazing shish-ka-bobs), and tapiocas. YUM!
The two gentlemen, who are in this picture, work in the Commercial Services department with Joseph. The one wearing a yellow tie is Patrick and the one wearing the red tie (that cost $400!) is Gernard. Of all the people that Joseph talks about, it is these two men. Patrick is the specialist over heavy machinery, Agri-business, financing, and mineral extraction industries, while Gernard is over the technology, security, avionics, and transportation sectors. They have become some great friends and mentors for us.
You can't see it from this angle, but behind the palace is a hill side that is the home to one of the local favelas. At night, all the lights are on up there and it looks beautiful. I had to imagine that those were fireworks. You would think that there would have been fireworks for our party, but no. Fireworks attract too much attention from the favela and when they see that it is a grand event happening, they bring out the guns and start shooting towards the palace. Yep, I am okay with not seeing fireworks this year!
The American Ambassador who is in Brazil was here and gave a speech that was really nice. It made me feel that much more grateful to be an American. I have always been thankful, but now I have such a stronger love for my country after living outside of it for these last few months. We are so blessed to be American!
Joseph is still smiling even after eating fish eggs (I forgot the fancy name) and what ever else those fancy platters had.
I am not really into this whole blogging idea. Its well.......a girl thing if you know what I mean. I fully support it, because I know we do a horrible job (well I do at least) of keeping a regular journal, and even writing our friends as much as we should is hard for me to do. So this blog is the next best thing I guess. Anyways, Kemp asked that I explain this day that I had at work last week. Before I begin, this is an extension of her story about rushing to the airport (by herself) to get my passport to me. I had forgotten it and this trip would not have happened without the wonderful assistance of my courageous companion, got to love her! As a result, this day ended up being a lot more than I had expected......thank goodness.
The picture of the guy with the cow.......he is the multimillionaire who has started a new hobby. Raising specialty cows. After our business meetings, he was determined to drive us to this little cow utopia that he has created. For the next hour we received the full explanation as to how and why he spent over 2 million dollars on this single cow! Turns out it is a special breed from India and its eggs are used (together with a bull's sperm obviously) to create more super bred cows that he turns around and sells for $R 200,000 a piece, or about $150,000! That is no small chunk of change especially when they take the embryos and place them in the uterus of several other cows. This allows one cow to have over 100 calves per year! That is a really huge chunk of change! Anyways it was an amazing experience overall and I wouldn't trade it for anything. So Mark Haddad from Guardian Building Supplies, if you read this someday, thanks a lot
One of the shops sold hammocks. And this one was even one for a baby! how nice! 
Now this is what I call a BBQ! This is a picture of a churrasco, a brazilian BBQ. Those are big giant slabs of meat on those giant shish-ka-bob sticks just getting ready for me to eat them. It is so amazingly delicious!
This is the group of us enjoying our yummy meal. It was so fun! Neves and Fernanda have been so great to take us to all the neat places in Rio. And this time is was especially fun because Bruna was with us. Bruna is blind, but that doesn't stop her from being the sweetest person on the earth. I loved helping her around when Neves and Fernanda was trying to teach Joseph how to dance. What a blessing to have met her!
After the feira, we spent the night at Neves house and was able to attend church with them the next morning. Every time I go to a new place, I feel so blessed to know that where ever I go in the world, there is a ward or branch. And they all have the same message. Even if the chorister is completely off key! 
Have you ever had the feeling of GREAT accomplishment? I mean doing something that defys everything? Well, I have had my moment. I was on my way out the door to go teach English when Joseph called in a panic and said, "I need my passport right now. Get a taxi." 
The pink stuff by the olives is ham paste. Joseph doesn't like it, but it wasn't too bad. Also our meal came with potatoe chips as a delicacy. :) It was really tasty. And by the time we were done eating, we were too tired to go to the Samba place. So we caught a bus and went home. Later we found out the the Samba place that we were going to go to would have cost us about R$95.00 per person! Thank heavens we were tuckered out. Can you believe that?!
About a 10 minute bus ride from our home is the race track. We decided to see what the races were all about. They were really quite interesting. We were there for about 1.5 hours and only saw two races. The track was very pretty too, I almost forgot that I was living in an enormous city. (Picture taken with the aid of our trusty gorilla - thanks Brooke Ure!)
So this is a complete new and wonderful way to eat a hotdog. First I must say, I love hotdogs. I love Chicago Dogs more than anything, but the Brazilian hotdog is a close second. Let me explain... Bun, hotdog that has been sitting in meatless spegetti sauce, smothered in more sauce, topped with potatoe chips, can corn, peas from a box, parmesean cheese, mustard, ketchup, and mayonaise. And if you want you can have a boiled quail egg on top as well. It sounds bizarre, but I am really quite fond of them. And don't worry, I ate around the bun.
The best part about all the races is the parade of the horses that happens about 20 minutes before the race begins. I choose the winners who wore the brightest colors (bright pink!) and Joseph choose them by the "shifty-ness" of the horse. Who won? I still don't know.
The bus left the stake center at 11:00 pm and arrived at the Campinas temple at 6:30 am the next morning. So I "slept" on the bus, but isn't this a beautiful thing to wake up to? I couldn't resist of taking a picture! After we unloaded from the bus and stashed our bags in the lockers, we had a true brazilian breakfast: hard roll, piece of fruit, and juice or hot chocolate. Thankfully I thought to bring my own sandwich on GF bread! 
Joseph and I were asked to be the witness couple. It was my first time so of course I was a bit nervous, and in another language! eeks. Then my headset had stopped working at the end part, so I am glad I know how the spirit speaks because I had no idea what was being said in Portuguese. What a great day!
This is Joseph's friend who was his driver in San Paulo for a week. He even brought Joseph to the temple! He isn't a member so he doesn't understand why we love our temples, but we hope as he waited for Joseph to be done, that he felt different while he walked around the grounds.
