Brazil & Argentina 2012

Here we are again, back in Sydney… well barely. Even though we had a great time in Brazil, we are all just exhausted now and have to gain powers for another trip in the future. But let’s go back to  Brazil first, where we had a great time Bandeirantes, as you could see in the previous post. After this very busy week in Bandeirantes we said goodbye to Eneida’s parents and drove back to Sao Paulo where we stayed at our friends flat (Gege & Goiti). In Sao Paulo we were also joined by Tante Bine, who spent a few days beforehand in Rio. Unfortunately, due to the idiosyncratic regulations of the  brazilian aviation industy, it was not possible for Bine to join us in Bandeirantes, though maybe the next time. Tante Bine was staying therefore already at Goiti & Gege’s when we arrived, which means that in the end 7 people were sleeping in a two bedroom apartment. We definitely owe Goiti & Gege some big favours to have coped with our chaos for a whole week. Anyway, we had a great time and managed to see more friends in that week. We hardly believe that in the past we used to have 3 bookings/day with different sets of friends! Now it all seems less crazy on the social front, though much crazier on the travelling front!!!

Unfortunately we didn’t manage to make many pics in Argentina, as our camera wasn’t working so well. We enjoyed the heat (36 and up!) and the San Telmo market – above all, we enjoyed Bine’s company, who endured us for another 3 days

Despite the jet lag, we managed to get some pics on. Enjoy!

Z’s beautiful drawing

Cool Papa?

Cool Maya

Bubbles on my own

Challenging puzzle

Cheese

Note the foot up

Girls cooling down

More fun in the pool

Keyboard practice

With Newton and Sueli’s family

With tio Sada and tia Julia’s family

Escaping from the picture

With vovozinhos e tioZ

Where’s Papa?

Bine Flower Power

Sitting like a grown up

With Bel, Andre & Ailton

With Luquinhas Yasuda

Yummy food at Li, Ma & Lu

With Lucas and Sati

The twins

IPad mania

With Lucas Sekyia

With Mimi & Waldyr at GG

Playing with Mimi

At Meimei with tios Yorikazu & Regina

At Rodizio com Gege & Goiti

Apple fun

In Buenos Aires

Brazil 2012: Sao Paulo I, e Bandeirantes

And we arrived well in Sao Paulo. We had an unbelievable easy flight, where the girls slept for almost 9h! Definitely unexpected and therefore even better to enjoy!

Gege and Goiti were at the airport to pick us up, as always! And tio Zinho had driven all the way just to drop the car in SP the day before. So we could get to Ge and Go´s new beautiful flat in 2 cars and through not so much traffic (unusual for Sao Paulo). We spent 2 relaxing days catching up with them, and the girls had so much attention from tia Ge all day long. We´ll see them next week again, so more on SP later.

The car trip to Bandeirantes was pretty easy, perhaps again because I was expecting some sort of nightmare. Michi drove all the way (430km), and it took us 6h30min or so, because we made a long stop at lunchtime to let the girls run a bit and get tired. They both slept well in the car, which made things also easy. And while Zoe loved watching the scenary (taking pics) or a cartoon on the IPad, Maya stuffed herself with Brazilian delicassies: pao de queijo, biscoito de polvilho, sequilho doce, fandangos de presunto…what a surprise

And vovozinhos were wating for us at the gate of their house, full of excitment! The girls were again drowned in attention and presents. Tio Zinho arrived soon after, and tia Re arrived with tio Jayme on Sat, after driving the whole night to get here early! But wait, we managed to also see tia San, Luquinhas e Felipinho, Newtinho e Ju, all on the same afternoon we arrived. On Friday the girls were already jumping in the paddling pool and enjoying the backyard, and Zoe played again with Luquinhas, while Maya inspected Felipinho and sprinkled pop corn on the floor. It was lovely to see Luquinhas teaching Zoe to speak Portuguese. On Sat I had a little school reunion, with old friends coming over with their kids and hubbies. It was a real loud party!

And wait, there was more still, on Sunday it was then a family reunion, with loads of cousins, uncles and aunties. Amanda was the super auntie/cousin, playing like crazy with the little ones. She even tried to tell Zozo to speak Portuguese so Isadora could understand her: “Zoe, speak Portuguse”, to which Zozo replied “Portuguese”….   We’ll get there eventually.

It´s been so special to see everyone after 2 1/2y! And there are loads of pics to see

With Ge at Almanara

Yum Lebanese food with Ge

Pirate in skirt

Schnuller Pirate

Mamae and Gege

Ge & Goiti

Lucas and Ge (America)

Peaceful car trip

Brazilian clouds

By Zoe

Maya & vovozinhos

Sisters!

TioZinho & Maya (by Zoe)

With Newtinho & Ju

With Luquinhas

Hammock fun

Swinging happiness

Holding tight

A little break

The hose is the best

Crawling in water

We can splash here!

Papa (by Zoe)

Blue ball hunt

Only Maya missing (snoring at home)

Dancing in restaurant (like her mother used to…)

Self portrait

With San, Felipinho & tia Re

Evy, Ro, Stella, San & kids

By Zoe

Bubbles with tioZ

With tio Sada & tia Julia

With the Kawata-Kobayashis

With Robi & Si

Isadora

Altogether

Happy 2012!!

It happened so quickly, and some of us missed the midnight bells!… It was also Oma’s party, and we were all celebrating the Reveillon and the birthday at the same time. Luckily the staff at the hotel were very tolerant towards the kids, especially considering that Zozo was at one point jumping like crazy near the buffet, and then suddenly shouted ‘toilet, toilet!’ Then it was a rush with mamae running to give the plate to Papa, and then scooping Zozo from the floor in a dash to the toilets. Ah, the fun of it

We still can’t believe it’s 2012 already. We have packed today (fourth time), and tomorrow we’re off to Frankfurt to take our flight to London, followed by (hopefully!) a flight to Sao Paulo. We should be there on Tuesday morning, local time. Last time Michi and I tried to fly to SP with a connecting flight (London-Amsterdam-SP), we ended up flying London-Amsterdam-Mexico City-SP, and obviously landed in Guarulhos without our suitcases. Ah… After this interesting experience, where I was detained at the Mexico City airport for not holding a visa – given that we didn’t PLAN to fly to Mexico (in a little room and no passport, while Michi could go on walkabouts), we now ALWAYS have a spare set of clothing in our hand lugagge, and have worldwide cover travel insurance. Isn’t there always something good out of something aparently bad? Just keep looking…  

And we’re now saying goodbye to Germany. It was very brief but full on, as always, and we managed to catch up with the German branch of the family and some friends. And the girls have just loved ALL the attention…and the Lyoner, the real bread and bretzel, the schincken, the potato in so many yummy shapes and forms……

Bubbles II

Bubbles

Serious playdoh work

Playdoh and beer

Chic girls

Girls power

Altogether now

Celebrating

Checking pics with Bine

Almost 2012

And another year flew by. Cliche, cliche, cliche, but the older we get the more true it becomes (sad!).

We’ve been enjoying the German delicassies, sweet, savoury, alcoholic, name it all. More importantly, we have met with old friends, which was very very nice. We met with Peter and Berit (unfortunately no pics!), as well as Peter’s mum. We also met with Franziska, Sven and her family, after 4 years! We used to go to Zweibruecken to meet them whenever here in the Saarland, but in the last 4 years a few things have happened… which might have changed our plans to something more like ‘survival mode’. Well, quick recap: leaving England, moving to Australia, 2 new jobs, 2 kids, many work issues as well as all the adventures of parenthood!! To add to the end of year nostalgia, and it definitely makes us feel so happy and proud of all we’ve achieved!…

Here some pics of the girls crazy plays…

One of Z’s great pics

After 12 years, looking almost the same ;)

Loves the tiger

Chaos with us

Peekaboo!

No caption needed ;)

Marching in garden

What’s that?

Amazing clouds

Love the landscape

Relaxing 180km/h

Crazy play with Bine and Giraffe

Obssessed with the horsey

MY chaise longue

Feet move for joy

Water play

After walk in the woods

Crazy play in car

Always on the move

Munching a lolly

Best chair

HK to Germany, and Frohe Weihnachten 2011

Ah…the flight to Germany was unbelivably easy. Mind you, our expectations of an easy flight are a little different from 4 years ago, and in comparison to the previous flight anything would have been easy, haha. Still, we’re getting more organized AND civilized. Papa and mamae can resemble a batallion of two in a military operation, which works really well. What choice have we got with 5 suitcases, 2 prams, a princess backpack and 2 super active kids? And one could have spotted the rare civilized moments, like when we managed to have 3 trays of food at the same time, with all 4 of us awake and eating together! Wow, that goes to our family Guiness book.

Coffee was again a best friend, though the spoilt parents were REALLY missing proper Sydney coffee. But again, begars cannot be choosers so we drink anyway.

And we made to Germany, which was such a relief. From the plane we could see the dark, cloudy, grey wet sky, followed by a cold air when leaving the plane. Zoe couldn’t have said better, with her first sentences ‘It’s cold’; ‘it’s so dark’; ‘I can’t see any leaves on the trees’. That was the perfect summary of our first hour in Germany.

We then drove to St Ingbert, and the girls were drowned in attention. It’s been really exciting for them, so much to do, to see, and the family to play with. Despite the jetlag, we’re all managing to catch up, relax and have fun. It’s been a huge difference from our July trip, when we didn’t manage to sleep for days, and we not write a blog post for weeks!

And, of course, das Christkind brought them so many presents…including our new camera!! So you can see how excited we got with it – hundreds of new pics in 24h   More to come later

Sydney to Hong Kong

And we survived. The flight was crazy, perhaps as crazy as expected but that doesn’t necessarily make things easier. Also, to complete our Brazilian passport saga, we had more issues on checking in. Never mind, hopefully soon all a things of the past! Anyway, we made to HK and to our nice hotel. The city was chaotic, loud and super busy. It was quite welcoming to return to the peace and quiet of the hotel – well, quiet while the kids were not going crazy. Food was great and shopping too – though we didn’t buy that much(! hard to believe!). We enjoyed the walks in the middle of the buzz, and by the third day we knew how to move with the flow – not against it.

Here are a few pics from the flight and the city. More to come later – our camera broke then, and we took a few pics on my mobile, which we’ll download later.

Christmas parties galore

It’s THAT time of the year…social overload of parties/catch ups/dinners/picnics/playdates. We all seem desperate to make sure we see everyone before the end of the year.

It is so nice to see how embedded we are in our Sydney family life – the only downside is the parents being already shattered before the celebrations begin! Well, nothing like caffeine to keep us going. Michi loves to remind me that when we met (8 years ago?!) I didn’t use to drink coffee (a Brazilian without coffee drinking habits). But nowadays it’s easily 4-7 cups/day, which I admit without any shame! Anything to keep us going

But this is our last week at work before we fly out, so we’ve started to slow down…well, sort of

We had the kindy Xmas party, and the Bay Gardens party (our residential complex). Santa made 2 appearances so far, and I’m sure he’ll do a few more before the big day. Luckily the girls dont’ seem to fully understand that there are so many Santas, and that’s not necessarily correct. Good for them!

Mamae and Papa will start packing today – not long to go! We can’t wait to be out and about, all over the world again – literally!!!

Preparing to take off

Flying her airplane

Next trip I want to go there

Fun before bed

More calming activities before bed

With Laila

With Julia

Santa arrrives

Mamae is so happy to see Santa

Zoe proudly went on her own

Love my toaster

All cuddled up

Peekaboo

Papa’s girl

I’m in charge here

Linda

Jingle bells in the Junior Preschool room. Note our “shy” girl…loves the stage like her vovozinho – only microphone missing…haha

And Maya enjoying a play in the car – the nursery kids are not allowed (normally) to play with the “big” cars You can see the German genes coming through haha

Family pic

Just our traditional photo: Zoe is 3y3m, Maya is 1y1m, Mamae and Papa just about 35y5m.

Nice hot weekend

….and back to 16C! What a cold spring we’ve had so far.

But luckily we had very nice warm days over the weekend, which meant a nice trip to the local pool, as well a visit to the Glebe Annual St Market. Speaking of swimming: we started to notice that Zozo is going strong and determined in her diving adventures (we got her diving rings, which she loves to catch from the bottom of the pool). She also now jumps from the border into her floating ring, it’s quite shocking! While Zozo goes from floating to diving (a cute little fish!), Maya is not so keen in the pool. She does enjoy her baths and her first 10 min in the pool, and then…happy to climb out and watch what’s going on around her. She might be more of a little land animal. Actually, more like a little land dancing animal! Maya is always moving to any music, be it in the radio, TV, or shops. She also enjoys dancing to the music we play in the stereo. Let’s see how this develops, perhaps one will go swimming while the other will go dancing?!

One last thing that happened the other day…Context first: we keep telling Zozo to wait for her turn when Maya is playing with a toy (Z wants to take it from her instantly), and also we ask her to share her toys if she has two in her hands. Anyway, at this stage it is mostly Zoe who has to give, which we know it is a bit tough but she’s also the one taking  things from Maya. Still, the other day Zoe went and gave something to Maya (spontaneously!), and Maya, without prompting, said “Ta, ta, ta”. Zoe was SO happy, she was very proud and surprised at the same time, that Maya said thank you to her! …It was very special to see…such a proud mamae!….

Not much more to report on our week, so I’ll leave you with a couple of videos. If a photograph is worth 1000 words, a video is worth a book!

Summer finally arrived

Summer finally arrived. We now have the fans on, beach trips, water play, ice cream and girls running around in underwear. Nice!!!!!!

As you can see in the below pictures, we went a lot to the beach, which the whole family enjoys. The girls can run around like mad, Papa can gaze lazily out at sea, while Mamae is trying to catch as many sun rays as possible. Zoe and Maya also love to go to the rockpools – these are areas of rock and sand on the beach which are exposed when the tide is low – where they collect seagrass and shells. Zoe also loves to jump the waves with Papa and needs to be dragged out of the water when her lips are blue and she is shivering all over.

The other thing you might have noticed on the pictures is that Zoe and Maya are really getting nicely along these days – who knows how long it will last This means they are doing lots of things in parallel, like wanting to eat or drink the same thing but also playing with toys. It’s so nice to watch how the two develop a relationship with each other. Zoe is still in command of this relationship but Maya is certainly a second child and doesn’t let herself be pushed around. So, watch this space.

Audrey Hepburn look

Clock made by Zoe

Favourite place

Checking if Zoe does this right

Let’s get the water moving

Favourite toy

Parallel cookie eating

PAPA MONSTER!

Parallel shovelling

Lazy Papa

Parallel sand burying

Off to the rockpool

Checking the library

Nakedei

“The hard life”

Parallel milk drinking

Lid obsession

Roundabout madness

Nothing like two steering wheels