Olivia shows off her beautiful skin problems here! We're not really sure what this is, probably a mixture of some kind of virus, allergies, bug bites, and heat. And it ended up spreading over her whole body... We took her to a doctor here and he gave us a perscription for some medicine that's really been helping. It's faded and not very noticable anymore.

Olivia with her Tia Rose at the beach.

Cesar and his daughters, as goofy as can be!

Olivia LOOOOOVES to play in the water! She splashes, jumps, kicks, and smiles!

Alicey won't go into the water without holding someone's hand. She's not quite as enthusiastic as Olivia is...

Alicey and her "sorvete" (icecream)...

The Melo family in Salvador, Brazil!

So here we are in Salvador, Brazil! Our flight went surprisingly well with Alicey and Olvia. Our longest part was from Chicago to Sao Paulo and Alicey fell asleep a half our after we took off and woke up a half hour before landing. Olivia wasn't quite as cooperative, but still didn't give too much trouble. Then on the last flight from Sao Paulo to Salvador, Olivia slept until I had to stand up to get out of the plain, and Alicey spent most of the time playing with a little boy sitting in front of us.

So we arrived Saturday afternoon and spent the afternoon with Cesar's family. On Sunday, church started at 8:00 am, so we had a pretty early start. That evening Rose had planned a birthday party for Olivia with a beautiful cake, LOTS of treats, balloons, and lots of friends and family! I didn't even know about it until Sunday!

Then Sunday night I woke up around 11 p.m. (we went to bed early). I heard a bunch of noise under our bed. Then I wondered if maybe Alicey's restless sleep had gone overboard... She had been sleeping on a mattress on the ground next to our bed. I peaked over Cesar to where Alicey was supposed to be, and as I suspected, she wasn't there. I woke Cesar up and told him of my conclusion. We looked under the bed and there she was- rolling around in her sleep. Cesar grabbed her arm and pulled her out. We layed her in bed with us and she kept kicking her legs on the bed and tossing a bunch. We tried talking to her and finding out what was wrong but she wouldn't respond. Then I wondered if maybe the mosquito bites she had gotten the night before (several that had been quite red when she went to sleep) were bothering her. I turned a light on and we noticed that several had blistered and a few had even broken upon. She was miserable. It was HOT, HUMID, and very uncomfortable! Then she started crying and of course woke Olivia up. I went in and tried to calm her down. After a while I put her back in her bed but she cried for a good 15 minutes straight! Finally I went back in there, picked her up, and noticed that her head was all wet. I HAD heard a strange noise before when I was calming her down, that could have been water dropping from the ceiling. So I went closer and noticed that there WAS water dripping on Olivia, poor thing! I called Cesar and we moved her bed and changed her sheets. After nursing her again for a while, she did end up falling asleep.

That was all during the night from Sunday to Monday. Alicey kept waking us up during the night complaining about her bites. The next day we bought an allergy cream, neosporin, and bandaids to fix her up. I also gave her some Benadryl I had brought for the flight (which I didn't end up using to put Olivia to sleep). We realized it was pretty much a mixture of the heat, humidity, and allergy Alicey had that caused such a severe reaction. She finally started getting better this morning, Tuesday. We haven't been able to go outside with her to avoid any more problems. And though it has been raining TONS here lately, it didn't rain at all yesterday or today. It would have been nice to go down to the beach, but that's okay.

So, here we are. In spite of all the drama, the girls are LOVING it here with all of Cesar's family. Alicey's favorites are her two cousins, Margarida and Manuela- Margo and Manu (13 and 8 years old) that she calls "minha meninas" (my girls). And Olivia's favorite is her grandpa Messias. It's pretty cute. Every time he walks by she reaches out to him to pick her up. Alicey and Olivia eat bread rolls all day long (in fact, that's what they're doing as I write this). Olivia's hair has also gotten quite curly here. And Cesar seams right at home! There's nothing really for me to help with here so I pretty much just watch over Alicey and Olivia all day. Cesar works for a few hours translating and managing his on-line math course each day. Cesar's mom feeds us meals and snacks about every two hours. Lots to eat. And that's about it so far. We don't have too many plans to do a lot of site seeing. We'll probably do more on the weekends because Cesar's sister, Rose, can drive us around. I'll update this later once more has happened!