We finished last week's blog early Monday afternoon so let's start there because believe it or not, something different happened. The sister missionaries called that afternoon asking if they could use our computers to email home (Mondays are their P-Days) and Kiersten of course said yes. While they were emailing, Kiersten was in the kitchen looking at what to make for dinner and decided on the leftover Cafe Rio pork that was in the freezer. She then invited the sisters to join us for dinner and they emphatically said yes. Luckily our pantry is almost always stocked with Mexican food items (black beans, corn, limes, etc.). It is always nice to have the missionaries in our home and bring that sweet Spirit into our lives. We love these sisters!
On to Tuesday. In the morning Kiersten finally rode her bike outside! It's a big deal. The roads here are not well paved and the drivers are scary so she hasn't dared take to the roads. Solution: there is a park near the airport that has a bike path! K went with another Embassy momma/cyclist and they had a great time. The loop is about 2.5 miles and poorly paved in places but at least they only needed to avoid pot holes and not cars. They are hoping to make this a bi-weekly occurrence.
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| Proof. We rode. |
When Kiersten got home she hit the grocery store and was able to find cranberries! Fun fact, the word for cranberry in Spanish is arándano which can also mean 'blueberry' so you need to add rojo (red) when asking someone if they have it in stock. They also don't care if it's dried or fresh so you need to specify that too. These cranberries were in a bottle with a German label. She bought 6. Never know when you'll need cranberries here. We are learning to stock up on hard to find food items. Back home to begin some Thanksgiving food prepping. The pie crusts were all made earlier so she set to work making the Toll House Pie and peanut butter cheese cake. She worked well into the evening on these tasks.
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| Jars of cranberries for approximately $4. |
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| Yeah, Mackenzie let Mom paint her little nails. It only lasted for about 30 minutes when Dad got home and made them take it off. |
Wednesday was busy, busy, busy. For dinner on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving we traditionally have soup and lots of it. We decided to only have one soup since it was just the three of us and that soup was Chicken Enchilada Soup. Yum! It was easy to make since it was from a packet so that meant K could focus more attention on making other food for Thursday and completing other tasks. She still had her Spanish lesson at 11 and then decided she needed to take Yoga at noon to relax a little. It was awesome.
When she got home, she played with a grumpy and tired Mackenzie who only slept one hour during her nap. We are trying to teach Mackenzie to put her things away and take ownership of her stuff and there was a power struggle between mom and baby with the first real temper tantrum to date. K said to M, "Please pick up your sippy cup, put it in the fridge and then we can go play." M cried and threw herself on the floor and refused to obey. It was a simple request that just set her off. K didn't raise her voice or get angry but M decided the whole idea of taking responsibility for her things was offensive and voiced her disapproval. For 10 minutes. K even showed her exactly what she wanted M to do and still no dice. So K held M's hands to pick up the cup, open the fridge and place it inside and then they went to play. Is this the beginnings of the "terrible two's"?
After that little episode, Scott got home and Kiersten was able to make the soup. After Mackenzie went to bed (early), K made the Pumpkin Pie with chocolate crust, started on the cranberry-jalapeño cream cheese dip process and peeled and cut the apples for the apple pie to be made in the morning.
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| Chicken Enchilada Soup topped with all the fixings including mango. |
Thursday, Thanksgiving, Turkey Day, the main event of the week arrived! In the morning, Annie came early so Scott and Kiersten could go off and play American Football that the DOD guys at the Embassy put on. We went to a Paraguayan Air Force Base that had some nice soccer fields that we reserved for our purposes. At first there were way too many people so the teams were split to play two smaller, half-field games. Scott and Kiersten were not on the same team. Scott got in some good plays, several first downs and tackles (flag football style). Kiersten felt invisible until the quarterback finally passed her the ball and she gained several yards. A few minutes later when the other team had the ball, she caught an interception and ran it in for a touchdown. Pick-six! That made all the guys think again about the girl on their team. She made a second touchdown and they won 5-2!
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| After all the football fun |
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| One of the planes near the field we played on. |
It was a fun and very warm Turkey Bowl. They made it home by 11:30 and cleaned up. The food was all completed by 1:30 and by 2:45 we were off to our friend's home for our big Friendsgiving dinner extravaganza. There were six families in attendance including us so there were lots of kids and lots of really excellent food. Everyone brought their best Thanksgiving recipes so it was the best of the best. The turkey was cooked two different ways and both were incredible. A traditional oven roasted turkey and a more Paraguayan style grilled/asado turkey which was also amazingly delicious. We rightfully stuffed ourselves on good food and then way too many pie options. It was a wonderfully fun day.
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| Our contributions to the meal. |
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| The beautiful setting of the outdoor table. There were two tables. |
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| The cute kids table. |
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| A plate FULL of the amazing food! |
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| One of the pie tables including our apple and pumpkin pies. |
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| The other pie table with our Toll House being cut into. It was definitely a favorite. |
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| Mackenzie loved her juice box for dinner. Didn't eat a ton unlike us! |
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| The little kids watching the big kids swim after dinner. Yup, this is the place we live. |
Friday was much more relaxed. Scott took the day off work and we were able to complete a few errands. The Jackson family tradition for Black Friday is to buy a Christmas tree and true to tradition we went in search of a tree. We don't know if they do real trees here so we were looking to invest in a fake tree. The options at the stores were pretty dismal and we didn't commit to any that day so we are still on the hunt. That afternoon we had a second Thanksgiving dinner this time with American members of the church. No turkey this time but some of the usual sides made a showing like sweet potato casserole and cranberry sauce from a can and rolls. It was still good food but didn't touch the level of food quality from the day before. That night we had our neighbors over to play more Harry Potter. We beat level four, lost level five and then beat it an hour later.
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| Her guard giraffe, Matilda, is her new favorite toy. |
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| She carried this huge ball all through ACE. She was very sad when we had to put it away. |
Saturday we woke to rain. As we've mentioned before rain can create rivers in the streets and that was definitely true on Saturday. Kiersten had committed to cleaning the church with the Relief Society in the morning and couldn't make it out in time. She showed up late (so did everyone else) and at first it was her and one other woman. She swept the entire building for an hour and a half. Thankfully three more people showed up but K needed to leave before the job was done. It's a large building so five people are definitely not enough.
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| Scott had built this fort for Mackenzie while K was cleaning the church. |
The rain continued most of the day. By mid afternoon it had let up enough for us to go on a little walk around the neighborhood to tire Mackenzie out. It worked! We got home and she caught some more much needed sleep. At 5pm we all went to the chapel for the baptism of the sister's investigator, the father of one of the YSA's in the ward. It was lovely. That night was the first night in many nights were we weren't at a party, hosting other people or baking. It was pretty relaxing and K went to bed early to catch up on sleep.
Sunday was busy again. Church was a little crazy but that's becoming the new normal. Mackenzie tested out nursery again today this time accompanied by Kiersten who didn't intend on staying but got sucked into the games. For lunch Kiersten made a very elaborate meal entirely from scratch. Butternut Squash Ravioli with a Bacon Cream Sage Sauce topped with a toasted pecan and parmesan cheese garnish complete with Rosemary Focaccia Bread. Oh yeah, it was as good as it sounds.
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| It was so good! |
Just as we began FaceTime with Scott's parents, Kiersten remembered choir practice was moved up to 3pm so she had to rush off for rehearsal. When she got home, S&K played with Mackenzie while laying on the floor. She bounced, literally, from parent to parent and had a great time jumping on us and climbing all over us. Kids don't need toys, they need tired parents who don't care if they are used as a jungle gym. It was a fabulous evening with our little family.
Monday, Monday, Monday. It was a busy day today. While Annie was with Mackenzie, Kiersten was able accomplish many little tasks including grocery run, laundry, and making more pasta. We received a lot of packages at the Embassy today but will be picking them up tomorrow because the sisters came over to email again and stayed for dinner of tomato soup and focaccia grilled cheese sandwiches. Very tasty.
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| Hermanas Weech and Bulgier with Mackenzie. (We asked their permission to share this picture.) |
Misadventures in Baking:
- The pies! So many pies! We thought we had figured out how to bake a pie without the crust sinking into the pan but no. It's always a little disappointing when the crust is beautiful and then shrinks. Grr! Thankfully that only happened to one of the three pies.
Toll House Pie 
Peanut Butter (Protein) Cheesecake
Chocolate crusted Pumpkin Pie 
Apple Pie topped with apples - The ravioli was amazing! It was a labor intensive process but the taste was totally worth it. The pasta making process was really fun because we didn't measure anything it was all by feel. The sauce was a compilation of three different sauce ideas. The base was bacon grease with butter, add some flour and ground sage then slowly add in cream until you get the consistency you want. Then salt to taste. Top the whole thing with grated parmesan, toasted pecans and bacon bits and you've got yourself a decadent, restaurant worthy meal.
Part of the ravioli making process.
Pre-cooked ravioli
The finished product on the plate.
Complete with the homemade rosemary focaccia bread.
Quirks of Paraguay:
- Mangos, part 3. We tried a Paraguayan mango this week. We'd been told the native mangos are much sweeter than regular mangos and we can confirm this fact. They are also a little darker orange than other mangos. Mackenzie loved it.
- Guarani. We are learning some from Annie who lets words drop on the daily. Purete (poor-et-a) means "cool" or "awesome" or "that's great." It's kind of an all use word. It's cool.
The Mackenzie Update:
- Her seventh tooth is surfacing more and more each day. The eighth is giving her lots of grief.
- She is really into twirling and spinning. She can spin in a circle for a while and then walk right out of the spin in a straight line. No staggering. Amazing!
Spinning with one of the Primary girls. - Mackenzie said her first "pray" this week at dinner. She knows to fold her arms and bow her head when we bring out food. One night we asked her to say the prayer and she mumbled out some words and we all said 'Amen'. We know Heavenly Father knew what she said so we counted it.
It was an incredibly busy week and there are probably things we missed but these are the events that made a biggest impressions in our minds. Thanks again for following our journey. See you here next week!
