Brazilian Blowout

I wish I could pay someone to come prop my children up on a table and groom them. This grooming is too late for our state department couches, though. Why did they give us WHITE furniture with four kids and a dog?

Look how green everything is! The rainy season has only been upon us for about a week, but Brasilia has already become lush and beautiful. The onset of summer also brings a plague of giant insects that descend upon us every day. The rhinoceros beetles are particularly melodramatic with their long, drawn-out "help, I'm on my back and I can't get up" swan songs. My girls have created a cemetery for them in the yard with names for each beetle and lovely flowers covering their hideous heads. On the extra-big ones, they've scotch-taped little hand drawn paper outfits to their exoskeletons. Soooo cute! Okay, so gross, but we still don't have our stuff, and as long as they're occupied, I'm happy.  Olivia has been our first South American insect victim, but after a round of heavy-duty antibiotics she's doing much better.  The other morning I found my dining room table inexplicably covered in dead termites. It's so strange, finding all these piles of dead insects everywhere (and of course we all run to Google to see what it is and if it will kill us dead).

Everyone is home today for Dia das Criancas (Day of the Children-because the other 364 days of the year aren't about them at all). One bonus of living in Brazil and going to an American school or working for the US embassy is that you get both American and Brazilian national holidays off, which is Suh-weet!