Sexta-Feira: A Day In The Life

• Ruth finished 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, her second in her current goal of five books.
  
• We went to the grocery store, which is a very big outing for us. It entails loading the boys up in the stroller, packed with my front-pack carrier for Max, our big bag and a few toys; walking several miles over to the store; picking out the things on our list; gawking at all the things we aren't familiar with; letting everyone pick out one special something to take home; finding at least one new thing to try; convincing the clerk that we really are not interested in paying for our groceries in installments; loading Max into the carrier; loading the stroller up with groceries; walking back home; and finding a place for everything in our (not-so) gigantic kitchen. It's a blast! One of our favorite outings of the week!
  
• Ruth's last day of a day-camp she has been attending at a nearby language school. She was actually in a class that was being taught in English to Portuguese-speaking children. But it helped her gain confidence in interacting with Portuguese speakers and allowed her to get out of the house and away from us, and make some new friends, while enjoying some fun activities--like American football (as opposed to soccer, which is the "football" of choice around here) on the beach.
• Laundry Day. Sounds a little mundane, but it's actually a huge, huge deal, since I have 3 children, as you know--one of whom is two and another of whom has just recently started eating solids; and since there are quite a lot of laundry rules to follow. For instance, each family is only allowed to use the lavanderia two times during the week--not including Saturday and Sunday--for six hours at a time. They enforce this by having you check out a key, not to the laundry room, but to the individual washers and dyers. And they keep a log of when you return the keys. In addition, you must sign up for a machine at least 24 hours in advance, so there's no just slipping in and doing your laundry on a moments notice--although they did let me get away with that my very first time because there happened to be a free machine, and I'm sure they felt sorry for the poor, dumb American bumbling her way through the process.
• Churrasco success! Jeff got going early on the churrasco and produced a fabulous pile of (cooked) meat any Watts man would be proud of.
• Dessert! Fridays have always kind of been days that we have a little mini-celebration to start the weekend. Tonight we indulged in some of our special grocery store treasures: chocolate/hazelnut cookies, Garoto bombons and balls of chocolate yumminess covered in chocolate sprinkles.
• Family Night. We like to use Friday evenings as a pure family night when we can. We usually have a little family Bible study and then do something like play a game or watch a movie or some other little something that we can all do together. Tonight it was Phase 10--a card game that both kids know how to play (with our modified rules, which more resemble Uno) and enjoy very much.
  

It was a very fun and intersting day, and now it's time for a restful and peaceful night. Hope you all had a happy Sexta-Feira as well. I'll try to check back in with you tomorrow.