Other than the weather, this Jackson family was busy, busy, busy! Kiersten is training two clients and now has 3 piano students! And they are so international. One American, one French-Canadian and one German. She is teaching and learning so much.
Monday was a US Holiday so Scott and Kiersten took the time to go to a fancy lunch at La Cabrera. A nice, sit-down steakhouse with so much food brought to our table! It was like the buffet came to us. Just as an example, Kiersten ordered the half portion of steak (400g) and ate half of that! And it was a bit more expensive than we are used to but it was still a lovely time out.
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| Bread starter... |
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| Main course! The menu only mentioned the meat we ordered, not all this extra stuff! Yikes! |
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| And the lollipop tree that comes with the bill at the end of the meal. |
Even though it isn't actually Fall here we can still get butternut squash. Mackenzie became quite attached to the one we bought and carried it around as her "baby" for about 3 days until we finally cooked it.
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| Loving on her calabacita. What a weird kid. |
Speaking of babies, Finley baby only has a few more days of being 11 months old! What?!! This year has gone by way too fast. This time last year we were all back in the US getting ready to meet her. No one was more ready than Kiersten who had been in the hospital for 15 of 21 days (as of today). But now we want time to slow down! Love this baby of ours!
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| What a sweet, sweet baby! |
Friday was a very exciting day. A woman from our ward owns a gluten-free bakery and she came over to the house to teach Kiersten how to bake gluten-free alfajores which are the most delicious cookies we've ever had. Upon first bite on our first day in Paraguay, Kiersten vowed to learn how to make them and that day finally happened. It's essentially a layer of thick dulce de leche sandwiched between two shortbread cookies and then rolled in coconut flakes. Mouth. Watering. And gluten-free flour is easy to make on the cheap here. Five pounds for roughly $3.87! Oh yeah!
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| Carefully peeling cookies off the rolling mat. |
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| Finished product! Mmmm! So good! And gluten-free! |
Later that day we took the family out to the mall to get out some wiggles and then to our new favorite burger destination: T.D. Burger. We were out later than Finley would have liked so it was a somewhat harried affair.
Saturday was... well it was a bit rough. We stayed in other than an extremely crowed trip to the grocery store by Kiersten and Mackenzie. Since the weather was still on the cool side, Kiersten made gluten-free pumpkin cookies and we all ate more than we care to admit. In the evening Kiersten took these cookies and the extra alfajores to Book Club! She didn't read the book but wanted to socialize and share the cookies with friends. It was a fun evening and has committed to the next meeting by actually buying the next book, in hardback!
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| Enjoying some homemade chicken nuggets. |
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| Full body drawing! |
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| Finley joined Mommy's morning Yoga session. |
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| Playing hide & seek with Daddy. Can you find him? |
Sunday was pretty low-key. For the first time in months, Finley fell asleep in church! When we got home we decided to tackle the ants in her room (and her crib!) so she napped in the pack-n-play upstairs and slept another 3 hours! Growth spurt? Kiersten and Mackenzie went to choir practice to prepare for Christmas and only one person showed up other than the director. So we ran the Tenor part for O Come All Ye Faithful for 50 minutes. Boo. Then after dinner we let Mackenzie watch Mary Poppins. For the rest of the night and part of today she has been singing, "chim chim chim chim".
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| Twins at church... and in life always. |
Today Mackenzie got 10 stickers in one of her chore categories and requested a Mommy-Daughter date. She decided on a picnic at home with fruit and water, all completely her idea! So proud.
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| Enjoying some apples, pears, yogurt and water at our picnic. |
Quirks of Paraguay:
- I'm betting we won't have too many of these in the coming months. Almost nothing surprises us here anymore. Except this newspaper vending machine we saw at the mall after our Monday lunch date:
The Mackenzie Update:
- She can sing so many songs now! I'm talking popular ones and does a good job of it. The best ones to date are, 'Let it Go (Frozen)', 'How Far I'll Go (Moana)', and 'Where You Are (Moana)'.
- Her drawing skills are skyrocketing! She asked Scott to draw an airplane but he told her to try. So she did. And succeeded!
Very clearly an airplane. So impressed! - Anything in the past is 'yesterday'.
The Finley Report:
- Standing so successfully now and looking ready to cruise.
This is her all time favorite toy. And we got it for free when we first moved here! - SHE IS A STAIR CLIMBER!
With the proper motivation this girl goes all the way to the top, and fast! - More teeth are about to poke through! Poor baby has had a runny nose for 3 weeks!
- She had a terrible cough this week. A humidifier and warm baths have helped tremendously.
We have a taco-tastic birthday party planned for the llittle llady (and llamas, see what I did there?) on Saturday and a low-key, family-only celebration for Wednesday. We'll tell you all about it next week on the blog!
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| Mackenzie helping with some party decorations this week. |
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