It’s the first time we meet our brazilian cousins, we love having company to play!

It’s been a long long time since our family was together!… or almost… Antonio and Matthias are missing. But it is as complete as we’ve seen since a quite a few years!

Exchanging gifts!! Xmas all over again!!! Hurray!

Turning on the Wood Stove!! Today will be a wood fired cooking day!!! Like the old days!

Vovo Tarcisio gets lots of help!

And after an entire morning of cooking and preparation, Gabi produces a typical Feijao & Arroz based meal…

Guilherme and Thomas ring the bell to anounce that it is LUNCH TIME!!!

After Lunch is soccer time… typical “pelada”:

Gabi is showing her hidden talents!

And where is Anna while all this excercise is going on???… you might ask yourself.

Answer is simple… still busy with desert!!!!

Chocolate cake!!!!

Besides their lovely food there is a big fish pond and a Mojolo (a corn grinder powered by a water system).

Gabi explains how the Mojolo works!

We found an ant trail!!!

And we don’t allow anyone to step on their trail!!!

Look, chicks!!!! Where did those statues came from???

And hens!!!

Ok… now we found the source!

Glaucia arrived first to spend New Years with us! She was sleeping in the other little house so in the morning we got our rain gear out to pick her up for breakfast.

There we go, all by ourselves up the road to the other house!

And after breakie art-work starts, Glaucia is a big helper!!!

We LOVE the result!

We LOVE when Glaucia shows her real child self!!!! We had so much fun together!

Are we bored??

“Noways!!!” – the kids would say! No time is wasted, there are so many fun things to do!

Riding the Blue Tracktor is a must!!!

A Coconut party – After opening and drinking the coconut water we need strong arms to cut the coconut open!! Jose Eustaquio comes to help, we just love seeing him in action!

Then comes soccer time!!!!

But not everything is just play… we work hard here in the farm… here we are sorting Vovo Tarcisio’s nails from his tool shed!

We need to do lots of lawn mowing!!

Sure, it is a bit hard to do all by ourselves, but we gave our sweat to help the guys!!

Not to say that almost every day we are baking Pao de Queijo (Cheese Bread). By now Thomas and Anna can almost do it by themselves!

Anna is the expert in preparing Tapioca (a maniok pancake), typical from the north east of Brazil!!!

And when things get too hot… the biggest surprise from Vovo Elizabeth and Vovo Tarcisio was the new addition to the farm… a swimming pool!!

And after a long busy day…. that is where you find us!

Snoring competition!

Now the kids understand why we don’t come to see Grandma and Grandad more often… their conclusion after 2 airplanes (22hours in the air) and 2 sets of land transportation was:

“It’s far away from Australia!”… but it is so very much worth it!!!

It’s absolutely great to have 5 weeks to enjoy Vovo Elizabeth and Vovo Tarcisio in their own enviromnment!! And let them show us where things come from and how things work in a farm.

What is this hairy thing on this plant???? Yes, Corn!!!

And so it goes with the kids exploring the abundance of goodies that Vovo’s farm has to offer!!!

Berries straight from the trees:

Anna can’t have enough of them!!

Papaya trees…

Grapes from the vines:

Oranges and limes, very fresh!

Lixias… very fast became Thomas’ favorite!

And the trees are so heavy with them!!

There are so many bananas on the trees that some of them are dehydrated and turn into “Banana Lolly” (dried bananas). And here is the Banana Lolly man in action….

Banana Lollies became our favorite treat!!!

And with so much fruit on the trees, it’s often time for a fruit salad!!!

For lunch? Lots of salad from the garden!!

The kids love harvesting all those fruits and veggies from the garden! By now they can name all trees and salads.

After a few days they already know where everything is: babanas, mango trees, pineapples, salads, carrots, pepermint, figs, limes, papaias, lixias, grapes.

They also know where the Tucanos sleep at night, where the yellow canarie birds made their nests.

Anna finds at least one ladybugg everyday and marvells herself with the masssive big and bright blue butherflies that sometimes pay us a visit!

The Guara wolfs haven’t showed themselves yet, but we saw our first monkeys yesterday.

The kids are always finding a different sort of ant, and naming them according to their shape: giant ones, the little sting ants, mid-sized ones… And so with the bees.

Every single little new finding is celebrated with the excitement and bewilderment!!! There is no single boring moment and so many pictures to share….

Lots of riding bikes in front of the house…

After a few hours of up and down… gas runs out and accidents start happening. That is Anna with a scratch on the knees.

And it all ends with a beautful Daddy-in-action barbecue!!! Yummy!

The name forestville is quite representative as the suburb is amidst the Forest. National Park is one of our neighbours, the front one.

This is our new house..

..our new garden..

..and pool:-)

The kids started on their new Montessori school and are absolutely loving it. It is sure a lot of changes at once: new house, new neighbours, new school, new friends. But everyone here is so welcoming that we felt at home almost instantaneously!

Meli, Philipe, Andi and Annete were our first visitors in our new home.

We rolled out our Puppet Show:

The Princess Kitty in the working..

and the Redback Spider!

Arent’ we beautiful?

Amidst the National park there are trails and little garden only with wild australian plants. It feels very remote, whereas we are in the heart of the North Shore.

Yes, sure we saw heaps of flowers and beautiful gardens…

But guess who stole the show??

Yes, this giant “lizard” decided to climb on to our neibours picnik table, yes, literaly!!! And snatched a piece of fruit from the hands of a tiny little girl. Can’t describe the pandemonium it created… it was parents and kids runing everywhere…

Poor bugger got banned from the proximities of the picnik area for the next 3 hours. What a laugh!