The Party's Over!!

 The Party's over!!  and I, personally, am looking forward to "Real" football, played by real men, not floppers.  We did, however, have the best seats in the house without paying the high prices.  One of the happy things that happened during the World Cup was that we were able to visit with one of our missionaries, Elder Long and his wife and a couple from Belem who were here for the games.  What a joy to spend 2 hours reminiscing about our mission in Belem.   The following is Dads take on the World Cup.

  My take:  With all of the hype and expectations for Brazil to win the Cup, it came down to too much self confidence and no defense.  Oh, and by the way, England, Holland and Germany play defense!  So, I guess that I don't get a new shirt with six stars, so I'll just keep wearing the same shirt (pictured above) that I got in 2002 - the last time Brazil won the cup.
 
  On June15th our oven finally arrived.  I'm not sure if anyone else received one and I have not asked but we are so happy to have it. Valentines day is in June here so I made cookies to share with the couples for a valentines surprise. Also made an apple pie for Fathers Day.

  June also is what we would call a Fall Festival month, it is after all fall here you know.  There are many festivals with square dance type dancing and special kinds of food. The picture below displays some of the cute outfits that both children and adults dress in for the festival.

In June we celebrated our 55 wedding anniversary.  It seems we have been in love forever and indeed we have been for the better part of our mortal existence.

July brought a change in the weather and a change in our temple schedule.  We are having a lot more rain now as we enter our winter.  Still warm enough to be outside without even a sweater.  Today we walked home from church in a light rain, of course we had our umbrellas, and it has rained off and on all day.  I love the rain!

We celebrated the 4th of July with Hot Dogs and homemade apple pie accompanied by the sound of fireworks, or rather, cherry bombs going off, as Brazil was playing soccer that night.

July has been a very challenging month physically and mentally.  We are now back on the morning schedule which means we arrive at the temple at 6 or 6:30am depending on the day, get home about 2:30 and go to bed at 8:30pm.  Because July is vacation month for the Brazilians there have been many people in the caravans and especially more youth. I think only Erin can truly appreciate just what that means.  It is challenging, to say the least, but also not without special tender mercies.  I have been trying to recognize them and appreciate them more each day.   We are in the baptistry 3 days a week and have been super busy.  Our maximum capacity is 32 and 2 Saturdays in a row we have had 52 girls in one session. Quite a challenge for two old dudes. This week, at least so far, has been much calmer, although since we still have another Saturday to go, I don't want to broadcast that too loudly.

Dad gave a talk in Sacrament Meeting last Sunday on ....we both cannot remember what it was on.  Ah yes,
Josua 24  Choose you this day.  Such is life in our ever changing world, not always for the better.  But we daily have a good laugh about it all.  Love you all!!!