It's raining, it's pouring!

We had a very rainy week this week. It rained every day which is a first for us here. This brought the temperatures down but the mugginess and humidity continued. However with the rain and cooler temperatures we are hoping Fall is indeed on the way. 

But enough about the weather! Here are some things we did this week to pass the time.

Tuesday was a normal day with Scott returning to work and boy did he work work work. Being away for a week sure kept him busy all this last week in the office. One exciting news about going back to work this week was we got the green light to plan our home leave for this summer so we started diligently looking at flights. The current plan is to go home to DC and visit Scott's parents in London. Still working out the kinks and dates but we are super excited!

Mackenzie got good quality play time with Alicia and is building that bond as well as her Spanish skills. It truly is amazing to watch a child learn another language. She can interpret both simultaneously and respond accordingly. She can say a fair amount of words in both English and Spanish, approximately 10 words in each language. We love this little bilingual gal of ours!

Eating ice.

Brushing her teeth.

Enjoying some yogurt.

She had about 3 bites of this sandwich before she deemed
it inedible and wouldn't touch it again.

Our delicious roasted veggie and pesto chicken dinner one night.

Kiersten kept busy this week with her church calling in the Primary. She learned songs, worked on posters for said songs for Sharing Time and prepared a lesson for her English class. Unfortunately by Friday she got very sick with a stomach bug keeping her in bed all day. Scott stayed home to take care of her and Alicia came early to watch Mackenzie. By Saturday she was feeling better and might have done too much because on Sunday she was feeling poorly again. Sitting here now on Monday morning she is feeling about as good as she did on Saturday but won't push herself because she now knows what repercussions she'll face. 2018 has been our most unhealthy year to date!

Before sickness struck, she made it to the new gym which is in a tent.

Honestly, it's nicer and better than the old gym.
That part of the Embassy is all torn down as they make way for the new construction.

Saturday afternoon Scott was absent from the house with church responsibilities so the girls stayed inside on the rainy day to play and make cookies. Mackenzie is actually very helpful in the kitchen. She wears a little apron and carries items to and from the pantry as needed. She'll then play with the extra cups and tablespoons until Mommy needs her "help". We secretly hope she develops a love of baking like us. Start 'em young!

Sunday was a stressful day at church. The lack of communication in the Primary is beginning to take its toll on Kiersten's patience. Despite the setback this week we are seeing a marked improvement in the reverence and participation and attention in all the children since she started working in there so she just has to remember where we started to where we've come. It is better. And it will continue to take time. The rest of the day we relaxed and were able to FaceTime with both sets of parents with a very crazy and manic Mackenzie who upon coming home from church refused to nap until 3pm! She went to bed very well that night.

That little blur insisted her Daddy chase her around the table
over and over again, laughing gleefully the whole time!

Now we are at the start of another week. We are hoping for a more healthy week for everyone and more patience in all things.

Misadventures in Baking:

• The cookies the girls made on Saturday were dark chocolate cranberry cookies and they were delicious.
  

Quirks of Paraguay:

• These Sprite signs. Not sure if there was something missing in translation or if that is really what they are supposed to say. We've found two gracing the skyline of Asuncion this week with the same misspelling.

  

  Why are the 'e's missing?!!

  
  
  
• It's blueberry season again! We found blueberries in the produce section of the grocery store this week and stocked up! We never know when berries will become available so we've learned to just buy as many as we can and freeze them when we find them. Mackenzie is a big blueberry fan.

The Mackenzie Update:

• As previous stated earlier, Mackenzie's language skills continue to impress us. We so hoped for her to become bilingual when we moved to Paraguay and now that she is we are thrilled. We just need to figure out a strategy for her to continue with Spanish when we return to the States.
• New vocabulary words include potatoes (taetos), papas (Spanish for potato), vamos (naanos which is Spanish for 'let's go' or 'we go'), bananas (nanas) and blueberries (...it changes every time).
• One morning Mackenzie got a little too excited when Alicia came and tripped when reaching for something on the stairs and hit the edge of the step with her mouth. She cried a lot but in the end was fine. There was a little blood but by the next day she was back to normal.

  

  It's dark but right about the front left tooth you can see some
  dried blood from the morning's fall.

• She's getting picky with her foods. She'll eat breakfast really well then have an okay snack. Lunch is usually a miss and then dinner depends on her mood and what we are eating. She's still growing but we hope she's getting the proper nutrients. Cheese and bread do not a healthy diet make.

  

  We had okra with dinner one night and she really liked it. She got it all over her face.

• Kiersten learned and prepared the 'Hello!' song for Primary this week because the missionaries are doing a great job bringing investigators to church. The song in Spanish is of course 'Hola!' We sang it on the ride home from church and Mackenzie loved it so much she sang it all afternoon. "Hola! Hola! Hola!" This is the first song she's really latched onto and sang.

Thanks for catching up on our week with us. We hope next week will be less hum drum. See you then!