Carnaval, Sao Pedro de Alva

Its Carnaval time of year and the School children paraded around the town in Sao Pedro de Alva on Friday in their fancy dress, this is Sienna with her buddy Fillipa looking very cute in their little red indian outfits made by the teachers...... today we are off to Mealhada to check out the procession up there.. hope to get some good photographs... ! The kids have three days off School next week .... eek !

Been busy here decorating etc.. now in our new place, we have bedrooms, bathroom and kitchen so far... lunge to come ! I still havent managed to get the internal doors painted and back on but we are getting there slowly, I will have to upload some more pictures soon....

The weather is much improved, less rain and more sun... we have had a few days of 26 degrees - not bad for February ! but it is still chilly in the early morning and the nights so we still have the central heating on.... the orange and lemon trees are laden with fruit and the fruit trees are covered in pink and white blossom.. Spring is in the air :o)

House sitting....

http://www.pureportugal.co.uk/listman/listings/10523.html

For those of you who fancy taking a peek, I have attached a link to the Pure Portugal websites listing of the house we have been staying in for the past few months, which is currently on the market....

The link does not do quite what I wanted it to do but the house is up for €249,000 easy to find !

It is called Casa do Poco Velho.

A year on....

A little over a year after leaving home in the UK we are due to move back into our house at the end of this month having renovated it to the best of our ability.. this was the kitchen last week... our actual kitchen will be arriving from the UK in 10 days, I cannot wait to see it. So far we have a newly renovated roof.... new wooden flooring throughout, with new internal walls... the Adega below is in the process of becoming our front room and houses our new recuprador and central heating system... Outside is a building site... I have no idea where to begin ! but we are getting there... it has been really hard work and at times I have wished we had chosen a smaller project... just simple tasks like popping to the hardware store for paint... or nails etc can turn into mammoth tasks due to the language barrier and at the moment we have no clue how our wonderful solar / log fired heating system works as George speaks no English....
The winter frosts have been a shock to the system but the sun has been shining every day and the daytime temperatures are reaching around 17....
Hard work so far, but I wouldn't change a thing.
Do I miss the UK ?
No.

The right side of the road..

I need you to try to imagine a driver with three passengers in his car ..... all looking pretty similar to this guy here, only a million times more shocked.... hair on end the lot..... because some idiotic English moron was driving on the wrong side of the road, heading straight at them... wondering why they were on the wrong side of the road and when /if they were going to shift over......

Then realising AAARRRGgHh ! Holy moly its me !! I am on the wrong side !!!

Anyhow, our bad, we are truly very sorry and promise to never do that again. Ever.

Cabriteeny....

I LOVE this photograph very, very much.

This little guy was one of three boys born on the 8th Janurary this year, they are tiny and soft and cuddly. Just Gorgeous. My neighbour Maria has five all together - two were born to another Nanny about 10 days before.. one boy and one girl and they look like a right handful, especially the boy who tries to eat my shoes and clothes every time he see's me ! Maria tells me that they are ok to leave their Mum at around 4 months and I have asked her if I can have the little girl - to come and hang out with our other two.

We went to Arganil today with Maria and Fernando her husband. Fernando is ill, he has a bad leg at the moment and can barely walk and he had a hospital appointment today so we took them in. Slightly different experience for me today as we arrived 10 minutes early for the appointment, were seen straight away and were out the door 10 minutes later. Unbelievable. Not quite like my experience of Hospitals in the UK where you need a good book and some comfy slippers for your stay.

So we went off and did some shopping, then went back to their place for coffee and spent some time looking at photographs of their family. Fernando has been ill for 2 months and the poor guy is so fed up. Maria must be finding it so hard to look after everything without his help. I am not really sure what is wrong with his leg - my Portuguese would only stretch to the date /place and time of his appointment. Maria is fantastic at communicating with me, she seems to be able to decipher my poor pronunciation and breaks things down so I can understand - anyway we get by ! and I really enjoyed spending time with them today.

Sienna and Tashan have been chatting to each other in Portuguese tonight - I am so envious !

Sienna is really embarrassed to speak Portuguese in front of us and I only realised last week that she can actually speak whole sentences. She was trying to peruade me that she had to take her two cats to School with her as her friend had asked to see them. I (assuming she was trying her luck) and being irritable said "oh yeah ? and how did she ask you that ?" (you have to imagine my head swaying from side to side for that one).

Sienna : "Eu quero ver dois gatos amanha por favor".

Me : .......(silence) "umm right. Well go on then." -Well that shut me up !

Then tonight I asked her who she was playing with at school today, she met one of the girls Mothers last night in a local shop and I asked her if she had mentioned it to her friend.

Sienna : "she already knew"

Me : " how do you know ?"

Sienna "she said -voce viu a minha mae, and I said - sim"

Me: "Oh right".

So after a little more than three months at school I am asking her to translate for me and she is only four years old. Oh the shame of it.

Feliz ano novo !

How cute are these two christmas angels ?! Christmas in Lagares was good.. Santa turned up with some little helpers in a 4 wheel drive with speakers blaring out Portuguese festive tunes... unfortunately when the 'gathering' arrived along with a guy who might possibly have been the Mayor ? I was looking something like Jethro out of the Beverly Hillbillies ...only worse, as I had been busy burning a big bonfire out the back for several hours and looked like an expert soap dodger. I did contemplate hiding until I realised that, that was exactly what Vicky and Lee were doing and these guys were not going to go away.

Anyhow, I am glad I came out of hiding as Pai Natal, (Santa) had arrived with gifts for the kids - would you believe it ? How cool was that. We were blown away.

On New years day our neighbour arrived with a gift of the most delicious honey (Mel) for us, from her own bees down in the woods, and yesterday Maria arrived with a huge bag of lovely fresh produce from her garden, so as you can see I am on my way to being self sufficient.

2011 has started off with a huge dose of DIY for us..all my favorite stuff like sanding plaster until my nose is blocked with an inch of polyfiller and I can no longer breathe. Deep joy.

I cannot believe that Vicky and Laila will be leaving next Monday. I am trying not to think about it too much. It has been so great to have them here.

We have begun to paint and with a little luck this time next week our house will have windows and doors, our floors have been sanded, stained and varnished and it is beginning to resemble a home again - on the inside at least. The outside is plain shocking ! We have to be in the house in 8 weeks time so the pressure is on now- which is how both Lee and I seem to work best.

So, Feliz ano novo to all ...

..and fingers crossed the elves show up sometime soon and save me !

My number one amiga....

Oh boy was I happy to see my Sister last week.... I have loved every minute of this year with all of its ups and downs but being separated from my little Sister, who I now know is my best friend in the world has been harder than I could have ever imagined. The build up to Vicky and my Niece Laila arriving had me up and down... from -terrified of having to say goodbye again as I know it will open the 'miss you' wound to jumping up and down like a hyperactive teenager who just drank 8 cans of redbull. So off I went on the train to Lisbon to collect them last Tuesday... my eyes welling everytime I thought about the moment I would see them and looking like an unbalanced weirdo on the train and in the airport...... and then they were there..... and it was just amazing and totally normal like we had barely been apart. So I am one week in and have 5 more weeks to enjoy loving them face to face before they return to Australia....... (until next time).

Poor buggers were freezing when they arrived... -1 at night and around 7 degrees in the day for the first few days and now thankfully it has warmed up to about 17 / 18 again.... lucky really as there is not much meat on my little Sis to keep her warm. Fingers crossed ! So our little girls are back together again... giggling, bickering, babycino's and general mischief.....

Laila the Sydney city girl has been great company helping me feed the goats and the chickens.

On Sunday we went to the "chicken market" as it is referred to in our house (first Sunday of the month) in the pouring rain. We sat under the tarpaulin with an umbrella and still managed to get soaked (dead posh). Well worth the trouble.... that piri piri chicken is unbeatable.

Today I attended a parents meeting at Sienna's School. Ok so about 98% of the conversation went right over my head. Man these guys talk fast ! -when they are not talking to me slowly, like I am hard of hearing and a sandwich short of a picnic I really struggle... but I made the effort and managed to pick the important bones out of the conversation.

So despite the rain pouring, a brief taste of sub zero with no central heating ..... a house renovation with a long way to go and the burning question of how to earn a euro out here..... life is good and I feel very lucky indeed.