Not really normal.

Has it really been over a month since I posted? Why yes, dear Kelley, you say. So much for mid-year half-hearted resolutions.

It really is hard for me to believe that we've been in the States for 7 weeks now. At the same time it feels like it's been forever since we have lived in Brazil! And this, good people, brings me to a question. What is normal? There is no normal and that goes for my life too. It just isn't normal. but take heart, I say to myself. There is no normal.

And that is part of the great adventure. Learning to take what the Lord gives you a day at a time and living it to the fullest! I fail at this, good people. I am more consistent at failing in that area than I am at blogging (haha...that's funny). But, there is always tomorrow. Or better yet, there is always today!

We have had a very busy month (an un-normal month)! We've checked out ministry opportunities in NC, looked into "normal" job opportunities and spent much needed time with friends and family! I would be lying if I said it has been an easy month, as it has been a rather emotional one for us girls in the Kroeker family as we adjust to...life.

The past 3 weeks has been filled with activity that took place in FL. I was horrible at making the effort to take the camera out and take pictures while we were there...something I'm deeply regretting now! But I did manage to get some good ones during our short overnight trip to the beach. Here are a few of those...

The three of us drove down to Carrabelle for the day. The water was GROSS. Absolutely disgusting. But there was an abundance of not-as-polluted sand which helped.

Besides the fact that my child can recognize polluted water when she sees it she also had another problem with the water. When she was little she had NO FEAR of the water. At all. None. So the days preceding our trip I was very faithful to caution her about being careful near the ocean. I think I over did it because she didn't even want to rinse the clean sand off her body in the polluted water when I advised her to. She kept saying "I don't want to get drowned."

And what kind of parents would not only force their child to step into that nasty water but sit on a stump and smile for a picture? That would be us. Look at that nasty foam.

We spent the night at my Uncle's beach-house. Karis liked having a huge trout with her in bed.

The following day was a beautiful day! My family came down and we went the extra mile (or 15) to go to St. George Island. It was definitely worth it!

We brought my nephew, Jagger, down to FL with us to spend time with my family. He and Karis had a blast playing together!

My 4 youngest siblings. I LOVE my family. I love having young siblings. They are so cool and were such a huge help with their nephew/niece.

Thank goodness for clean water!


An almost-complete sister's picture. We look forward to taking a real sister's picture soon with Stace!


Kimmy. My amazing sister, Kimmy. Only those who don't know Kimmy will be confused when I tell you this. Do you know what thought constantly comes to my mind when I think of Kimmy? It is this. What if my parents had stopped after having 5 children?

It is nice to be back in TN as we now try to get into some sort of a schedule. We haven't made any big decisions yet but may be coming close to doing just that. It is difficult not to jump into making decisions for the sake of having some closure. Or for the sake of knowing what tomorrow may hold. Or for the sake of getting settled. Somewhere. Sometime. In the near future. But we are confident that He will lead in some way. And we're ready to follow.

Before I close let me share with you a Karis dance that always brings a smile to my face. Actually, I laugh every time! And coincidentally she chooses to do this dance quite often when she knows she's about to get in trouble :-)

Not really culture shock.

Although I am still noticing differences in culture after being "home" for a week I would hardly call it shock. It is more like simply noticing little things that I forgot about after being away for a while. For example, milk. I am not a huge milk person but I forgot how heavenly milk here tastes compared to there. Another example would be squishy couches. I have become quite accustomed to seeing a soft looking couch yet sitting down with care because looks can be oh-so-deceiving (if you've ever visited Brazil you know exactly what I'm talking about :-) And then there is slight shock when you go out to eat but have to take out a loan to pay it all off at one time. I am missing Brazilian food (especially the abundance of avacado) but enjoying the not-always-so-good-for-you food here.

Meet Jonathan's cousin, Lorna. Hi, Lorna.

Lorna came all the way from WA to visit us this week! She, I'm afraid, may have experienced more culture shock than we have been experiencing. I even heard a few conversations like this....

Lorna: So what food item can you eat here that is TOTALLY different.

Jonathan: Boiled peanuts!

Me: (thinking to myself) What? Boiled peanuts? What are you talking about? Doesn't everybody eat boiled peanuts?

Lorna: NO WAY. They boil the peanuts? Are they soggy?

Jonathan: Yeah! They're really weird. Kell made me try one a few years ago.

Me: (thinking to myself, still) Huh? Soggy? They're not soggy...they're just boiled peanuts. The only nut worth eating (aside from pecans, that is)

Perhaps growing up in the panhandle of FL I am more southern than I ever realized. Sometimes I put "howdy" in the subject line of an email and up until a few years ago, I believe, I used to always say "y'all." But being away has minimized some of the southern influence in my life. I now notice when somebody says "y'all come back now, ya hear?" or "bless your little heart." And of course the very common "well now, how about that" (in the form of a statement.)

Ok, so getting back to Lorna. She is not southern and seeing TN through her eyes was enlightening.

Only Lorna noticed a sign like this.....

We had a lot of fun with Lorna this past week. One adventure was traveling a bit to go to the Mayfield plant.


Karis' favorite part was wearing a hair net. She even chose to keep hers on after we left the plant and passed the big bin where everybody else dumped theirs.

I am happy to report that my child now knows how to drink from a water-fountain.


The Kroeker's have this great tradition where when somebody has a birthday we all go out to eat - mom and dad Kroeker's treat (no matter who's birthday it is.) I really like this tradition. For August it was mom's birthday so she and dad took us to a Japanese steakhouse. OH. YUM.

YUM. YUM.

YUM. YUM. YUM.

Karis ate her entire salad with chop-sticks with a rubber-band on the end. It was awesome.

Then another day this week we traveled a little over an hour away to do a few other fun things...

Like play in a water-fountain. She had a blast!

And climb a mountain (perhaps we cheated a bit with the car.)

Usually I don't even bother taking pictures like this as the picture never does the view justice. However this one came pretty close!

We're heading off to NC tomorrow! Neither of us are really wanting to travel now but both feel it's important to start scouting out our different options. J's parents are going with us so that will be nice to have them along!

Saying goodbye to Via. And my tooth.

We have been on U.S. soil for almost a week now. Back to Papa John's pizza, clean houses (which means clean feet), carpet and self-activated stuff. It has only been 8 months since I was in the States for my brother's wedding yet walking into a bathroom where the toilet flushes on it's own (and not always at the correct time), has motion activated soap-dispenser and then motion activated HOT water come out of the sink. Well, it's a bit of a shock! And because I was so preoccupied with other things when I took Karis up to get a drink of water out of a water-fountain (a first for her) it was really humorous to watch her jump back as the water came out! I finally convinced her to try and take a little sip but then she was done. "I not firsty anymore, Mom."

Backing up a little over a month ago. Wow, life got hectic. Real "quick-like" as they say here in the hills of Tennessee. Our summer was busy as it was but as we stopped to catch our breath we realized that our plans to come back for furlough and make some hard decisions had changed a bit. We knew that we would not be returning to Brazil...at least for a few years. So then it made sense to close things down, which meant selling or giving away every item we had accumulated in 5 1/2 years except for what could fit into 6 suitcases.

Karis did really well during the chaos even though she was rather neglected. And not only was she rather neglected but she had two semi-cranky parents who were selling or giving away all of her toys.

As her toys began to disappear her creativity began to kick in. Of course this was when she still had SOME toys, lots of boxes and furniture to work with.

With the boxes used up the couches became "boats" with her few toys that were still around. Of course 3 weeks before we left she was down to no furniture and about 3 toys.

And because we didn't want to get too comfortable in the chaos we decided to get the first part of my dental implant done. I can't remember what I have mentioned about that in previous posts but after 6 months of having the tooth extracted the bone regrew enough to do an implant without a bone graft. And I needed to do it soon or the bone would continue to deteriorate without any tooth to keep the bone from...well, deteriorating.

Jonathan did take a closer picture of the bruised gum and stitches but it showed way too many nose hairs so I opted for this less-disgusting shot.

The first few days after the implant were fine (what you see is not a tooth that was implanted. You can't even see what he did as he put a titanium stud up into bone and then sewed the gum shut to keep out infection. After six months I can get a tooth put in when the bone has healed and grown around the stud.) But then by the 5th day I was in a lot of pain. Day 6 I was completely useless as I walked around moaning. And day 7 after going back to the dentist and determining that I had infection in the bone. Well, it wasn't pretty folks. Oh wow, the pain. So then onto antibiotics and strong pain meds. After a few more days I was able to start sleeping at night again and my poor husband who took great care of me could concentrate on the 153 things he needed to now get done in a week and a half. Poor guy.

So as a side note I now have a flipper in my mouth (a retainer with a tooth on it!) This will just be until I can get a tooth put into the implant. At first I was a bit insecure about the whole deal but am now feeling rather used to being able to take my front tooth in and out. Jonathan's cousin is here and since she was unaware of what has happened I had this great idea to take it out at supper time and see her reaction as I casually smiled without a tooth. But I crack myself up so much that all day as I thought about it (and wondered what I would do if somebody looked at me without a front tooth) I spent a good part of the day laughing at myself. Then of course when I tried to give her a big smile I laughed so hard I had to put my head down on the table and ruined all I had envisioned. She didn't even have time to notice. Ah well, there's a first time for everything. I have 6 months to practice!

Enough of the whole tooth/implant saga.

As I mentioned before, we had to fit everything we wanted to bring back into 6 suitcases. Jonathan did an amazing job, though we did end up bringing back 1 extra piece of luggage to get all of the last minute necessities in.

This is an accurate picture of how we all felt those last few weeks.

As I was laying in bed one night thinking of everything that had gone wrong or added to our already busy schedules I asked the Lord "Could anything else go wrong?" And then it struck me. Yes, things could definitely be worse. There were a few families who had recently had bouts of lice and although we had been careful...well, had we been careful enough? So of course for several hours when I should have been sleeping I sat in bed scratching my head and feeling very sorry for myself. And I spent the next week doing random checks in our hair throughout the day. Thankfully we were spared that grief.

We had to say goodbye to our furry family members. That was sad. And I did tell Jonathan "no matter what, do NOT let me get an animal for at least another year." You see, I have a bad habit of collecting animals and then not being able to keep them for whatever reason. We have been through 6 dogs in less than 6 years. Yeah.

And we all had many difficult goodbyes ahead of us with our not-so-furry friends.

The last supper.

And of course our child who has traveled more than most people do in their entire lives did great on all four flights and 36 1/2 hours of traveling. After the last flight she was rather dissappointed as she wanted to go on several more airplanes. You know, to try out the different colored ones.


Now we are in TN being spoiled by Jonathan's parents and catching up on a summer's amount of lost sleep. Besides a few episodes of crying for Chief (our huge puppy) she has been nothing but smiles since we arrived.


We really don't know what the future (as in, the next 6 months) holds for us. We will make a trip over to NC to check out a job opportunity there as well as make a trip to FL to see my family. Besides that we have have no idea. Kind of exciting and scary all at the same time!

Failure. Again.

Oh my readers, my readers. I have failed. Again. I thought for SURE I'd be more consistent at posting once a week or so but I have let you (all 5 of you) down. And I am truly sorry. Please don't leave. I need you. My bloggy-world security is depending on you!

Alrighty, done with the guilt-trip tactic.

Before I post TONS of pictures from this past month I have a very blog-worthy story to tell. So don't skip to the pics!

One night last week we had supper on the street outside one of our favorite restaurant/snack joints. We pay about 5 dollars to have 4 to 5 fried, puffy, & free-radical-laden pastry thingies along with a smoothie. Good deal huh? (you probably just had a heart attack, Mrs. E...but don't worry, pretty soon we will be thousands of miles away from this joint!) The owners have an adorable little girl Karis' age that sometimes comes around. Well, this night she came and hung out with us most of the time just talking away (and receiving blank stares from Karis who couldn't understand what she was saying.) Now, if you are like I was before I moved overseas and you wonder how a family can live overseas and yet their little kiddos don't speak the native language, well...I know what you mean. I didn't understand that either 'til we did move overseas and had a child. You see, it takes SO much effort to speak a 2nd language to your child in the house. Why should I take the time to say "you, daughter, clean toys in your room" and sound like a non-fluent speaker of the native language when I can say, without thinking "ok, time to clean up your room!"??

If we come back after furlough I do have a plan in place for Karis to learn. But until then, English in the home is what it will be!

So after that excuse I shall continue with my story. So here we are munching down on our $5 heart attacks and this little girl is just talking and talking when Karis decides she really wants to talk to the girl, too! She says "Mom, can I tell her that on my next birthday I'm going to be four?" and I reply "Sure! but uh, well, she won't understand you because she doesn't speak English."

You could see the wheels spinning. Kachunk, Kachunk, Kachunk. Then, after about 15 seconds of silence Karis looks up at the girl, holds out four fingers and says "wa ba dooby da da!" I looked at Jonathan, trying hard not to laugh and then back at Karis who was contentedly munching down on supper, once again.

After I thought about it I realized how genius my child is after all. She used a lot of logic in that situation. The little girl says things she can't understand so as long as she says something that even she can't understand, surely the little girl will. I know, I know....a real prodigy.


Oops, these pictures are from before our big trip, actually. A little carnival-type-thing came into town for a few weeks with several rides that would inspire one to write out a will before daring to go on one of those rides. For the longest time we couldn't understand what Karis was talking about when she would ask "Are the cartoons open?" We thought it was a strange way of asking to watch T.V. but one day as we were passing by the carnival she said "Look, the cartoons ARE open! Can we go?" And then it clicked. And because she isn't spoiled, and because she doesn't have both of us wrapped around her little finger we said "no, we are going over to so-and-so's house for supper." And then after supper we took her back....at 10pm, to ride a few rides.

Thankfull this halfway-safe ride was her favorite.

This one may appear to look safe, but don't let looks deceive you. Sure, it's a cute little caterpillar and yeah, it only travels at 1-2 mph. But let me tell you, I feared more for my life on the back of that thing than I did on the huge roller coaster rides at Six Flags. As you can probably tell, this picture was taken BEFORE the ride began (hence the smile on my face). Karis naively enjoyed it but after that it was back to the truck ride, for Mama's life just flashed before her eyes. And continued to flash before her eyes the whole 10 minutes that caterpillar would NOT stop going around and around the 50-year-old track that sounded and felt like it was about to break into a million pieces.

A "Jump-o-line." A great alternitive. NO. MORE. CATERPILLAR.

The highschool had a great banquet right before we left on our big trip.

Ok, now post trip. We have a huge city a few hours from here that has donuts!

One more churrasco before the folks head back.

And a camp-fire underneath the stars. I mean, carport.

Karis' friend (practically sister), Kiera, hung out with us that night.

It doesn't matter how badly they may be fighting, the wonderful solution is to grab the camera and yell "say cheese!" Suddenly, all is ok in the world.

It is such a wonderful, yet humiliating thing to be married to a man who can do anything. He is so mechanically inclined and I am...well, not-so-mechanically-inclined. The only kind of questions I ever get asked are "Should I wear this shirt tonight?" I'm afraid as a wife I am rather dependant on my husband's knowhow. But, just when I was feeling completely useless an opportunity presented itself! And it involved HIS green baby! Sure, it was spreading apart little pieces of metal with a screwdriver that had been smooshed by little bugs on the highway. But still, I did something useful. And I even got my picture taken for it....

So if ever there is a time when my mechanically-inclined husband is tempted to remind me of how useful he is, I can say "but dear, remember the time I sweated over your truck and pulled apart little metal thingies that had been smooshed by bugs?" Ah, I look forward to that day.