Family Day

When we first moved to Brazil, we had a family day every Friday.  On that day, we would pick up the kids from school and then do something fun together as a family.  We would let each family member take turns choosing what we would do. That first year in Brazil was very hard, and I don't think we would have survived it without those family days.

Since then, the family day tradition has continued although we don't do it weekly.  But we all look forward to times that we set aside to do something together - just our family.

Last Thursday was a holiday here in Brazil.  Since Bronwyn will be leaving for college soon, we let her choose what we would do as a family.  We headed up to Gramado and Canela, our favorite little tourist towns in the mountains near Porto Alegre.

We had an awesome time.
The weather was great.  The kids got along (no fighting the whole day, yeah!).

We took a bunch of pictures, so I may only tell a little in this post and the rest later.

We drove into town around 11:45 and we were ready to eat.  Bronwyn (and the rest of us) wanted to eat FONDUE!  Fondue is very popular in Gramado and Canela, and we have our favorite place.  (because of the price - but it is really good, too).

Fondue comes in 3 parts - cheese, meat, and chocolate.  So yummy! (click here to read more about the fondue experience and watch a video in which I may or may not have licked chocolate off of a plate.)

Anyhoo, after the fondue yumminess Bronwyn (who HATES to choose what we will do) chose for us to ride the "teleferico" - a chair lift that takes you up and down a mountain with an awesome view of a beautiful waterfall.

We let Anderson ride with Garrett, although I was a little nervous about them playing around and someone falling out....

Ansley and Bronwyn rode together....

And Carys and I, although she wanted to ditch me and trade her chair lift ticket for a 20 second zip line that goes down the mountain.  If you know Carys the adventure queen, you are not surprised.  She is afraid of nothing.

Here is our failed attempt at the self timer photo shoot.  She was saying, "hurry, mom!.....then... Mom, mom, mom,  the camera already took the picture."

So we tried again with her setting up the camera.  She was a little faster than me at getting to the spot.  What!?  I had on slippery boots!

Here are our adoring fans watching us as we floated in on our chair.

After the chair lift, we did something we have never done before....and it was really fun!
More tomorrow.....