Here’s what else:

Kermess at our school — a highlight of the year. A Kermess is a festival or fair to raise funds and all of the schools around here seem to have them. I had never heard the term before we lived in Chile, but if you want to read something interesting, go here. Because ours is an international school, Kermess consists of food booths hosted by many of the countries represented at the school, along with carnival games and some rides. The food is amazing. Tons of variety, and most is affordable and delicious.

Thanksgiving in Chile. Bunch of gringo Mormons. Tons of food. What, you didn’t swim on Thanksgiving? We met up with some dear old friends of my parents, the Kimballs, who are here as missionaries.Jonathan has excellent Webelos leaders here in Chile. He’s got a bunch of pins in that little baggy. Matt took Sam and Ben with a group from church on an overnight campout and hike.Thomas had a jungle-themed preschool program. Adorable. I can’t believe he’s been in preschool for an entire year. We love his teachers and he has cute little friends. Mary played the tambourine in her kindergarten Christmas program. We made fake gingerbread houses — constructed of cardboard, with all manner of cookies and candy stuck on with frosting. Thomas, not pictured, didn’t even pretend to decorate his. Just ate as fast as he could.Matt’s excellent mother, Vicki, came and we took her all over the place. Restaurants and shopping, a lovely day at the beach, lots of swimming, a little trip to a place with a cabin where apparently I didn’t take pictures, and the amusement park below. This is Matt’s company party at a place called Mampato. Their tagline is “Let’s Fun” and fun we did. The kids took Granny on all of their favorite rides, and then Santa came with presents for everyone. There were hot dogs and drinks and ice cream and a whole potato spiral-sliced and deep fried on a stick. Pretty much your perfect day if you’re a kid, right?

Our week with Granny went by so fast, and it was VERY SAD when she left, but thank goodness, Christmas was still to come…

Our final stop was at one of the termas (hot springs) which are everywhere in the area. A hot soak was just what we needed after that long hike.

Jon turned 9 in August. We celebrated by taking a bunch of his friends for overpriced American food at Johnny Rocket’s. He wanted butterscotch brownies instead of a cake — an old-school Nana Rozanna recipe. Yum.

Never a boring day at preschool in Chile. Here’s Thomas the “pirata.” He came home another day with newspaper taped to his back — a “super-heroe”.

Chilean Independence day, September 18th, is one of my favorite times of year here. The kids dress up and learn traditional dances and I go to school a million times (for all of the different grade levels) and try to take a decent picture and cry because I feel like we’re having a “Chile moment.” Jon was in the “devil dance” this year — one of the best ones! Very fun to watch.

Mary did a little dancing and played traditional games, before listening to an organ grinder (that’s traditional here — imported from Germany I guess?) and having a Chilean feast.
For the middle/high school program, you have to go early to get a seat, wait for the thing to start, sit through lots and lots of other numbers (the dancing is fun to watch, though) and then this is about all you see of your kid. That’s Sam in the middle. Ben was singing at the same time, but I couldn’t get close enough to zoom in on him. Story of my life.

Matt turned 40! Thanks to our fun friends who just had a similar celebration, we had these funny glasses, a hat, and black decorations — I had to explain the black to the kids, who don’t think 40 is very old, thank goodness!

Just like last year, we tried out the pool in September. It was a nice warm day, but the water was ice-cold.

Sam turned 14. He wanted brownies instead of a cake, too. Brilliant, really, because they’re delicious and so much easier to make. Made from scratch!

Sam was a part of this giant event to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Chile. We were in a stadium full of about 25,000 people and the program was fabulous both in spirit and in execution. I really just can’t do it justice with my words nor my pictures, but it was an awesome experience in the true sense of that word. So lucky to be here and be having these moments!

In Chile, we have to get creative as well. Even if I wanted to use mixes, they are less common, often not very good, and always more expensive here. You should see what they charge for an icky frozen dinner. So I cook even more from scratch than I did before. Good for me.

Sometimes I make something from scratch (marshmallows?) and think it wasn’t worth the effort, but more often, I find that the scratch product is so easy. Why do we ever buy the processed version? Here are two examples.

Homemade Hot Chocolate.

I can find Hot Cocoa powder here for maybe twice the price it would be back home, but one morning I flipped open my trusty red and white cookbook and read their Hot Chocolate instructions. Why, why, why do we buy the powder? Unless maybe we’re camping or something. Here’s how you make hot chocolate. Start with a quart of milk. Put a small amount of the milk in a saucepan with either 1/4 c. unsweetened cocoa, or 1/3 c. of chopped dark chocolate (chocolate chips are fine), add sugar to taste (1/4 c. more or less) and cook over medium heat until everything is melted. Stir in the rest of the milk and heat to desired temperature. That’s it. Doesn’t take any longer than heating the water for the fakey powder stuff!

Homemade Enchilada Sauce.

I’ve always bought enchilada sauce in a can before and am not sure why I hadn’t thought to try making it, but now I have to as I’ve never seen a can of the stuff here in Chile. There are some crazy-complicated recipes out there, and I’m sure they’re delicious and smell like your Mexican grandmother’s kitchen (ooh, or maybe the kitchen of the Red Iguana in Salt Lake — yum). Yesterday I had a hankering for enchiladas and found this totally fast, easy recipe, and maybe I’m not very fussy (since I’ve been fine with the canned kind all this time) but I thought it was delicious. Also cheaper than the can and without random chemicals. Done and done.

My next thing to try is homemade goldfish crackers, a snack item we kind of miss around here. The homemade ones are healthier, too, though I think they may end up falling more into the category of the marshmallows — delicious but a lot of trouble. We’ll let you know.

Buenos Aires is the only way to connect from Santiago to Iguazu, so it seemed logical to build in a stop-over. I’ve always wanted to see the city, and though many of the typical tourist favorites there are more for adults (the big thing is to go to a tango show and those are not really appropriate for children!) there are plenty of things to do with kids as well.For example, you could visit a lot of pastry shops — we hit at least one each day. So good. We ate a lot of that famous Argentine steak too. Oh, and really good ice cream. And yes, I did gain five pounds on this trip, why do you ask?We had a tour of BA’s historic center. Me–Sam, that’s where Madonna sang, “Don’t cry for me, Argentina”! Sam–Who’s Madonna again? Are we done yet?We saw the national cathedral, which looked a lot like other cathedrals I’ve seen, but the kids had never seen a cathedral before and were actually somewhat impressed. We had unbelievably good hot chocolate and churros at the famous Cafe Tortoni. That guy in the first picture is our very patient and charming British tour guide, Alan.We explored the fascinating Recoleta Cemetery and found Evita’s grave. And is it too soon to tell you all that someday when I die, I expect a marble statue to guard my tomb?We didn’t look at all out of place on the subway. We felt pretty daring as the subway is often very crowded. But even though we rode it each day, none of the kids got lost or crushed, and no one picked our pockets!Happiness is having a sibling whose weight can balance yours on a seesaw.
We took the train to a little town called Tigre, where you can get on a boat and ride up into the Parana river delta. We explained to the kids that these homes are essentially on their own little islands, connected by inlets of the river. There are no roads, so instead of a car you have a boat. Or you wait for the boat we were on to come pick you up at your dock. We rode up to a lovely, scenic restaurant, El Gato Blanco, and then on the way home, the boat stopped for a bunch of school children and proceeded to drop each of them at home as we traveled back to Tigre. So what we were on was basically a floating school bus.

We played in this fun old park near our house, but were annoyed to find the playground locked up tight. No worries, there was a McDonald’s nearby which made everyone so very happy. Incidentally, fast food is almost twice as expensive in South America, and particularly in BA, I am amazed that people shell out 7-8$ or more for a value meal when they could have real food (including a steak for heaven’s sake!) for nearly the same price. The place was packed though, and the fries were perfect.

We shopped for souvenirs and watched tango dancers in the very colorful, and very touristy “Caminito” in the La Boca neighborhood.
Finally, one of the highlights of the trip was this home where we stayed. I had found us a little apartment to stay in on VRBO, but the guy emailed me while we were in Iguazu to tell me he had booked a long-term renter and ask if we’d be willing to switch to his other, bigger, more expensive property, but at the lower price, of course. It turned out to be a 100-year-old four-story mansion with its own elevator. It was like something out of a novel, and we loved it. The kids ran all over the place. It had charming, quirky details everywhere and was just the kind of place I adore. Good thing we were tired enough to sleep standing up though, because an antique bed is not necessarily a comfortable bed. Something to keep in mind.

Iguazu Falls sits on the borders of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, and is scenic at a level that utterly defies description. The entire first day, which we spent in Brazil, I had to keep reminding myself that what we were seeing was actually there, and not an IMAX movie. The boat ride on the Argentine side felt like reality though — we were soaked and Mary screamed in my ear the entire time. It was awesome.

Tons of walking meant there were a lot of tired little feet, but other than that, a practically perfect vacation. And Iguazu was only the first half of our trip, so stay tuned…

I Like To Move It — from Madagascar
Love Shack — The B-52′s
Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It) — Beyoncé
Surfin’ U.S.A. — The Beach Boys
Just Can’t Get Enough — Depeche Mode
Conga — Gloria Estefan
Celebration — Kool & The Gang
Macarena — Los del Río
Waka Waka (Esto es África) — Shakira
Y.M.C.A. — Village People
Who Let the Dog’s Out? — Baha Men
California Girls — The Beach Boys

The Macarena was surprisingly popular — next year we should add The Electric Slide. I think what made dancing together so fun was the wide variety of ages, from little toddlers to grandparents.

One funny thing — I have to tease my sweet mother-in-law a little bit. We lovingly refer to her as a “gusher” because of her tendency to lavish praise on people, and she kept singling out people she thought were good dancers — “Hey everyone, look at Sam!” At which point the person would turn red and stop dancing. There’s a reason most dances are done in semi-darkness! As hammy as this family can be, the desire for attention doesn’t extend to our dancing.

I saw a related idea on this blog, where you have each family member choose a favorite song before a big reunion, and then make a cd, which becomes the “soundtrack” for the entire reunion. I think that sounds like more work than what I did, but also a lot of fun.

Any other song suggestions for our next dance party? A lot of songs are good for listening, but hard to dance to. My dorky playlist above has become a favorite for my kids and we listen to it in the car, when cleaning our rooms, etc.

Mary. Kindergarten. Pink for everything.

This looks like a timely post, since most of you have just started school, or are about to start, but we started school July 24.

Jonathan. 4th grade. NOT cute. My only kid in a uniform this year.

Keep in mind that July is the middle of winter here, so this would be like you starting school in the middle of January. It was cold, dark, and rainy that morning, which is why the “back to school” pictures are in the living room instead of on the front porch, or actually at school.

Benjamin. 6th grade. Middle school -- yikes.

We were pretty cheerful though — my secret weapon is making these chocolate chip pancakes, which my children wish I would make every day.

Sam. 8th grade. Taller than his mother and becoming a serious student (yes!).

I really didn’t want to get out of my cozy bed this morning. Something about packing lunches and feeling like my life resembles the movie Groundhog Day. But of course, me having a bad attitude doesn’t get anyone off to school.

Parenthetically, I am a night owl who married a morning person. Seems to me, from an evolutionary standpoint, that it would have been helpful for my children to inherit his propensity to hop right up and be cheerful and productive. But, just like his beautiful brown eyes, so far we’re one for five on the morning-loving. Sam is the only one who can get himself up. The others I quite literally drag out of bed, to which I’m sure my mother would say, “what goes around comes around.”

Did you hear about some study that said it doesn’t much matter what parenting techniques you use, because how your children turn out depends mostly on who you are as parents? I don’t even care if it was a good study or not, I already know it’s true, and doesn’t it make parenting even harder? You mean I have to BE what I want them to be?

I am quite certain this works in both the long term — our values, our ethics, our faith — and in the short term — our attitude. Don’t you just hate that old saying, “If momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy”? I know some of you hate it because of the grammar, but really we hate it because it’s so true!

So I’m going to talk to my kids about having a great attitude this month, but mostly I’m going to talk to myself about it (you don’t talk to yourself?). I wish it wasn’t so much about me, but I know it is, and I can do BETTER.

This is kind of a cheater goal, because we have some fun things to look forward to this month, and that is always, always helpful from an attitude standpoint. Spring is coming (it was sunny and warm yesterday — yay!) and the kids have a week off from school, so we’re taking them on their first really big South American adventure — to Iguazu Falls and Buenos Aires, Argentina. Matt is having a very big birthday later in the month. (Help! What should I do about celebrating it?) And he is traveling to the US at the end of the month, which is always hard because he’s gone over a weekend, but we look forward to it because he brings back suitcases full of goodies!

Oh also, our sweet Carmen is coming back from maternity leave on Monday, and I know most of you don’t feel bad for me at all, but boy have I missed her! I’m sure she’s going to find the level of dirt in the house a little dismaying, but guess what? She always comes with a good attitude. And having help is definitely good for my attitude!

So all of that will help. And if you want to get on my good attitude bandwagon, here’s a little scriptural inspiration:

Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life. (3 Nephi 31:20, the italics are mine)