Oh man! So much has happened this week so let's just dive right in!
On Tuesday Scott bought a car! And the girls went to Agro Shopping. And Mackenzie officially began walking! (See, so much happened this week and this is only the first day.)
During Scott's lunch break on Tuesday, our neighbor took Scott back out to the used car lot to buy the car. In cash. He wasn't able to drive it back that day for one reason or another but we were assured the car would be driven to the Embassy tomorrow. (It was.) But since Scott went during lunch, he missed out on the Tuesday asado lunch and instead went to Burger King.
Kiersten and Mackenzie finally got out of the house and went Agro Shopping with one of the other Embassy Moms. If you remember, Agro Shopping is the Farmer's Market of Paraguay. Kiersten was able to buy some things by herself and she is getting better with Spanish numbers and general phrases.
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| Look at all that yummy produce! |
After Agro Shopping, the girls walked to the Embassy to meet Scott and walk home with him. Once out of the stroller, Mackenzie wanted to walk so she held on to Kiersten's finger. Then when Daddy came around the corner, off she went to greet him! They then began to 'chase' after some birds (Mackenzie loves birds). We got our first real video of her walking and she was so proud of herself. So were we. We have a toddler now! Kiersten is a little sad that Mackenzie isn't a 'baby' anymore but is so excited for her to be walking.
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| Chasing after the birdy. |
Wednesday Kiersten finally decided to get a hair cut. It's only going to get hotter here and she's been toying with the idea of going shorter. After consulting her Mommy Embassy group, she learned of a stylist that is wonderful (according to them) and made an appointment for the next morning with another of the Mommys who was needing a cut too.
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| It's a bad angle, but it's about four inches below the shoulders. |
It should also be said that since Monday, Kiersten and Mackenzie have been going through a trial period with the nanny. She's been coming for about 2 hours each day to play with Mackenzie and let Kiersten do chores or other activities. On Wednesday Kiersten left the house for the market up the street leaving M and the nanny alone at home for the first time. It went well and gave Kiersten the confidence she needed to go to the hair salon the next morning.
Oh and our car came! Out of gas, a loose headlight, crappy windshield wipers and no wiper fluid but it's here! And we are so happy!
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| Oh the yellowness of this car! It's great! |
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| Small but just the right size for now. Most of the other cars we see are this size. |
Thursday was... ok. K's hair appointment was for 9:30. Anahy (the nanny, whom we will call Annie for the rest of this blog because we can't say her name.) came around 8:45 and K rushed to get things gathered for M's nap and her hair appointment. They got to the salon on time and both got started. Kiersten was second so while she waited for her turn, her shampoo girl gave her a fabulous scalp massage and then when she rinsed her hair and had her in the chair, a shoulder massage! That was the best part of the whole experience. Getting your hair cut in another language is tricky, especially if you have curly hair. It's another beast entirely than straight hair and it can be just that, a beast but I'll get to that in a second. The stylist was confident she could give Kiersten the cut she had in the picture.
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| Cute, right? |
When she finished the cut she tried to style it (curly) for her, the only problem being Kiersten's hair was now damp or dry and that just won't work. She was putting product in and trying to scrunch it and all the while asking K if it was good. 'Yes' she continually assured her with an indifferent face but in her mind she was screaming, "I have triangle hair!" She left the salon $25 lighter (right?!) and with a triangular lion's mane. Sorry no picture. Once she got home she washed her hair and styled it her way and it looked much better but not quite like the picture. The length is about right but it's missing layers and volume. Perhaps she'll try again in a few weeks with another stylist.
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| And this is my hair now. It's fine but not exactly what we were going for. |
When 4:30 rolled around, Kiersten was too tired to make dinner and now we have a car so the girls picked up Scott from work and they went out for dinner. At Burger King. (For all the times we've been there this month you'd think we really love it or something.) We also bought gas so going out for dinner was a great idea.
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| Action eating shot! A Whopper with cheese and fries. Mmm, America! |
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They love babies here, especially our baby.
With her paper crown and balloon scepter. So happy! |
Friday! We love Fridays! Ever since Tuesday, Mackenzie has been a little hesitant to walk on her own. She can but she won't get started on her own. That was until this morning! Kiersten was doing a quick workout and Mackenzie decided to get up and walk around. It was great! She walked and walked and walked around the living room and she was so happy. All that walking sure made her tired though so it was off for a quick nap.
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| Just look at that happy face. Freedom! |
During her nap, Kiersten cleaned the house and attempted to make chipa but more on that in our Misadventures in Baking section later on. The water guys also came to replace two of our empty 20 liters. It's been 4 weeks since Kiersten's first experience with them and she can tell she is improving each week with her Spanish. It's very exciting! Scott got home soon thereafter and we all ate lunch together. Since we have our own car now, we could go to Casa Rica when ever we wanted! We went to ACE first to get a few home good items and then to Casa Rica for groceries. When we got home, Kiersten made more chipa (again read below for more details) and it went fabulous with our leftover tomato soup from earlier in the week. Mackenzie went to bed and Kiersten made a third batch of chipa... no I'm just kidding. Chocolate chip cookies. See below for more details.
On to the weekend! Saturday was a productive day. We went on a short family walk before Mackenzie's nap and saw a lot of birds.
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| Practicing her walking skills. |
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| This is directly across the street from us. Birds! |
Scott did more work with the pool and backyard and we are getting excited for the weather to heat up so we can use it! Yes, it's hot here but it hasn't warmed up our pool yet ironically enough. Since it's winter, the sun sets earlier in the day so it doesn't give our little pool enough direct sunlight to heat things up. It's small enough that we don't think that will take too long though. Only time will tell.
In the afternoon, Kiersten left for a Relief Society choir competition. Yes, a competition. There were five wards total that participated. One ward (or branch maybe, they were small) had 5 people. One ward had choir robes and a little girl playing the kazoo (they were my favorite). The two other wards both wore white shirts with black skirts while we wore blue shirts, black skirts and yellow party bead necklaces. The choir robe ward sang with music played from a speaker. Two other wards sang with our accompanist straight out of the hymnal. Props to her because one, she'd never practiced with them; two, Paraguayans cannot keep time or sing really slowly; three, she could not see them and; four, she couldn't hear them! (This one is assumed because one ward I could barely hear.) She did great! Reminded me of this one time on my mission.... Another ward had a pianist and then obviously our ward had our pianist. Long story short, we won first place! Kiersten left before the awards to get home to her little family who had been home all day.
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| Judges table (two from our ward) and yes, trophies! |
Even though Scott stayed at home with a sleeping Mackenzie, he wasn't too upset. When she woke up they watched the first BYU Football game of the season together. Kiersten was sad she missed it but caught half of the last quarter. Go Cougs!
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| Supporting the wrong team and sport but what a cute fan! |
Sunday was wonderful. We participated in a Regional Conference broadcast from Salt Lake. Five speakers: three members of 70, the Primary General President and Elder Rasband. It was interesting to see what their focus was for this part of the world which to us seemed to be missionary work. They even had an English room and about 20 people were in there. Some missionaries, three expat families (us and two others) and a few local members who speak English. Three of the five speakers spoke in Spanish so we heard their translations but the Primary General President and E. Rasband were in English. One of the talks had some Guarani thrown in so at random times, the translator just gave us the Guarani which was cool but seemed out of place in context to the talk.
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| I love that no matter where in the world you go, the Church is still true! |
Scott treated us to a yummy traditional Sunday dinner with mashed potatoes, rolls, veggies and STAKE! We were going to cook it on our grill but it was a small cut of meat for two people and didn't feel like firing it up for that. Definitely another time.
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| Enjoying her veggies and potatoes. |
And today was a wonderful day. It was our nanny's first full day (5 hours) and it was fabulous! Kiersten was able to go for a run in the park which was her first run since we moved here so it was a little rough and HOT! The park was better than expected though. Shady with several different paths. Best part, you can see our house from two different places on the trails.
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| With a map and everything! |
When she got home, she helped put Mackenzie down for a nap and did some meal prepping for the week. This is something she's been wanting to do for a long time but could never find the time. We'll see if it sticks! And the rest of the day was pretty normal. Ran some errands after Annie left and made dinner. A nice, normal Monday.
Whew! What a week! I'm sure you've all been waiting patiently for this so without further adeu, Misadventures in Baking!
- Chipa, batch #1. On Thursday Kiersten translated a chipa recipe from Spanish into English in order to make it without bringing up Google Translate every other word. On Friday she made them and it was surprisingly easy! Scott and Kiersten took their first bite and it was SO salty! The recipe called for 1 tablespoon of salt. She double checked the translation before adding it. We knew we needed to try again.
- Chipa, batch #2. After going to the grocery store and buying more of the required Rallado cheese (which is honestly green can parmesan cheese so you can totally make this recipe back in the States) Kiersten set to work. She turned the oven on about 20 minutes before even starting the recipe and turned it all the way to 250C (480F) in hopes it would reach 180C soon. She then cut the salt down to 1 teaspoon and cut the cheese down to about 100g instead of the 150g. After being on for almost an hour, the oven was finally at 150C and we decided to just go for it. 23 minutes later and the chipa was done. This batch tasted much better! and it went perfectly with the tomato soup. It was like a grilled cheese sandwich bread. Perfect!
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All the ingredients you need.
Water, milk, vegetable oil, salt, flour, 1 egg, and Rallado cheese. |
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| Add 1/2 c water, 1/2 c milk, 1/4 c oil and 1 tsp salt in a pot. |
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| Bring to a boil then turn off the heat and add 1 c flour. |
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After the flour has been added and the dough is cool to the
touch, add in the egg. |
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| Then 100g of cheese. |
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| Finally, roll out the dough into little balls and place on a baking sheet. |
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Bake for 20-25 minutes at 180C (356F).
Cool on wire rack. |
-Chocolate chip cookies, batch #3 since we've been here. The first batch had twice as much butter and turned into puddles in the oven and took forever to bake. The second batch still had a little too much butter (1 cup = 226 g) and still took too long to bake but they were edible. This third time Kiersten cut the butter to 200g (one stick here), took out the milk and used a scant tsp of vanilla. The vanilla here is weird. It's imitation I think? The oven was still on from the second chipa attempt so it had been on for two hours or more and was only reaching 350F which we've determined is it's max temperature. She also decided to turn off the convection setting (if that's really what it is) and try it that way to see what would happen. Two batches. The first baked for 8 minutes and looked burnt, the second for 6 1/2 minutes and were a little less burnt. It makes no sense! These cookies are supposed to bake at 375F for twice that time! This oven is not doing it's job properly.
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| This dough looked and tasted better than the last two... |
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| By George, I think we've done it! Still working on the oven settings though. |
Quirks of Paraguay.
- Trees. The trees here are beautiful but they have their share of weird things too. Some trees have too many things going on like they have the usual trunk, bark, branches, leaves and maybe some flowers but then they'll have spikes or a cactus growing in them! This is why we take pictures, friends.
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| Yes, that is a cactus up in that tree there. |
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| But see? This flora is pretty. |
- Yogurt. You know Kefer? The drinkable European yogurt? ALL the yogurt here is like that. It's a little annoying but it's nice if you want to drink it or use it like milk with your cereal which is how we eat it so actually, it's not annoying at all!
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| Learning spoon work with the drinkable yogurt. Didn't really work. |
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| Homemade granola with yogurt not milk. |
- Asado. The Paraguayan form of barbecue. We finally have a picture for you to comprehend what we're talking about when we say MEAT.
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| This picture was taken at the rodeo the other week. MEAT! |
Last but certainly not least, The Mackenzie Update.
- WALKING! Yes we've mentioned it a few times in passing during this post but our baby is officially walk. She can stand up on her own and get going. She still likes to use her 'walker' but we've now found a fun use for it.
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We FaceTime Grandma Hammond a lot and this has become
a fun way for Mackenzie to get more involved in the conversation. |
- Teething? She has been increasingly cranky in the last few days and wanting more naps but not always sleeping. May be just a phase. Who really knows with these things?
- Carbs. Maybe with the teething thing she just wants soft foods and that has been in the form of bread mostly and she happily ate some pasta at dinner tonight. Or maybe she's burning more calories from walking.
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| Really enjoying her chocolate dessert after her carb loaded dinner. |
As always, thank you for your love and support. This next week is going to be equally busy because Scott's 30th birthday is on Friday! So excited! All the details aren't totally planned out but we'll let you know how it goes next week. And next Monday is Labor Day in the States and Scott gets the day off so who knows what we'll do! Tune in to find out next week!
