Saturday

My favorite part of Saturday is having Eric home all day. First we all went to the Church for the Primary Program practice. While Gretta and Eliza were at church we took Carli to get her new school uniforms. 

After the girls practiced they got a little snack of pao do queijo (the cheese bread) and juice. They have some amazing varieties of juice here in Brazil. Mango is one of my favorite.  Once Gretta and Eliza were done we went to a different uniform store and pick up some more stuff for them. 

Then we came home because the repair man was to come fix the washing machine and oven again. Last Tuesday he came to look at the washing machine, but it took a while to find the part. Well in the mean time Carli knocked the door totally off which is a big problem with a front loading washing machine. Luckily Eric was able to jerry rig it to get it to work, but I was excited to have it fixed. 

The repair guy (more like a handyman) came and worked on the washing machine and oven. The washing machine door is better but not really 100% secure but it should work. And he keeps telling me that the oven is fine, but it's not. Tonight I tried to cook pre-made pizza in the oven and the temperature won't stay consistent especially at low temperatures and I think that maybe the thermostat is off. It's super annoying. Tonight I had it on at what I thought was the right temperature and then when I went back to check the pizza in 10 minutes the over was off. This happened over and over. I think the owner doesn't think I know how to use the oven right and I am pretty sure her handyman doesn't really know how to fix the problem. So it's a big problem especially because having a working oven is pretty critical. Eric is going to ask at work finding a reliable repair man. In stead of taking 20 mins to cook the pizza it took over 1 hour which was really annoying because the kids were hungry and if I had only know it was going to be such a problem I would have made them something else! Hopefully we get it fixed for REAL this week. 

While the repair man was here Carli took a nap and I stayed in the apartment. Eric took the girls down stairs to go swimming. They had a great time.

Then at 3pm we went to a birthday party for one of the American kids in our ward who just turned 3. It was a Panda Bear Party the we all had a great time. It was fun to be with other English speakers and the kids enjoyed having more toys to play with, great food and of course CAKE! A great time was had by all. 

On the way home we stopped at the mall to buy a chip and minutes for an old cell phone a co-worker gave Eric for me. It's a pretty large mall. What is funny to me is that I saw the same store on different levels, but they were really the same store over again not just two levels of the same store. I mean they had the same stuff in them. The first vivo store we went to didn't have the chip, so we went downstairs to the next level and another vivo store had one. It would be like an authorized cell phone dealer and then an authorized reseller being in the same mall. The girls and I walked around while Eric got the cell phone all figured out. We ran into two girls that go to school with Gretta and Eliza. One is in Gretta's class and the other in Eliza's. I recognized the one in Gretta's class from the Birthday Party pictures. The one in Eliza's classes name is Lulu and she was really excited to see Eliza. 

We also window shopped and I was SHOCKED at how expensive everything was. We went to the food court after shopping and for our family to eat at the food court would have been over $60. Hence the problem with take and bake pizza later. Had I known I would have just bought the girls McDonalds at the mall. Oh well. 

It was a long day, but at least we got a lot done. I would have to say today was really the first day I was missing how easy things are do to at home and wishing things in Brazil were a little cheaper. Labor is cheap, but stuff is very expensive.