There are two different sets of photographs for today because we took two separate outings. The ladies all went with our friend Simone to Luz e Vida, a Christian bookstore in downtown Curitiba to find some music and videos to bring home. The girls were delighted to find that shortly after we all arrived, a special event was about to begin. It was a play for children. We were the only ones there at first and got to enjoy the action up close and personal.
The men all took a bus downtown to find a new watch for Dad (his broke, and, paired with the time-out-chair, it is an essential tool in our family). They walked along the pedestrian shopping street downtown, and saw the Catedral de Tiradentes. They also had some sweet treats before returning back home to reunite with the feminine half of the family for lunch.
In the afternoon, we decided to create an opportunity for all the children to work together. They have a little bit of trouble getting along most of the time. There is all kinds of "sniveling rivalry," as it was always called in Kim's home growing up. Looks like we're turning into a perfectly normal family already. Anyway, we invented a game where they'd have no choice but to work as a team. It was called the 4-headed-monster game. They had to link arms and go around outside finding pieces of paper we'd hidden around the soccer field. Each paper was a piece to a puzzle that spelled out the words: AMOR (love), RESPEITO (respect), SORRISOS (smiles) and OBEDIENCIA (obedience): all things that make 4-headed-monsters very happy. There were coins taped to the back of some of the pieces, and the "monster" had to cooperate in order to glue the pieces together and discover the secret words. There were cookies and glow bracelets as prizes for when they finished their task.
Should have been a great success. However, midway through gluing down the third word, everything fell apart and the monster began fighting against itself, resulting in pushing, pulling, kicking, hitting, tormenting and, yes... biting. Since any individual child usually gets a time-out for such behavior (the length of which is one minute for each year of the child's age), the "monster" got a total of 26 minutes of time-out. It was hideous and ended up with everyone in enforced isolation on their own individual beds. No fun at all, since books, toys and games were not allowed. Some particularly feisty little monsters ended up with no pillows or blankets either. We all ate dinner in the room since we were not fit for public viewing in the cafeteria--rice, beans and water. Yum.
It may have been successful in the end, because we're pretty sure everyone learned a lesson.
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