More pictures of Kallen...

A lot of people have asked me about the delivery, so here is a brief description of our experience.

I went in at 8:00 a.m. to be induced...but it took almost 2 hours to get called into the room. By that time I was already having contractions so they didn't induce me. My water broke by 11:00 and I had an epideral by noon. Because of my history of fast deliveries my doctor stayed with me pretty much the whole time. By 1:45 I was ready to push but had to be transferred to the delivery room. So they had to run me through the halls to the delivery room and then I had to crawl onto the delivery table before I could push. Tim had to get scrubs and a mask on and almost missed the birth. By the time he arrived the head was already delivered and 30 seconds later Kallen Beatriz was here.

A couple of other things that were unique with this Portugal experience are...they do not give the baby a bath for the first 24 hours. They dress her with clothes that I provide right after birth with the blood and mess that they are born in. After the delivery I had to stay in a recovery room for two hours before being transferred to my hospital room. Then after I was brought into my room the nurses or docter did not check on me until the next day. We were pretty much on our own. Overall it was a good experience and went much better than expected.

Kallen is a great baby and sleeps and eats well. Much better than Traeger and Karis. Hopefully it continues.

Here are some new pictures.

Life in the Country...

This is where we are living now. It is up in the hills and out in the "country". It is very different from the city life we have been living. The kids are loving it because they get to play outside and enjoy the outdoors once again. The following pictures are everyday sites for us around here.

This is our neighbor. He is a shepherd and walks his sheep by our apartment several times a day. The kids love this of course.

Here are some of the sheep.

Here they are crossing in front of our apartment. We also have a beautiful veiw of the river from our varanda.

These guys are everywhere. Traeger even found one in the house the other day and somehow managed to catch it and remove his tail before I could save it and release back outdoors.

Kallen Beatriz is here!

Kallen was born on September 5, 2008 at 1:58pm(Portugal time). She weighed 2.640kilos or 5lbs. 13oz and was 47cm. or 18.5 inches long. Everything went well with the delivery and everyone went home on Sunday, Sept. 7th. We are sorry about the delay in adding these pictures, but both our computers crashed on us within a few days of each other.

Speaking in Tongues?

UPDATE: Tim successfully completed his mission. Sunday morning at 11:30 Tim preached his first sermon in Portuguese. Everything ran well and Tim was understood by all. Here is a short clip, sorry the audio is not the best. And guess what? He gets to do it again next week (5 pm Sunday) b/c another church is down one pastor due to a family emergency. So you can just keep on praying. At least he can preach the same sermon since this is a different church. Thank you so much for praying. Your prayers were definitely felt.

Snail Tale

Part of learning the culture is eating what the people eat. Well, that sometimes involves a thick stomach lining. We recently went with our language teacher and some other friends to the town's local festival where we gobbled down three large plates of SNAILS! Yummy. They are cooked with oregano, garlic, and olive oil and you can pull them out with toothpicks, but if you are really good you can just suck them out of the shell. The biggest shocker was Karis. She loved them and in the end was an expert at pulling these little guys out of their shells. However, when we now find snails crawling around she just wants to eat 'em up.

Warning: the video is rated "Y" for the yuck factor.

Visit to Northern Portugal.

As our time gets closer to leaving Portugal, we were wanting to take advantage of the time we have left and see parts of Portugal that we haven't seen yet. Our language tutor took some time off, so we decided to visit Northern Portugal. We had a nice time and saw "o berco de Portugal"(the birthplace of Portugal), the castle where the first king, Afonso Henrique, of Portugal was born. We also saw the mountains in the center of the country and Porto. We had some great language opportunities as everything in Portugal is hard to find and we had to stop and ask directions many times. We were quite proud of ourselves as we understood the directions and never really got lost(which is highly unusual on a trip like this). Here are some pictures of the trip.

This is a waterfall we hiked to in the Serra De Estrela mountain range in northern central Portugal.

That's Traeger standing on the rocks in case you can't quite see him!

Here is a picture of the sunset in the mountains, where we stayed.


This is a francesinha. Porto and Northern Portugal are known for them. It is made with slices of meat and two slices of bread with melted cheese and sauce on top. They are actually pretty good.

Here is a view of Porto and the river running along the edge of the city.

Porto is also known for it's many bridges. We took a short boat tour along the river to view the city and bridges from that perspective.

The houses along the river are very colorful and beautiful.

The kids taking a break from all our walking on a door stoop.

This is a picture of the housing in the city of Guimaraes. It is a very beautiful city--very well kept and clean.

This is a statue of King Afonso Henrique, first king of Portugal. Tim and the kids are showing off their muscles.

This is the Paco dos Duques(the palace of the Dukes). It is the palace that King Afonso had built and lived in.

This is a picture of the Castle where King Afonso was born and lived until he built the palace in the previous picture.

This is a picture of the Northern coast of Portugal. It was very beautiful.

The kids collecting rocks and shells at the beach.

Our hotel had a pool and the kids spent hours swimming. They had a children's pool and an adult's pool. Traeger is really becoming quite the swimmer! They love the water.

Karis also gained a lot of confidence in the water and isn't near as timid as Traeger about going all the way under!

This is the "Bom Jesus" in Braga. It is an old Catholic Parish.

*Just a reminder to continue to pray for Tim this week as he is preparing to preach on Sunday. We'll make sure to post an update after he is done.*

A Happy Ride

The kids enjoyed a little ride up to see some horses and a lake (pond really), but they always get excited with the little Portuguese ditty's that play on the loudspeakers.