Our new Peruvian home: The outside

After spending close to 170 days in a temporary hotel/apartment (exactly one-third of Kennedy’s life to date) we FINALLY moved into a home. Although it was a long time, it was definitely worth the wait. The area we live in is located on a hill so we actually get sun all year round (which is a rarity in Lima). The house is located on a corner lot and has a very big yard. Here is Alli standing outside our wall. To the left you can see the front entrance and a little further down is the garage door.

***One Important Note****
Thank you Uncle Sam and faithful U.S. taxpayers for the beautiful house! Do not be deceived by this post and think we purchased this home ourselves. We're grateful to be the beneificiaries of government provided housing while living overseas.

As you enter the door you will always be greeted by two extremely happy little girls. This is the view of part of the yard and the house from the front entrance. Up the steps is the main house. To the left is the carport connected to the maid’s quarters / laundry room. The girls love having a big yard to run around in and it’s great to be able to open the doors and not worry about them running into the street. This is a view of the house, pool area, car port and back yard.

Here is another view of the yard, just a different angle. Brooke and I went on a cruise for our honeymoon and for some odd reason decided to buy two hammocks (we had no where to put them, we just liked the hammocks). Well, almost 5 years later we now have a place to hang them.

Here’s a view of the yard from yet another angle. The girls love it!!

Now that they have their own yard the girls take every opportunity to play in the dirt. A nightly bath has almost become a ritual in our home because the girls get so dirty everyday.

Brooke and Kennedy's first experience with the pool. The pools not heated so we are excited for the hot summer to warm it up.

Kennedy has gotten on this kick lately where she really hates wearing any type of clothing, so a good thing about having your own pool is that it doesn't matter what your kid is wearing when they go in.

Our new Peruvian home: The inside

Here is the fountain that is located in the middle area of the home. There are a lot of different birds that come here and drink and Kennedy loves to chase after them. The fountain is outside but feels like its inside because you can see it from a lot of different rooms.
As you walk in the front door this is the view of the entry. To the left is the living room and kitchen. The door in the back leads to a family room and the bedrooms. You'll see that Brooke's piano survived the 6 month ordeal in storage and fit nicely under the sky light.
View of the living room from the front entrance. You can see the dining room area in the back (notice its empty). We don't have a dining room table, however, that doesn't mean that the room doesn't get used. Because its empty it creates a great echo, so naturallyAlli and Kennedy use it as their special "scream" room. Who knew such small people could have such strong lungs. The outer wall of the living room is all windows (just like the dining room wall) so it has a great view of the back yard.

View of the living room looking into the main entrance area.

The play room. Here are Alli and her friend Andi playing princess.

Kennedy's room. There is a shared bathroom that connects this room to Alli's room.

Alli's room. Alli has slept in a hotel Queen size bed for 6 months so when we moved in and got our stuff we realized that her old bed is pretty small. She doesn't seem to care though.

This is a little family room area located in the middle of all of the bedrooms.

Brooke and Alli use this room frequently to debate some of todays more controversial topics (ie: health care reform, the troop surge in Afghanistan or which Disney prince is the cutest).

Master bedroom. Brooke loves the yellow curtains (not really). The sliding glass door opens up to the backyard and the lovely black bars give the room just the right touch. Not pictured are the bathroom and walk in closet (because who really cares what a bathroom looks like anyways, right?)

The kitchen with its WHITE WHITE WHITE floor. Keeping a white floor clean in Peru is like trying to keep white pants clean while mud wrestling. The door in the corner leads to a small breakfast nook.

The breakfast nook. This room is pretty cool because its surrounded by small windows and overlooks the little fountain area. We have all of our meals in here. The small door in the back leads to the laundry room/maids quarters/pool bathroom/fountain area.

The laundry room. Not pictured is the attached room we use for a shed/storage.

The maids quarters. Everyone in Peru has a maid and most live with the family. We have a maid (Maria) come three times a week (still not used to the whole maid thing but it has been nice not having to scrub a toilet for the past 6 months). The house actually has two rooms for maids quarters as well as a maids bathroom. One room we use as storage, this room is for Maria to put her stuff. There is also another bathroom next to the maids quarters that has a shower and changing area thats supposed to be used as a pool shower room.

Happy Halloween!

Here's our Kennedy Bee! Our families may remember this costume...it was Alli's 2 years ago. Anyway, we bought Kennedy a very cute princess costume to go along with Alli's princess attire, but Kennedy HATED it. We barely got her to wear this costume. I guess dressing up really isn't her thing.
Here's Princess Ariel. The best thing about this costume is definitely the wig. Alli would stroke her hair over and over "just like Ariel does."

Okay...Alli also found this Tigger costume somewhere in our boxes and decided she would have to be both this year. So we got to take both of them around and switch back and forth. :)

Alli and her best friend Andie

Hugging or choking?

Tim and his girls ready to trick-or-treat at the embassy.

Kennedy-Bee dragging her heavy bag through the embassy

Trick or Treat!

This picture doesn't do it justice, but the embassy put tons of effort into their Halloween decorations. Each office looked absolutely amazing!

On Halloween we went to a ward Primary party. It was a much better alternative to trick-or-treating in Lima. Although a lot of kids do go door to door begging for candy we thought it would be better if we stay in that night. While driving home from the Primary activity Brooke watched a man amongst a group of trick-or-treaters get thrown to the ground and handcuffed by the police. The majority of trick-or-treaters sadly looked like kids who only get candy this one night a year although there were some kids dressed in costumes.

Charming, right?

So what do you do at Peruvian parties...Dance!!! Even a Halloween party isn't complete without a dance floor!

Alli and Andie doing what they love best...giggling and running!

Ariel doing the cake walk.

Ariel eating candy on a string. It doesn't get better than that!

I've been called to be the primary music leader in our ward so I guess that makes me eligible to do a table at the primary party. Spanish skills come in helpful at this point. I'm sadly lacking the skill even though Tim tries to convince everyone I'm fluent. What a joke!

Afternoon at the Beach

Here's a few pictures we took one Sunday afternoon. We went out to the beach in front of our apartment just to see it. Of course looking at it wasn't enough for the girls and we all got a little wet. We're glad the girls are going to love the beach this summer! (It's almost summer time for us...hooray!)

Not another Knot!

If you put a very creative child in a hotel for 4 months and then in an apartment with not many toys, do you think she'll get bored? Not our little Alli! She came up with a new favorite activity...knot tying! All day she'd be playing with Tim's belts, scarves, jump ropes, extension cords, doggy ribbon collars, and anything else she could find to make her knots. I kept finding poor stuffed animals hanging by their necks everywhere so we started taking pictures. The most creative series of knots that I saw Alli do (sorry, no picture) was when she connected our bedroom doorknob to a broom, the broom to a hanger, the hanger to her scooter "horse", the scooter to the doll stroller, and the stroller to a cupboard knob. It was pretty impressive. She'd spend quite a long time on her knots and some of them took quite awhile to undo!

Doggy during breakfast

Alli and her extension cord

Bear and stroller dangling from the Mr. Jumper handle

Kitty in a noose

Soccer net tied to the horse (why? I don't know!)...and the poor kitty again

Alli happily working on a knot

This is the classic knot..."Alli Dog" has her paw caught and is barking for "owner" (aka Mom or Dad) to come and free her.


One final note: Since moving into our house we have not seen a single knot. I guess Alli finally has other stuff to keep her entertained!

Kennedy's first trip to the ER

Kennedy on her way home from the hospital A few weeks ago we took our first trip to the Emergency Room with our little Kennedy. We had spent the afternoon at a resort with some friends and were playing a game on the tennis courts. Alli and Kennedy were being good little girls digging in some dirt nearby. We were on our last hit of the game when I turned around and saw Kennedy run up a hill and then plummet head first onto a gravel path about 4 feet below. Of course she was screaming and I ran over. There was a lot of blood and while I was trying to figure out where it was coming from she passed out. She wasn't coming around and while Tim ran over and took her from me she stopped breathing for a few seconds (which seemed like an eternity to me!) After 30 seconds or so we got her to wake up and fought with her to keep consciousness as we ran to get medical help.

We of course knew she needed to get checked out quickly, but the resort we were at was located in a TERRIBLE part of town. Not knowing where to go we got a taxi who knew where a good hospital was and then followed him in our car. For those of you who don't know what it's like to drive in Lima at 7:00 pm in the slums of the city...consider yourself lucky!!! We amazingly made it to the hospital and little Kens checked out to be just fine. Thank you Brett and Stephanie for all your help that night!!!

Kennedy the next day

Two Wild and Crazy Girls

2 more pics

Have you met our new puppy? Her name is Perrito the Dalmation. (This was at an Embassy party...who would have guessed she'd want her face painted like a dog?)

A couple things to note in this picture: First the horse...Alli lovingly puts her horse to bed everyday by giving him one of Kennedy's blankets. This also means the horse is off limits to Kennedy. It creates a few problems. Second, look at Kennedy's posture! Are we all born like that and just learn to slouch all the time?

Our exciting trip to Ica

A few weeks ago we planned our first family trip in Peru. We went to a little place called Ica with another family. The plan was to escape the endless cloud cover and cold weather in Peru and enjoy some sun and clean, fresh air. I (Brooke) couldn't wait to see what was outside of Lima...I can only handle so much of this city and it was definitely time for a break. So our vacation began...
First we couldn't get on the right freeway. After a series of U-turns, wrong streets, and missed exits we found the road we needed. (Why don't they use a few more signs here?!) We were about to get onto the road we needed when we ran into this traffic in the picture below. Lovely, right? Welcome to Lima. Well, we found out why it was so bad after we drove by an accident scene with a body bag lying in the road. Again, welcome to Lima. We got on the freeway we needed finally and started to relax...

...until we realized we were going in the wrong direction. Trying not to get frustrated we attempted to turn ourselves around which can seem nearly impossible. We got stuck in construction, Tim's blood began to boil, we got a nice little scrape on our car, and made it back on the freeway going the right way. (This had taken us an hour so far and we were further away from our destination then when we started.) Then Alli needed a bathroom break...of course. Finding a decent toilet with toilet paper is no small task here, so that threw in another half hour into our journey. I was so happy when we finally were headed out of the city. Goodbye Lima!!!

Here we are at our second rest stop. Brooke is taking the girls on a walk to stretch their legs and see the wild chickens.

It was so interesting to drive through Peru. It seriously seemed like one squatter town after another. We have no idea how the people survive there because they have nothing. It's just sand and a makeshift hut. Here's a picture of a relatively very developed town. It actually has roads and property boundaries. Don't you love the haze that covers everything?

After several long hours in the car we made it to Ica!!! After about 30 minutes Tim got really sick to his stomach, Alli threw up a little later, and Brooke was sick the following day. I'm sure we all ate some yummy parasites and bugs the day before.

In the sun again!!!

Even though we battled with a terrible case of stomach sickness throughout our little vacation we still had a great time. We all got better after 24 hours and our friends the Boyds kindly offered to take Kennedy home with them the last day and we enjoyed our vacation without a baby. It was almost like a honeymoon again...except Alli was with us and we were mostly sick and very weak.
Why do I love thie picture of Kennedy so much? I don't know...she's just a growing girl trying to keep up with her big sister. She's do determined and independent. We love our little Kens!

So apparently Kennedy LOVES the water! She couldn't stop laughing the whole time she was in the pool. (Note: her swimming suit is getting a wee bit small. However, when I packed our suitcases 5 months ago for our move to Peru it fit just fine. Someday we'll get the rest of our clothes back...)

Here's the little bathing beauty.

Mommy and Alli.

Dad and Alli

We couldn't go on a trip without riding a horse! This was Alli's favorite part. If you look closely in this picture you can see a parrot in the tree.

Here's our cowgirl holding the horses "brains." No matter how many times we tell her they're called "reins" she insists their actually called brains. Whatever. Some things just aren't worth fighting about!

And she's riding all by herself!

Now she's a little lost puppy. Don't worry, we're about 5 feet away. She just likes acting like a puppy in distress.

The little golfer.

Golfing with a llama.

It was Sunday morning and I'm sure Alli is pondering the finer points of the gospel.

The Sand dunes

The main reason we went to Ica was so we could enjoy the sand dunes. The resort had a big sand hill on it's property and we gathered enough energy to hike up it a few times. We also rented a dune buggy for an hour and went out in the dunes. It was awesome! It would not have been awesome with Kennedy, so thanks again to the Boyds for watching her! Alli loved it and it was like going on the craziest roller coaster ever...but without tracks. Unfortunately our camera broke, so these are the only pictures we caught.

Brooke and Alli ready to go down their first hill.
The hike up to the top......and the long slide down!

Tim and Alli with the view of Ica in the background.