October 16, 2010

Good morning!! (for us anyways)

So, the last week has been alot of just hanging out doing school work.  I had decided that since we have been sick so much, maybe staying home and resting might be a good idea.  Tanner and I still haven't gotten over our coughs, Ricks body finally gave in and got sick, Kaylie got sick again (this time with what Tanner has).  Can you say - what the heck?!!!  But, Devan has been holding strong - no sickness yet!!    We've been down to the beach several times.  Rick and the kids have ridden bikes down there.  Kinda fun to call a recess from school work and go swim in the ocean.  The Portuguese people are really funny about the sea water.  They think it cures everything.  Got sinus problems?  Go to the beach and sniff the salty air.  Got a cough?  Go to the beach and breath the salty air.  Funny.  Hasn't seemed to help us yet, though.

It was kind of cool yesterday to hear Devan say "Hey Tanner, wanna ride bikes down to the beach?"  And they did.  Brotherly love (for the moment).  They rode down there and watched the fishermen bring in their giant nets to see what their catch of the day was.  Interesting process.  All across the beach they lay their nets out.  They use boats (really old fashioned ones - kind of like gondolas) and tractors to get their nets out.  They leave them out over night, I think, or maybe just all day, not sure.  Anyways, to get the nets back in, they use tractors to reel them in.  One guys works the tractor, two guys untangle and clean off seaweed from the nets, one guy gathers it, and one guy pulls it up onto a trailer and stacks it. When the net gets to the very end, it has buoys attached to it which makes it float up and bring up all the fish it has caught.  It's exciting to watch, actually.  The process is slow so the anticipation builds.  The day I watched them do it was kind of a let down.  Not many fish.  But, the boys said yesterdays catch was huge.  Devan told me a funny story about a guy in a speedo trying to steal some of the fish and the fishermen getting really mad at him, and a lady trying to sneak around Tanner to steal some of the fish.  Funny.  Devan wants to bring a bag next time, so he can steal fish to.  He actually said that the fishermen only take the sardines (which is a staple here - yuck!!), so he wants to gather up the other fish and cook them for dinner.  After the fishermen are done with the work, you should see the beach.  I have never seen so many seagulls in all my life.  It is feast time for them.

Our stay in the condo has been fairly uneventful.  The monster in the water heater/pipes finally got figured out (sort of).  We had a guy come check it out, who thought he had resolved the problem (until midnight hit and the monster came back).  He had another guy come work on it, but it never made the noise while he was here -so he didn't know if he fixed it -nope, didn't fix it.  Finally, the first guy came back, worked on it for a while, asked us if we needed heat throughout the house (luckily it's been warm lately), we said no, so he just turned that part of the water heater off.  Problem solved.  Hopefully it stays warm till the end of the month.  The heating system here, and in most Portuguese homes, is radiant heating.  You know, those things that hang on a wall in every room.  Hot water pumps from the water heater to each of them, which puts off heat in each of the rooms.  Well, something's up with our system.  We would have shut it off in the first place, but we thought it would shut off the whole water heater - and we weren't willing to take cold showers.

The only other excitement in the condo was when Kaylie went upstairs to her bedroom and yelled "My rooms flooded".  It had been raining quite a bit.  She has a balcony off of her room and water was streaming under her door.  Rick came up and climbed through her window to see why 4 inches of water had built up. He and Kaylie started scooping up the water with plastic bowls and dumping it over the balcony. Turns out, the great drainage system consists of a 3 inch hole drilled in the tile, no cover or anything.  Pine needles had clogged it up.  Rick cleaned it out with a coathanger and the water poured through.  Good thing we hadn't left for the day, which was the plan, or we would have come home to water pouring down the stairs.

Oh, one other thing about the condo.  So, it's late one night, Rick had already gone to bed.  Rick comes back downstairs and disappears outside with a flashlight.  He was gone for quite a while.  Turns out he went to give our neighbor a little "talking to" about her barking dogs.  Funny.  She was just sitting on her couch, while her dogs barked constantly.  Seriously - constantly.  It was like the barking chain from 101 Dalmations.  His talk worked.  Haven't heard much from the dogs since then.  Sorry to all my neighbors back home in Utah for Lucky's barking.  I know it must drive you crazy.  We'll try harder to get him to stop.

Well, we found the perfect home.  But Devan and Rick aren't sold on it because it's about an hour from the beach.  Bummer.  Kaylie and I fell in love with the set up.  It sits back on a private road with lots of land around it.  It has a heated pool, sand box area, fire pit area, covered patio, huge deck (for sleeping under the stars).  The house has 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, great kitchen, huge family room, 2 fireplaces, and even a grand piano (so Kaylie and Tanner can keep practicing).  The town is perfect.  Has the perfect ambience of Portugal, but modern things such as a banks, restaurants, parks, and even a public pool and tennis courts.  We'll see.  We will keep working on the men.  And maybe that's where we'll end up.  We still have another place to look at.

Well, I'll keep you posted.

Love you and miss you (and our own barking dogs)

Denise

PS - happy birthday sis!! (2 days late)