Weekend in Las Vegas

Last weekend we went to Las Vegas to meet with the Brazilian Consulate. Ana Elisa got her Brazilian passport and citizenship. The best part of the trip, though, was that grandma and grandpa met us there. Dad just happened to have a business convention to go to in Vegas that same weekend, so it worked out great. It was so good to spend time with them, and Ana Elisa was so excited to see her grandparents. I always show her pictures of them, so she recognized them right away. She calls both of them "gampa", it was so fun to see her with them. We spent a lot of our free time swimming at the hotel pool. Here are some pictures that we took at the pool.

We came home and had a pretty normal week until today. I decided to take Ana Elisa out for a walk to try to get her to fall asleep. I walked about 10 feet from the house when I realized I'd forgotten the house key and that I'd locked the door as I walked out. So, it was 2pm and we had about 4 hours to kill before Emerson would come home from work. So, I had two options, spend the rest of the afternoon in the back yard or try to find someone who would take us in. Luckily, I called some friends just as they were about to walk out the door and they said we could go over to their house. It was about 90 degrees outside, so it was nice not to have to sit out there for so long. Ana Elisa never took a nap, so by the time we got home (after going to the park for a bit), Ana Elisa was wiped out. We gave her a popsicle to cool her down and she fell asleep eating it.

Passport Pictures

We are going to Las Vegas to visit the Brasilian Consulate so that we can get dual citizenship for Ana Elisa. We decided to go the cheap route and take our own passport pictures here at home. I had to go to mutual, so Emerson took the pictures. I couldn't stop laughing when I saw them. Emerson said she didn't want to sit still for the pictures, so he had to bribe her with jelly beans. She goes through a lot of emotions before Emerson finally gets a picture of her smiling at the camera...

Just Plain Mad!

This is boring!

Fine, I'll just sit here and suck on this jelly bean, then!


Where are you hiding the rest of those Jelly Beans?!

The perfect shot!

I may just have to frame her passport :)

Happy Easter!

Growing up, we always went to my grandma's house for Easter. She was big on holidays and always put a lot of time and effort into making each one memorable. I was sad when we moved because I didn't want to miss those holiday get togethers at grandma's house. I was sad that Ana Elisa wouldn't be able to go to the parties at her house and that she wouldn't get to make those memories that I always cherished. Now that grandma has passed away, I have thought about it more and more. Lizsett told me something very true the other day. She said that Ana Elisa can have her own wonderful memories, and they don't have to be the same as mine were. It's up to us to make her childhood memories sweet and enjoyable.

I thought about that as we prepared for Easter. We had a wonderful weekend, different than the ones I always cherished from the past, but wonderful because we are making our own new memories.

Emerson had Friday off, which was so nice. We got to spend three full days together. On Saturday, our ward had an Easter egg hunt. I was really excited to take Ana Elisa because this is the first year that she can participate in the fun. I couldn't believe it when we woke up, it was raining! It's been two months since it rained, and of course it chose to rain on the day of the ward party. We went anyway and braved the rain.

There were so many eggs! I wouldn't be surprised if there were around
1,000 candy filled eggs out there!



Emerson took Ana Elisa out to get the eggs while I wimped out and stood under the canopy to take pictures :) Here they are getting ready to charge...



Ana Elisa had a blast running around picking up eggs off the ground. The rain didn't seem to bother her at all.





Later that evening, we went over to some friends house for a little Easter party. They had another little hunt for the kids. Ana Elisa's favorite part of that evening was the little puppy that they had there! Here she is trying to feed the puppy through the glass door!



Today, Easter Sunday, we tried to dedicate to thinking about our Savior. This morning we had an Italian Colomba for breakfast (the Colomba is very traditional in Italy, when I saw it at the store, it brought back so many great memories from my mission, that I bought it so that I could share a little part of my wonderful Easter memories with my family).



After church, we had some friends over for dinner and watched the movie "Finding Faith in Christ". It was a great Easter filled with wonderful NEW memories.