Joseline is a daddy’s girl. No doubt about it. Doc gets kind of jealous sometimes. But that doesn’t stop all of them from having a good time.
He’s such a great dad – seriously, who else would pose with a bowl on his head. Gotta love a dad who loves his kids. These guys are peas in a pod.
This weekend was a big one for us! Friday night was the military ball, Saturday was Governor’s Day, Sunday was my first day teaching Relief Society in our new ward, and Monday is the E4-E5 promotion board!
The military ball will get it’s own post, and maybe I’ll post over on My Soul Delighteth about teaching Relief Society.
Saturday morning Russ had to be at formation at Camp Williams at 0700 (for those of you who don’t speak military, that’s 7:00 am – and we live about 20-30 min away from Camp Williams, depending on traffic). We had stayed at the ball until about 2300 (again, that’s 11:00pm) dancing to Article 15 (the UT National Guard’s band). So we didn’t get home until around midnight. I don’t even remember what time Russ got out of bed, but I don’t think he left until around 0630. I won’t ask him how fast he drove (he took his motorcycle) but he ended up getting there on time.
On time for some waiting. They had a formation at 0700 and then released every body until they had to form up again around 0930 for the parade. If you are unfamiliar with the Army (or the military in general) their motto is “Hurry up and wait.” You might think that it is “Army of one” or some such nonsense, but it really is “Hurry up and wait.” That’s what they always do. Form up and then wait for forever for nothing. Or something. But they have to wait. Wait wait wait wait. But you better be on time to wait.
I didn’t get to Camp Williams until about 1005, a few minutes after the parade started, but I think all we missed was a prayer and maybe the national anthem or something. We got there just as Governor Hubert was speaking. We had to park all the way in the farthest north corner of Camp Williams, but the army was cool and picked us up with a van and dropped us off right by the parade. On our way down to the parade grounds three C-130s did a fly over. They were pretty close to the ground, and the kids got a kick out of it (Joseline thought it was a little loud).
We got to the parade grounds and found a seat just about in time to watch the soldiers parade around.
Now, a military parade is not like a Fourth of July parade or a Homecoming parade. Basically the soldiers form up with their companies and in their units, and in their battalions, and they march past the Governor and salute him so he can “inspect” them. I’m sure he doesn’t really do much inspecting. He probably just smiles and looks pretty for the cameras. Mostly a military parade is just for show – but it is a cool show, and a powerful representation of our military. There were so many troops there. It was the entire Utah National Guard – Army and Air Guard. It was crazy. The Guard also had three Black Hawks fly over during part of the parade (just before the Air Guard marched by, I believe). The kids loved that, too.
I didn’t get a good picture of Russ because I was too busy trying to point him out to Vincente. By the time I remembered that I need to take pictures, I had to take them of the back of his head.
Russ was the third from the front on the second row.
You can see his beret where the arrow is pointing.
The band was great, and the soldiers looked fabulous.
After the “parade” they had a fair type thing where all the units and battalions sold food and the Guard put up a zip line and a bounce house. 
They also had a lot of booths advertising all of the services the military has for families. I signed up for the FRG for our unit, talked to some Military OneSource folks, and got information on the local Family Assistance Center. We also signed up for the Enlisted Association of the National Guard. Apparently they are the people who lobby our politicians to keep the benefits for the Guard soldiers.
They also had an Apache helicopter and a Black Hawk medic helicopter the kids could get around, touch, and (for the Black Hawk) get in.
The Apache folks were a little more touchy about the kids getting in the cockpits – but I think that’s because Apaches have guns, and the Black Hawk didn’t. The pilots were all really nice and talked to us about their helicopters.
Vincente loved being the helicopters and decided that he is going to join the army and fly helicopters when he gets “big like Papai.” Cute kid. I told Russ that I secretly hope that Vincente will join the National Guard when he is old enough. No matter what else he chooses to do for a career, I would absolutely love for him to be a citizen-soldier!
The last thing we did was head over to the 19th Special Forces Group’s tent where Vince tried his hand at a paintball gun. He was actually doing pretty well. He was aiming. Russ said Vince couldn’t figure out just how to use the scoping bars (or whatever Russ called them) because he was consistently hitting the wrong spot so he probably had the target through part of the scope and not the whole thing. Anyway, after hitting a few targets and some unsuccessful attempts at shooting the rest he told Russ he was done, so Russ finished out – left handed. And of course took each one out in one shot.
Joseline mostly sat in her stroller and enjoyed a cookie. She tried the bouncy obstacle course but ended up getting stuck. She liked the helicopter, but I think what she liked most of all was being with Papai. She’s super attached to that guy.
Russ was laying with Vincente tonight at bedtime. Here’s how the conversation went:
Vincente: “Papai, you’re superly awesome.”
Papai: “You’re superly awesome, too.”
…
Papai: “Papai’s going to the other side of the world for a little bit.”
Vincente: “There’s lots of water over there so you can’t go over there.”
Papai: “Papai’s going to fly over the water in an airplane to some more land.”
Vincente: “Oh.”
(Joseline makes a ruckus)
Vincente: “Joseline’s really silly, huh?”
Papai: “Yeah, she’s like Mamãe.”
Vincente: “Yeah, Mamãe’s silly, but a little smart, too.”
Papai: “Like you.”
Vincente: “No. I’m a lot smart. I’m a lot of smart than you. I’m superly smart.”
Papai: “You are superly smart.” (trying to suppress the laughter)
Earlier Vincente and Joseline had been coloring in a Portuguese preschool workbook. Russ mentioned that Vincente doing the workbook pages must have boosted his confidence a little.
Ha. Just a little.
In preparation for Independence Day (and because Vince love swords and fighting and armies and war…. son of a solider? I think so) we talked about Captain Moroni for Family Home Evening a few weeks ago. We even made our own standard of liberty.
We re-enacted the scene of Moroni tearing his cloak and fastening it to a pole and talked about why he did it, and why they fought.
Then we talked about the founders of our country, what they did, and why they fought. We recited the Declaration of Independence (well, this part: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”) and talked about George Washington and what the American flag means, and how it is like the standard of liberty that Captain Moroni made. We hung our standard of liberty and an American flag on the wall for a little while (until the tape failed and they fell down).
Playing soldiers wouldn’t be complete without making helmets and having swords. Russ has a super cool sword he got for Christmas when we were first married, and Vincente has his little foam sword Grandpa Victor got for him last summer (because Vince kept trying to use the knife sharpener for a sword…) and we made helmets out of boxes and tinfoil. They were awesome.
I’m glad we got to talk to Vincente about both the standard of liberty and the American flag and what they stand for. The kids love pointing out American flags (almost as much as they love pointing out the temple) and always tell me when they see one. We’re trying to teach our kids that there are times when fighting is okay – but it is only when we are protecting our freedom, our families, and our religion.
I am so grateful for the example of Captain Moroni – especially for my children because we are a military family. We can help them understand that their Papai is fighting for a reason – that we don’t just fight because we want to, we fight to preserve freedom – and freedom is indeed a very important thing to fight for.
The first weekend of June is our neighborhood’s annual Fun Run. It’s free, fun, and mostly just for kicks.
This is our first year to participate, but I am sure it won’t be our last. It was really a lot of fun to get out with our neighborhood, and the run was around our neighborhood, so it was perfectly safe for the kids.
They had a 1/2 miler, a 1 miler, and a 5K. I would like to do the 5K next year, but this year I just did the 1/2 miler with the kids.
This year the run was on a drill weekend, so Russ wasn’t there, but we had a blast anyway!
Vincente ran almost the entire 1/2 mile (I was so proud of him!) and I ended up carrying Joseline for most of the 1/2 mile – I figure that carrying a 20-something pound two-year-old would make up for the fact that it was only a 1/2 mile.
Don’t you love it! And look at that Army haircut
(he wanted me to cut his hair like “Papai”)
Vincente at “parade rest” – don’t you love that serious “attention” look?
What a kid.
And then when people noticed his haircut he would say
“You can call me ‘Papai’”
Ba ha ha ha! Such a funny kid!!
I haven’t dropped off the face of the planet – I promise. There’s proof over here and over there. Okay, not super recent proof, but proof enough.
You know how when you’re climbing a mountain, you can’t really tell how far it is to the top when you’re actually on the mountain, doing the climbing. Well, that’s kind of how I feel right now.
Although, the nice thing about climbing a mountain is that you can usually stop for a breathtaking view every now and then, making the uncertainty of when you’ll reach the top somewhat bearable.
The view of the Arkansas River on the way up Pinnacle Mountain in Arkansas. I had a picture of the fog coming off the river from a different hike, but I couldn’t find it – so this will have to do. Not quite breathtaking, but beautiful nonetheless.So we’re still working through some things (I say working through because we really are working through them. Things are getting better, not worse, so that’s good) but in the meantime, we’re enjoying the view from the side of the mountain.
Remember how much we missed this face? (photo courtesy of Vincente, of course) He came back from Brazil on May 15 with lots of goodies for us! Mostly books, but some flip flops for me (I basically live in flip flops – especially in the summer, but I’ve been known to wear them even in the dead of winter – as long as the ground is dry), and a berimbau, from which the airline took the tall stick – because they were going to charge him $100 to check it, and they wouldn’t let it in the cabin. Bummer. But Russ managed to take it apart and brought home everything except the long stick, which are not really a rare commodity around here.
Thanks to a lot of this
with a few days of this 
in between, our yard has been growing a lot of these 
and a bunch of these
Tonight we’ll be building the vegetable garden, and hopefully planting tomorrow. I know it’s kind of late in the season, but all this rain has made it nearly impossible to plant anything.
Russ mowed the lawn a little over a week ago, and it looks like a jungle again already! I’m not complaining – we’ve had to do a lot of repair work on the landscaping of this house. Remember what our yard used to look liked? (if you don’t, there are pictures in this post) I’ll post an update on the yard later, probably after we get the garden up.
We’ve been enjoying visits from friends – especially this friend who now lives very close to us, and who we adore very much! 
We’ve been working out and running, and in general just plugging on with life.
Oh, and enjoying some really yummy watermelon ($.17/lb at Sunflower Market a few weeks ago! The absolute best! PS, Vincente took this picture)
So I can’t really complain about much, but I can’t wait to be at the top of the mountain. I’m sure the view will be amazing.
I’ll post a picture of the view from the top when we get there. And we will get there.
Because I just downloaded these pictures from my camera today, and we have a T-ball game tonight, I thought I would share our little slugger:
Running home -
With “coach” -
And would he be a man (or a jock) if he wasn’t caught adjusting himself?
I promise that I wasn’t trying to get this shot! He moved his hand just as I snapped the picture. I think it’s adorable.
T-ball is certainly fun. No stress, just fun, every gets a chance to hit, everyone gets a chance to “catch” (and by catch I mean, hold up their mitt, then after the ball sails past them, or falls 4 feet in front of them, run to pick it up, and throw it at – er, to – a teammate, who then throws it home), no strikes, no outs, just fun! And the last kid up to bat hits a home run by default (so all the kids can come back in and the teams can switch).
The worst drama is when two kids run after the same ball when they are playing on the field. And then there was the kid that did somersaults to second base. And the one who skipped first base altogether and decided he’d go straight to second. The fun that is 4-year-old T-ball.
Russ became a “real” soldier on September 30, 2010. By real I mean, he finally had all the training necessary to do a job in the military. The picture at the top was at his company’s award ceremony the night before graduation, at which Russ received several awards, including the GAFB (pronounced “gaff-bee” – weird, I know... military... go figure) – the German Armed Forces Badge – basically you qualify by doing really well on the APFT (the physical fitness test) and by shooting a bunch of stuff, and by in general being a good soldier.
These two pictures are at the actual graduation. It was short and sweet, just the way I like it. Vincente played Monkey Preschool Lunchbox most of the time (man I love my iPhone...) and Joseline mostly just sat around. The cutie. 
We are so proud of our Papai! He is such a great soldier and has done a lot of good stuff! And we are sooo happy he is done with all of his initial entry training!
It’s been a while, and I’ve been taking too many pictures (again!) but I’ve decided to start only posting my very favorite pictures or the pictures that go along with a particular story/event I want to share. And then not spend so much time talking about the stuff that went on. I’d like to … but my life is probably not nearly as interesting as the pictures are cute :)
I’m going to work more on scrapbooking and eventually I’m going to start printing pictures to hang in our home (this fall… when we have a “home”)
Anyway, life has been very eventful this month. My parents came to visit, we went to the aquarium with them, the farmers market, and did a bazillion other things.
Now we’re getting ready for yard selling and moving and such.
I can’t believe our time here is almost finished.
We’ll be moving back to UT on March 1 (well, me and the babies) – but those plans are kind of tentative… they’ve changed at least 4 times since the beginning of the year…
Then it will be job hunting for me, graduation for Russ from DLI on April 1 (which I may or may not attend… he said he doesn’t care as much about his graduation from DLI as he cared about his graduation from BYU – I can’t blame him… bachelor’s degree and 5+ languages vs. associates and 1 language… hmm, it’s easy to see which schooling wins in the “coolness” dept for him)
In other news, Joseline still does not walk, I speak more Portuguese at home (and have committed to speaking Portuguese to the kids this summer while Russ is in AZ), Vince speaks Portuguese in the evenings and on weekends when Russ is home, and Joseline mostly just giggles. Oh yeah, and makes the “car” noise. Like every time she sees anything with wheels. Motorcycles, cars, push toys, etc. It’s pretty much hilarious. Her favorite toys are cars, and dishes. Good thing we have a lot of each.
And she loves Lightening McQueen. If Vince’s Cars toys are out and she has a choice, she goes for the Cars toys before the Hotwheels. I can’t blame her – they are pretty fun cars.
Vince goes potty almost all by himself and FINALLY puts his undies back on by himself. I just stopped helping him one day. The first few days he ran around naked because he wouldn’t put them on by himself. Then I started taking away toys/privileges if he wasn’t “underweared” Now he just does it himself.
Russ is getting ready to take the Chinese DLPT on March 20 (another recent for our early departure). He’s doing pretty well in class, but still hates doing homework. I totally understand though. We are SO much more entertaining than his homework :)
I am mostly hanging out with the kids, marking off my to-do list every day, and SO enjoying my garden which is blooming all sorts of beautiful flowers (the flowers are totally coming with me to UT).
We try to go to the library more often, and I’ve started doing a run/kid swap with a friend – she runs while I watch her 2 year old, then I run while she watches my kids! It’s working out great, and I’ve been pretty consistently working back up to a 10 min mile for 3 miles. I hit it just about on the head on Wednesday, and I hope to do a 4.1 mile loop next week, probably on Friday. With lots of hideous hills. It’s going to be a great run, though. Half-marathon, here I come! I’m progressing, slowly but surely.
The Post Wide Yard sale is on Saturday (the 6th) and my goal is to make $1000!!! Can I do it!? Better bet your bottom dollar I will!! I’ve got lots to sell, and I have the very best spot on the lot, which is going to be all decorated pretty, and I always have a “free stuff” box, which I’m going to place at the BACK of my spot this time, instead of the front, so people have to walk past all my COOL stuff to get to the free stuff :) You’d think I was in marketing or something.
Anyway, hope you enjoyed the random update and the pictures. Just a few BAZILLION of my very favorites from the past weeks. (Sorry, I wrote “few” before I actually went through my pictures to see how many favorites I had… )
