MICHAWN'S MEANDERINGS: Mother's Day - Fun With My Firstborn

Today is my Granny's birthday (that's her, taken a year ago). HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GRANNY HOUGH!! LOVE YOU! She is 81 years young today. :)

Can you believe it was a year ago today that we left Saline, LA?!?!? I can't. We spent another month traveling in the U.S. and then we were off to Brasil. But, (weep weep), a whole year of being away from home (home being Saline)...wow. I haven't lived there in a very long time (except for that last 6 months we were in the states), but we would still visit at least once or twice a year...so this is a first.

Be praying for me please on this one-year anniversary. I am having a hard time in the area of language learning. Let me give you a re-cap of Portuguese in my life during the last 11 months that we've been here.

--Got here in June and basically just talked to people to learn a little bit...picked up words and phrases here and there, looked up things in my Portuguese/English dictionary alot. But, nothing formal until...
--August 21st - Started going to Portuguese class. I met with a teacher twice a week for a total of 4 hours a week. Including homework, it totaled about 8 hours a week. It was good, but I felt like I had no idea what was going on much of the time and really felt like I needed more of a base before I had that type of class. So...
--At the end of October I stopped those classes. We began to pray about what the best option would be for me. I began to study more on my own (of course...I had 8 extra hours a week since I wasn't taking those classes).
--In February we (me AND the kids) started going to "Portuguese class" (the kids started to preschool and I went to help). It was a great boost for me and my Portuguese. I learned alot in those 2 weeks. The plan was for me to go for 6 weeks before the baby came, but I started having some health issues and was forced to stop. Then our little blessing came along...and we started praying about Portuguese options yet again.
--May 6th, the day Cass was 6 weeks old, I started going to the Asas office to work to get in some good Portuguese exposure and practice. It's going well. We're just wondering our next steps. I will continue to go to the Asas office 3 times a week until the end of June. Basically all of Brasil has July as a holiday and takes the whole month off. And then in August Cass will really be discontent to go with me to Asas I'm thinking, so no more Asas for me probably. We'll just have to see.

Joel's mom said the other day that for her she found that the more she learned, the more aware she was of all that she still didn't know. I can definitely relate. Some days I feel really good about it and can communicate very well. Other days it seems like I didn't understand anything. I'll break it down for you...

--I do very well in one-on-one conversations. Usually we speak slowly and I'm able to actually have a conversation.
--In group settings I do O.K. I get bits and pieces of what people are saying and can usually get the main idea. I miss details though...hard to live without details. I've lived without details now for a full 11 months. :) It's wearisome.
--At places like church I get basically nothing. The thing is that I recognize/know most every word that is said, but it has to be said slowly for me to be able to put it all together to make the group of words (sentence) make sense. Of course, add to that a microphone and not the best acoustic situation and yeah...I'm clueless lots of the time. So, I just zone out. There was a girl that spoke the other night at church...she spoke on the mic too...and I totally knew everything she was talking about. So, progress is being made...it's just very slow.

And that brings me to my point. It's not like I'm staying stagnant in language learning. I am progressing, slowly but surely. With my circumstances, not coming as a childless couple, it just might take some time. But, that is a problem.

Basically I'm feeling tons of pressure to learn this language...and quickly. I am stressed. And people...I don't get stressed, so you know it must be bad.

I wouldn't change my "circumstances" for the world (having these 4 precious little ones), but taking care of a family of 6 is quite the job. Add language learning on top of that and wow. I wouldn't feel nearly as stressed if I didn't feel this pressure to learn it quickly. It's hard. My heart is with my children and my home. My children will never be these ages again and I don't want to miss one single minute of it, but I have to. I hear moms all the time say that they just can't do it all. It's true. And learning a new language in a short amount of time to boot? Yes, I'm stressed.

So, please just pray that we have wisdom in how to handle all of this and what steps need to be taken. Pray for God to order my steps and for my heart not to be sad when I think about not being able to stay home with Eissa and just be a "normal" mom doing "normal" mom things. Don't get me wrong...I love the idea of being able to speak another language fluently and it's all very exciting to me too. I just wish there wasn't the pressure to do it quickly...and that we had the ideal arrangement for learning it with small children. :) Doubt there is an ideal arrangement for that, but whatever.

Anyway, thanks for your prayers.

Now, thought it'd be interesting to see a few pictures from when we were back in Saline 1 year ago. So, first some of those and then yes...still Mother's Day. We had so much fun with our kids. I took extra shots of Grady that day it seems, so here are just some of him.

Us 1 year ago.

LOVE the lake!! This was Eissa's first time in.

My cousins...the one in the middle (Gillian) is coming to stay with us this summer...and the one on the left (Ariel) is coming to visit too for a couple of weeks. Woohoo!!

One of our last nights at my mom's...we were having some chocolate milkshakes in her bed. Mmmmmm!!

More time at the lake...my favorite spot in the world.

Can we say "YUM!!" really loudly?!?!?!? Fried fish picnic on the lake...the best.

My family...parents and brothers included. This was our last Sunday there and we dedicated Eissa at our church. It was also Mother's Day. By the way, no...the blue shirts were not at all planned. :)