hush, puppy

So while my hubby and father in Law are both out of town this month, I am staying with the in laws. Its nice to not be alone, and we definitely have a full household: My kids and me, my brother and sister in law, my mother in law Maria and Charlie’s cousin Cecilia. Maria has the task of running her husband's business while he is away, which is turning out to be a way more involving job than we originally thought. It means that she is gone most of the day, sometimes till nine or ten at night. It’s a lot of stress for her, and a little bit of unexpected stress for me, since someone still needs to be here to run the household. Making dinner for more people every night has been fine and I’ve been glad to do it, but answering the door and phone all the time, no fun at all. I’m really glad that the maid, Mirium is here during the day, otherwise I think I wouldn’t be able to do any of it. My kids are small enough that they make it difficult to finish tasks. My brother and sister in law are luckily old enough to take care of themselves and even watch my kids some times, so that lessens the load too. Mostly I’m just glad to be useful. And it’s fun to be giving everyone here a little taste of American cuisine. They have all been to the states before of course, but whenever there they just cook Bolivian food. Kentucky Fried Chicken is about as American as they go. I’m not the greatest cook, but I do know how to follow a recipe, so I’ve tried making new things from Allrecipes.com every night. I have made hush puppies, and sloppy joes, and fresh broccoli salad, and lots of deserts like peanut butter bars and no bake cookies. Honestly, Michelle and Jason won’t really eat most of it, but they don’t usually eat dinner anyway, so Maria assures me they aren’t going hungry. At least now they can’t get mad at all the American kids who won’t try the Bolivian food, cuz they’ll know it goes both ways. Of course It’s strange though what kids will think is weird, I didn’t think my ham and potato soup looked that scary. Boy I can’t wait for Charlie to come home though! Their internet in China is intermittent and their daylight is the exact opposite of ours, so communication has been hard. Only two more weeks!

We are far far away

Yesterday I showed Lydia a picture of her new little Cousin, Colin. He's adorable, by the way. When Lydia saw Elesa and Haggy and the new baby, she was like, "Hes cute but we can't go see him because they speak English and we only speak just Spanish here." I love the three year old interpretation of our separation. Of course she knows we are in Bolivia and they are in Utah, but I don't think she really gets it, deep down. The different language thing, on the other hand, is something that she understands very well and has to deal with daily. So she has decided that the language is the difference between here and there. And the language is then perhaps the only thing keeping us apart. Maybe she is right. So will all y'all just learn Spanish already so I won't have to miss you anymore?

Serves me right

I got pulled over a few days ago. I was trying to make a U-turn and found out I wasn't supposed to. I didn't actually make the turn, just started to and then pulled out of it, but the cop pulled me over anyway. I didn't have my licence on me. Big mistake. There is a huge fine or 5 days in jail just for not carrying your licence. I knew the punishment was severe, but the last cop who pulled Charlie over tried to tell him that he had to have the Bolivian licence, not just the Utah one, or the punishment was the same. Even though the Utah one is supposedly good for six months. Or three? No-one can agree. Well, long story short, (too late), My mother in law Maria had to come and "negotiate" with the cop, and we have to pay a fine every day for the next few days to keep me and herself out of jail. Serves me right for getting cocky.

I am never driving again. I shouldn't have driven in the first place, but its been hard since Charlie and his Dad Juan Carlos are away. Maria is the only one who can drive. I was driving everyone to church since Maria had to go to a different ward for her calling. Luckily, Jason gets his licence next week, so that should lighten the load. Maria tries to convince me that it should still be fine for me to drive. But I'm too ashamed, and even though bribing cops might be just the way of life here, its just too insane, and I can't do it. I'd rather just stay out of their notice. But they're everywhere, and I am not that good of a driver, especially here, where I don't know all the expectations.

Oh well, there's goes that little bit of independence. Good thing I'm ok with being dependent. Mostly.

Ants are yucky...

So I found this package of chocolates in my house. I'm trying to avoid giving sugar to my kids, so I decided unselfishly to quickly eat them before my kids could see. I dumped them into my hand and started quickly eating. They had sort of a weird taste so I looked down at my hand suspiciously, only to discover that what I thought were little broken pieces of chocolate clinging to the candy was actually little ants. blachckclckclkcy.

She's Here...

Lydia yesterday was having a pretend conversation on the phone and it went something like this:

"Yes, she's here. Yes. Yes shes here. Yes she's here. Yes. Yes. Shes here. Yes, She's here. Shes here, yes. Yes, She's here. Yes, shes here. Shes here." Sounding exasperated, "YES! SHE'S HERE! Ok here she is," and then she handed me the phone. Silly silly.

poop training

I decided to start potty training Owen, mostly because we were out of diapers and I didn't have any way to get more for hours and hours. I know, stupid reason, most of my sisters are going to groan and roll their eyes at that. But we have been trying to prep him for it for a while now, so I decided to try it and see how it went. The only problem is its kind of a do or do not, there is no try thing. For my next kid I think I'm going to do kid directed potty training instead. Potty training is the pits.

Lydia was really funny, she decided it was her job to do the training, and she would get really mad if I tried to ask Owen if he was dry, or give him his sticker. She kept saying, "No, mommy, I'm gonna do it!" It wasn't till the second day when Owen finally did self-initiate (meaning he went to the potty without being asked and did his business), but he was so darn cute about it. He didn't tell me he needed to go, he just sat down on the potty. I thought he was just pretending, but he stood up and pointed at the pee-pees and said "Ta Da!" Sometimes hes so cute he makes mommy's heart hurt. Course, she is pretty biased.