Growing gardens

As promised! Pictures from the garden.

This is Nino and Cinthia doing some late night planting. We finally found some basil, oregano and tomatoes we could buy close to the Hogar and jumped on it.

This is Connie, Denise and Javiera. The sunflower have been the biggest hit in the garden. The seeds were a gift from a friend from Vilches and one of the girls ended up planting them all for me. The other girls got so jealous once they started growing so wild, and wanted to take some ownership too, so we finally 'gave' each girl a sunflower to take 'special care of' and watch grow. In Spanish sunflowers are called Maravillas, or 'wonderous' which seems perfect to me.

My favorite story recently from the garden is when the kids suggested they should pull the weeds growing up under the sunflowers. Cinthia, who has been helping us water and plant, was so torn, wanting to keep the garden up and help in every aspect, but also wanting to take care of every plant, including all our weeds. Finally the sentimental side won over and she defended the poor defenseless weeds, and besides, they looked so nice and pretty.

We've got some twine for a little fence in our garden to keep little feet from trampling the plants. The bicycles have added an extra challenge to it's stability, but when ever it falls down or gets pushed around the girls fix it right away and make sure everything is in it's place.

December & swinging into 2010

I have been meaning to write about our Chrismas season for a while. The well intended Christmas letter never got to the drawing board, and neither did the New Years letter. Now it is the end of January and we are already starting to work on our transition of leaving the Hogar. Our official last day will be February 15th and I try not to think about how that is in 3 short weeks.

So we'll stay in denial a little longer and share some Christmas stories! Our Christmas started early with the visit of my parents and sister Emily. We decided to celebrate Christmas on the beach and take advantage of the summer time. It was beautiful.

Here we are on Cerro San Cristobal. It's a large hill in the middle of Santiago with an open air chapel with a beautiful statue of the Virgin above. When you sit to have Mass here, there are flower beds between each row of benches. It is truly an amazing place.

Here is Cinthia with our Christmas Tree! I was nervous we wouldn't have one, but about a week before Christmas Sister pulled it out of the cellar. You've got to love the crooked star. I personally think it gave the tree a lot more character.

I couldn't imagine Christmas with out Christmas cookies. No snow and 90 degree weather... that was a stretch, but definately couldn't do without the cookies. It's not a big tradition here so I had to search out the little packets of spices and make some substitutes for gingerbread cookies. The girls had a blast and loved them!


New Years Eve we had the wonderful pleasure of being invited to our good friend Veronica's house. The party started about 7pm and we kept going strong until 5am. I tell you, they know how to party here in Chile. Then on New Years day we kept celebrating and eating more amazing food. It was so relaxing and felt just like home.
A new picture for 2010 of the girls in our house. Some faces have changed as they've been trying to mix the age groups more so that it feels more like a real family structure with older girls helping out the younger ones. They've been enjoying the summer months and vacation so much as have we. More time to relax with the girls and enjoy the little moments.