Merry Natal

We had a fabulous Saltzman family get together in Natal (which means Christmas in Portuguese) in August. There is too much to cram into one post, so please enjoy my favourites:

Eating more meat than humanely possibly:

Gigantic slip and slides:

Silly faces:
Walking along the beach to get lunch:
Eating amazing food in tiny shacks:
ABC football game that only the night owls attended:
Renting a native for the week:
And becoming best friends despite the language barrier:

The largest cashew tree in the world (we can confirm that cashew juice is disgusting)

Feeding cashew tree monkeys (get this they eat cashews!)
Did you know that a single cashew grows under a piece of fruit, as demonstrated by this wonderful plastic replica:

Enjoying our own private beach (that we sometimes shared with others, we are nice like that)

Dune buggies!


Watching the locals fish:

Kissing a shark (this isn't really how he kisses...)

Building sandcastles with the family contractor:

Cavern (you had to grab onto the wall for dear life when a wave came in)

Dolphin watching and just being plain cute:

Team volleyball practice:

Becoming "friends" with officials (aka bribing)

Our house:

Snorkeling in a rain storm:

Enjoying great times together:

Being with family is always great, no matter where you are....so Australia next time?

Like a Bridge...but better

Bridges take time and money to build, so why go to the effort when you could simply awe the tourist (or in some cases freak them out, mentioning no names, mum!) with punting skills that put Cambridge students to shame.

The Whole Universe?

Kevin and I had an 8 hour lay over in possibly the world's most uncomfortable airport. The main highlight however was we got to see this lady:

Meet Miss Universe aka Ximena Navarette.

When you see a woman who is well over 6'2'' with shoes on, dead skinny, gorgeous and wearing a sash, it kinda catches your eye. When we walked past Ximena I made Kevin do an immediate 180 so we could walk next to her. (I prefer to remember it as walking with her.)

Kevin refused to take a photo with her. I had my camera out waiting for him to go up to her. We did have a language barrier against us, but I feel the camera in my hand would have done the talking. Kevin's real excuse was that he was a married man, and it would be creepy. I tried to explain that she has probably taken pictures with men of all ages who were way creepier, but he wasn't convinced. I may take him a couple of days, but I wouldn't be surprised if he ranks this is one of his biggest regrets in life.

Walking with Ximena wasn't too kind on the old self esteem. So I keep reminding myself that I have a great personality and I too want world peace.

Sleep Over!

One of my favourite memories from visiting my family in the summers, was sleeping over at my Aunt's house. So in my determination to be the "cool" aunt we had Kevin's Nephews over for a sleep over. Unfortunately it decided to rain all night which really put a damper on all of my planned activities.

After convincing Kevin that yes the park would be fun in the rain, he made us put ponchos on and off we went. Wish the boys had told me that wearing the hood was totally uncool.We played Uno Attack, made pizza and played an intense game of hide and seek, animal style. If you couldn't be found, you could provide a hint by making animal noises. Best quote of the night, was when Kevin couldn't be find, so he gave the hint of "boing de boing" - Noah looked up to me in complete surprise and goes "A Kangaroo? We don't even own a kangaroo!"

I also got to experience being a real adult, by pretending to sleep in the fort, but really waiting to everyone else went to sleep and snuck to my own bed!

Hopefully the boys had as much as fun as we did, and this gives me a favorable standing in the cool aunt poll!

Happy Birthday America

My goal this year was to have the most American 4th of July ever. I'm pretty sure I acheived it with a little help from Katie and Matt who were kind enough to come to Orlando to celebrate with us.

We:

Jet skiied

Claimed land for our own (although I think this is more of a British thing to do)

Enjoyed the beauty of our country

Snacked a lot

BBQed too much

Played Corn Hole

Swam

Carried an American flag everywhere we went

Took the boat out to watch fireworks.

And apparently had some weird competition for the All American Couple (I think the Critchfields had us beat)

Happy Birthday America!!!!

(Critchfields please come back soon)

Take a Bow

So amazing, even the trees bow down to her.