I'm finally coming up for air!  The kids had 3.5 weeks off of school for the holidays and just went back to school on Tuesday, so I went back to work as well.  I'm exhausted!  It's funny because when we had the ambassador over for dinner a month ago, she said that putting a family of 5 in our apartment was like us living on a boat.  So keeping with that theme, this past month, I deemed myself "Cruise director" of our family ship, trying to keep the kids happily engaged in somewhat quiet activities in our apartment without stifling their natural creativity.  It's not an easy thing for one's sanity to be cooped up in apartment with three active, noisy children, with wall to wall tile and concrete that echoes, and neighbors down below to worry about.  But with embassy families traveling out of the country or just unavailable to play, we were kind of on our own.  It's the middle of summer here with uncomfortable levels of humidity and heat, so the thought of going outside to the marginal (the one area of grass and a "playground" besides the embassy), was not appealing to the kids.  We never made it to the beach either because I didn't feel comfortable taking the kids alone. 

 We got out of the house and went swimming at the embassy:

 Thomas was allowed to join in on a 123Design class being taught at the embassy.  They used a software program to design something and then print it with a 3D printer.  He of course picked blue thread.  The only thing wrong with it, as he pointed out, is that it twists "righty loosy, lefty tighty" instead of the other way around.  :)

The kids built forts, trains, etc.:

I splurged and bought an expensive Christmas Lego kit, something I've never done "just for fun."  But looking at the price of available gingerbread houses online and the thought of shipping them here led me to think that maybe I should just invest in a Lego set (one of the kids' favorite things to play with each other and dad) that could be rebuilt every year and had a feeling similar to creating gingerbread houses.  No I didn't feel up to attempting to bake our own houses nor try to find ingredients to make frosting. :)  This particular set was "Expert" so it was definitely a challenge and took them the whole morning to build.

 The kids did some baking which they loved as you can tell by Rhea's face as she licked the bowl and spoon saying, "Mmmmmmm!"

 And of course we resorted to our wonderful Kiwi and Tinker Crates for hands on activities.  The girls' box focused on shapes and bubbles, so we went out on our patio to make the mess while Thomas stayed inside and tinkered with his electrical constellation he made.  The girls also made some animal masks and zipper tags.

 Every day the kids had races down the hall on their Ripsticks.  They would ride down the hall into Savannah's room where they would turn around and come back.  I'm really hoping the guy downstairs was at work!

 One day we were able to get together with a few embassy friends to see a memorial celebrating the first Angolan President, Agostinho Neto.  He became president after the Angolans gained their independence from Portugal in 1975.  They have his body at the memorial, but they only allow showings of it in September, the month in which he was born and died.  It was a simple memorial with a few things on the wall to read, but we love looking at the outside.  Apparently Agostinho loved space, so they built a memorial that directs your focus upward to space and the stars.  Just a little side story—somehow we got an adult Angolan tag-along to our tour.  At first, I thought he was appointed to help translate for us, but then saw that was not the case.  Apparently he was interested in one of Holly’s teenage daughters, 14 years old, and really wanted to get her phone number.  He hung around the entire tour and then told her how sweet she was (they barely talked) and asked her for her information so he could call her and facebook her.  I heard all of this, and knowing that he was much older, 25 to be exact, let him know nicely that she was 14.  He said, “Oh it’s okay.  I’m married.  I have two kids.  I just want to be friends.”  Holly became aware of the situation and let him know that her daughter would take his information and contact him but they would not be giving her daughter’s information.   I bring this up because it is not uncommon for men here to have multiple wives/women.  There are many Christian people here that are against that and believe it is wrong, along with Angolan law.  However nothing is ever enforced and they really can’t punish people if they’re just “living together.”  Clearly, in this man’s mind, as is the case with many men here, it is not wrong to be married and have other relationships.  Briant encounters this a lot at the visa window—one year a man applies for a visa claiming one wife, and another time he applies again with another woman.  Anyway, after visiting the memorial we went and had lunch at Holly's house and let the kids play for a few hours.  She’s got a yard with a trampoline and places to ride scooters, etc.  The kids appreciated that!

With two weeks off of school before Christmas, the kids spent time working on their homemade gifts for each other as well.  We also spent a lot of time reading Christmas books along with "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," watching Christmas movies (a new one this year that the kids loved was "Christmas Oranges"),  doing puzzles, playing games, and painting nativity scenes.   I of course scheduled some of our morning time to be academic.  I wanted to catch the kids up on phonics and math.  They don't do phonics at school (how could they when everyone has a different accent when speaking English), but they still need it to help their reading.  And with math, they focus on mental math at school.  As a result, my kids are weak in the written math calculation processes of multi-digit multiplication and division.   I also had them start a writing project called an "Alpha-biography."  They write something about themselves that corresponds to each letter of the alphabet.  A fun project that they could work on a little every day.  It's a work still in progress. 

Over the past few weeks we've had some visitors.  Elder Alfredo (sitting to Briant's left), was here serving in our branch when we first arrived in Angola.  We had him over every week for 4 months, and grew to love him and his gentle spirit.  He would always wrap himself up in one of our blankets during their meetings because of the cold air from the air conditioning wall unit.  Angolans and Mozambicans (as most Africans, I hear) have very thin blood as we've discovered, and are known to wear winter hats, coats, and sweaters in warm weather.  Elder Alfredo was finishing up his mission that week (after several months in the office as one of President Merrill's assistants), so he wanted to come and say good-bye before heading home to Mocambique, and of course eat one more of "Irmao Platt's" dinners.  Briant has given many Elders nice journals that he orders specifically for them.  Most of them come into the mission without a journal.  Elder Alfredo expressed gratitude for the journal that he had the chance to write in for almost a year of his mission.  Briant gave him another journal as they said good-bye, explaining that he could write about school, his search for a wife, his wedding, etc.  After Briant said this, Elder Alfredo smiled.  The Elders leave the mission normally very excited for the next stage of their life, especially the thought of getting married.  :) And now we have three Americans serving in our area (the most we've had at one time) with Elder Bradshaw and Elder Mitchell that are new.  It's sad to say goodbye because most likely we will never see the Mozambican Elders again.  We're grateful for modern technology though so we can stay in touch that way!

Another visitor was Aaron, our wonderful friend.  Sadly for us, plans have changed for him, so his summer departure will now be earlier, much to his relief.  It's hard for both husband and wife to be apart 4 weeks at a time, every other month,  We'll be sad to see him go though because we've become friends and have enjoyed our association with him.  We all love when Aaron comes over to eat, play games, etc.  Savannah was excited to learn that Aaron knows how to play the violin since she has started taking lessons after school.  So the last time he came over before he left for the states, they had fun playing together!Sunday we had the pleasure of visiting with President and Sister Merrill in our home.  They came to pick something up, and stayed for dinner so they could eat Briant's famous tacos.  It was great to visit with them.  They stood in front of the wall that says, "With God, nothing is impossible" to take the pic.  They said that it is very true and appropriate for them.  Sister Merrill in particular had never traveled outside of a 200 mile radius from her home in Arizona until they came to Angola.  They were quite shocked by the call but they accepted with faith!

 

The Merrills' three years of serving is up in June, so we're grateful that we'll have almost our whole tour here with them.  They are wonderful people and I love hearing about how their lives are going here in Angola.  That is not what you would call a "coveted" place to serve as mission presidents!  :)  I appreciated the chance to have Sister Merrill's input on our church situation too.  She empathizes with my feelings as of late, that the kids and I aren't getting much out of church being in Portuguese.  About a month ago, I started helping in the nursery the last hour instead of going to Relief Society because the little kids there talk my speed of Portuguese.  :)  Since then, one of my kids' Primary teachers (Sister Vicky) that is American, has moved, and Sister Lisa is out of Angola right now, and is out of Angola much of the time, so they're without a teacher.  I've gone back and forth on whether we should just attend Sacrament and then do "home-church" for Primary because the kids have complained that they don't understand anything even when they're with a teacher.  They want me to attend with them to translate for them.  Sounds easy, but the room is made of concrete and tile so everything is loud like the noises from the chairs, the a/c unit, doors opening and closing, etc.  Everything is loud except for the soft voices of the leaders/teachers, so it's hard for me to understand what they're saying (I've been amazed at how softly they speak here to each other, and they can still hear one another!).  And for me to translate would just add to the noises and chaos that exist already.  Briant doesn't want to home-church because he wants to be useful, as do I, so I've started taking the kids with me to nursery.  They absolutely love it and are leading all of the activities for the teachers--Sunday we sang a few songs like "Do as I'm doing" (translated our own way because we didn't have the words with us), played "Duck, Duck, Dog" because we didn't know how to say 'goose' in Portuguese, hand games like "Rock, Paper, Scissors," and "Micky Fala," our version of "Simon Says," etc.  Now that I can see the leaders are depending on us to do almost the whole hour of play/activity time, we'll try and prepare quieter activities and maybe even try to have a gospel focus.  We were in a very small room because the slightly larger room where they are normally (which is very small), is next to a bathroom that had clogged pipes and reeked of urine.  This smaller room had no windows, so we were uncomfortably hot and sweaty the whole time.  Did I mention that it's summer here and most a/c's don't work?  The teachers express their appreciation for our help and the toys that we've given, so for now, this is what we'll do.  One of the teachers, Irma Maria, said that she appreciates learning from me (not that I have anything to teach her!), but if it's helping Irma Maria, then we'll be there.

Our last visitor that we had just a few nights ago, was our U.S. Ambassador, Helen La Lime.  She came to our building to look at another apartment, so she stopped by to see ours.  She has tried to encourage the housing board to look for homes instead of apartments for families because she knows how tight things can be for the kids if they don't have an outdoor space to play.  She walked in and right away said, "I don't know how you do it.  It's like living on a boat!"  Really, at this point, we're used to the "coziness" and intimacy that a smaller place gives us, so I have no complaints.  And how can I when we live in a space much nicer and larger than most Angolans?

After looking at the apartment, I invited the Ambassador to stay for dinner (I totally shocked Briant because he was just planning on making "breakfast for dinner."  He was a good sport to go along with it!  (Here in Angola, as much of our time when I homeschooled in Utah, Briant cooks dinner while I handle the kids with homework, reading, piano, etc.  We're both very happy with the distribution of responsibilities.  :) ).  Surprisingly, the Ambassador agreed to stay, but she wanted to contribute bread from a nearby bakery, so she and our kids walked together to get the bread.  The kids misled her a little (it was actually dark), so it took them a little while to find it--poor lady, she was in high heels walking these rocky, dirty streets.  Anyway, they returned as Briant finished whipping up a wonderful "Cobb" style salad with some Olive Garden salad dressing and bacon that Aaron brought back for us the last time he came from the states (we didn't think bacon and eggs would cut it for the Ambassador).  We had a wonderful visit with her and got to know about her and her kids better.  She has lived a very full life in fun places and speaks 4 languages fluently.  She will probably be retiring soon.  We're glad our kids had this experience of being with the Ambassador in our home.  They enjoyed talking about school and showing off their piano skills to her too.  As seen in the pic, our kids still don't really have any sense of appropriate diplomatic behavior, nor do they care.  And that's okay with me.  Things get a little too 'stuffy' for me too sometimes in formal settings with 'important' people.  It's nice when you can be yourself, especially in your own home.

This weekend at the embassy, we had a “Cookie Decorating Party with Santa.”  Our CLO (Community Liason Officer) that is in charge of the embassy activities, was out of town.  So another mom, Holly (not pictured), and I volunteered to plan and execute the activity.  It ended up only being for our families and one other family because a few others left the country and another one was sick.  Small group but still fun for the kids.  

We wanted to help the kids think of those in need this Christmas, so as part of the activity, we prepared a little treat to take to an orphanage.  We had the kids attach little papers to traditional red and white candy canes that explain the meaning behind the candy colors and shape.  Here in Angola, they have red and white round candies, but they have never seen candy canes.  So the kids cut, hole punched, and tied the meaning of the candy cane to the canes.  Holly and I are both Christian, and knowing that it would be mostly our kids at the party, decided to go ahead and do a “Christ” focused activity as part of our party.  The kids were very helpful and are looking forward to delivering the candy canes along with some toys, bed sheets, shampoo and soap soon.

The Meaning of the Candy Cane

Many years ago a candy maker

Wanted to make a candy that would

Symbolize the true meaning of Christmas—Jesus.

The hard candy was shaped like

A “J” to represent that Jesus

Is our rock of all ages.

The candy was made of white to stand for

The pureness of Jesus.

The red represents the blood that Jesus

Shed to save us from our sins.

So the next time you see a

Candy cane, take a minute to

Remember the real meaning of Christmas.

Jesus.

After preparing the candy canes, the kids colored Christmas pictures, frosted and decorated gingerbread cookies, ate popcorn, and visited with Santa.  This year was extra special for us because Santa was Briant!  He was a good hubby to humor me and be the Santa this year.  Typically one of the marines fills that role, but to make it easy on everyone, I volunteered Briant since he would be at the party anyway.  The kids know that the Santa that appears at the embassy is not the real Santa because Santa can’t come to everyone’s Christmas party, especially in Africa.  So because last year they figured out that it was one of the marines, I thought I better tell my kids that it was going to be their dad.  I didn’t want them to figure it out in the moment and then ruin it for any child that thought it was the real Santa.  The kids loved seeing Briant dress up and they were really good about not accidently calling him ‘dad.’

Here's Santa returning to his "sleigh" and changing room.  :)

By the way, Briant had a wonderful "HO!  HO!  HO!"  Now my nickname for him is "Santy."

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Thanksgiving was a nice, quiet day at home with each other.  In the morning we ventured out to an Italian owned grocery store called "Inter-market" that we thought might have pecans and cream cheese, but alas they did not.  Briant had searched a number of different stores on foot that week so I could make our traditional yummy dip, but only found a few small containers of cream cheese.  Luckily we found some pecans in the freezer that I brought with us last year, so I ended up being able to make a smaller plate of it.  We kept things low-key, and spent only about 1.5 hrs in the kitchen.  Mashed potatoes, store bought rolls, stuffing from a box, a turkey leg, and our traditional pumpkin cookies with chocolate and cinnamon chips.  Briant and I knew we were really just cooking for ourselves and that the kids would eat their favorite things, so we kept it simple.  Briant vetoed my pie idea knowing that he would be the only one eating them since I'm gluten free.  He found a little turkey wrapped in some sort of saran wrap at the store that was $70 USD, but not trusting the source of the turkey and not liking the cost for the small size, he passed.  Later in the week he found a large turkey leg, large enough that it made us think it had been on steroids!  It turned out to be very tasty, and perfect for us because we would prefer the dark meat anyway!While Briant and I cooked, the kids watched the old classic "Holiday Inn."  We usually watch it at some point during the holidays, so they asked if they could watch it.  All of the dancing and singing from the movie must have inspired them because they wanted to spend the night dancing and singing around the family room--they called it a "talent show."  Watching them together reminded me of my sister and I when we were young, doing our dancing and gymnastics for our family.  I still remember Misty's dance to Michael Jackson's "Thriller."  Good times.  Rhea has it in her genes.  ;)The kids performed a few songs they've learned in school, along with different variations of "Let it Go" from Disney's Frozen (no surprise there), and some Irish dancing.  We love Celtic music, so here are the kids performing their solo "River Dance" dances:

Here is Thomas' version of "Let it Go."

That weekend we also put up our Christmas decorations, including the long-awaited tree.  As usual, Thomas thinks of how he can contribute to the cause, and usually decides on providing music to set the mood for the occasion--Christmas music on the piano, while the rest of us decorated.We're anticipating that for the foreseeable future, a windowsill will be our "fireplace" for our stockings.  Not nearly as cozy, but it works. :)  I love the stocking holders that Briant and I have.  They came from Sandy, one of my young women's leader that gave them to us when we got married, almost 16 years ago.  I'm glad they didn't get stuck in a box that stayed back in storage!  It will be many years until we see that stuff again.

Another favorite that we're all relieved made it here, is a music box Grandma P. gave us back in 2009.  I found a pic from the year she gave it to us when Thomas was 5 and Savvy was 3 (Rhea was napping).  As the pic shows, the kids have LOVED that box and have moved it around the house to locations where they can hang out with it.  It plays a variety of Christmas songs while the train moves around the tree.  With as much as they've handled it, it's no surprise that the little star on the tree broke off and went missing years ago.  We're actually surprised that is the only thing that has happened to it.  :)

It is wonderful to have our full-size tree again this year (even if the top lights aren't working), and most of our ornaments.  I missed them last year!  The homemade ones with all of the sentimental value made it (along with some other favorites), so we're happy!

On weekends, we have hours of time to kill that normally, back home, would be spent caring for the house and yard work, or at the park, in the neighborhood, with friends, running errands, etc.   In the spring, I decided to look into "Kiwi" and "Tinker Crates" that I remembered my friend Mary mentioning a few years ago when she purchased them for her kids.  I decided to buy a monthly subscription that automatically ships to the kids once a month, addressed to the kids in cute little boxes.  I have not regretted the purchase!  There are different themes to every month's box and everything in the kit is colorful, covered with cute graphics and all supplies needed for the activities--scissors, crayons, glue, paint, etc.  It's wonderful for us here without having access to a Walmart or Joann's.  The kids and I look forward with anticipation every month to the next theme and contents of the kit!The girls get a "Kiwi crate" while Thomas gets a "Tinker crate."  Right up his alley.  Building circuits, trebuchets, flashlights with generators, hands with fingers controlled by pulleys, rockets, etc.

The girls have enjoyed themes of insects, bubbles, and shapes.  Here are pics of their insect tic-tac-toe game and dragonflies that flew.

I'm sure we'll continue subscribing to the crates even after we return to the states!  I know I could create kits that are cheaper, but the fact is, I wouldn't.  It's a lot of work to plan meaningful themes and activities and purchase all of the supplies.  I love the crates because everything is already done!  They will be a fun part of our family memories in Angola.

Every year at LIS, they have "International Day."  I love it!  It's a chance to see the diversity of the students and their families along with the food, clothing, and musical traditions of their home country.  At LIS, we have some 56 or so countries represented from around the world.  Twenty-five of those countries participated in a parade and booths set up around the school.  This year we had Kazakhstan join us.

I'm impressed with the amount of work that each country's committee puts into the booths--decor, flags, banners, streamers, food, and prizes for the kids.  And I love seeing all of the color!

Here's Thomas with his friend Zequia from Japan.  They spend a lot of time playing the piano together at school.  She has been a huge inspiration behind Thomas' piano playing this school year.  In fact, one of the songs he's trying to master right now is a Japanese song called, "1,000 Cherry Blossoms", the English translation.  It's definitely a step up from the level he's been playing, but he's up for the challenge because "Zequia can play it."  :)  I talked with her parents at the parade and they said that having Thomas learn and play the Cherry Blossoms song has really motivated Zequia to improve her playing as well.  Awesome!

The parade:

After the parade, we visited each country's booth, tasted their food and the kids got their "passports" stamped.

We had some yummy food--Canada's french fries with cheese and gravy, waffles from Norway, scones from Russia, rice pudding from Venezuela, incredible meat from Nigeria, sticky rice balls from Japan, etc.  There were a lot of pastries from each country that I couldn't try because of the gluten, but I imagine they were good!

Visiting Kazakhstan and Russia got us excited for our next post to Latvia!

And last but not least, Angola.  They had some yummy ice cream that the kids loved and I loved the hair of the lady serving the ice cream (bottom right).  A wonderful day!  It was much cooler than last year which we totally appreciated and we loved the cultural experience!  It's so fun to be around so much diversity in one location and to feel the energy of everyone.