Our friends the Engles invited us and other American expats over to their house for an Independence Day BBQ at their house in La Molina. As for any holiday get-together, we had to dress up!

Fun little story while we were getting ready. So...I rarely do make up anymore, and if I do anything, it's just mascara. You'll notice I'm actually wearing make up in the picture above. So Henlie says, "You wearing hiccup? I'm too little to wear hiccup. I can't wear hiccup yet." lol I couldn't get her to use an "m" to say make up, but she was right. She is too little for make up for now. :) Although, she did want to wear "chapstick" like Mommy. (I did let her wear actual chapstick.)

We made it to La Molina and had a fun time chatting and socializing. There was also swimming, but we decided not to take our stuff, which worked out because the day ended up being a little chilly. It didn't deter most of the kids, though :)


We ate yummy food. Matt and the guys watched some soccer game. He and some other expat dads of Peruvian kids coined the term "pringo" for their Peruvian gringos :) 

The ladies chatted. Andrew even gave Tía Holly his first real social smile - and boy was it a big grin! It was adorable. He later gave one to Emma later. It was weeks before Mom or Dad got one :) 

The kids played. Aside from the pool, they have a trampoline. They also got a little preschool-sized bounce house. One of the boys in our primary class wanted to play with Henlie, but she wan't having it....until Mommy and Daddy didn't want to take her to the trampoline. Once we suggested Mark take her, she went right over and dragged him over. lol He and his sister Melanie did a great job babysitting her :)

June 21st was a busy day. Not only was it Father's Day, but it was the Trujillo temple dedication as well. Since the rest of us get up long before Matt, we made Daddy some pancakes and eggs for breakfast. Then we gave Daddy a card and some cookies.

For the dedication, we went to our friends Rob and Abby McMillen's house. We watched their three youngest while they went to the second session, and then they watched our two while we went to the third session. We watched shows and played in their backyard. Henlie even tried roller skates :)

The dedication was wonderful. President Uchtdorf and Elder Bednar gave their talks in English and had a translator, so I could understand what was going on. For our session, Brother Waddell (1st counselor in the area presidency and in our ward) offered the dedicatory prayer, so that was neat.

Apparently, even though Elders Uchtdorf and Bednar both spoke in (I'm guessing) all of the sessions, they didn't offer the same talks. Rob picked us up to take us back to their house and we compared notes. I thought that was neat :) Elder Bednar's talk stuck with me. His big thing was we are supposed to do work for OUR dead, not just THE dead. It's important for us to find our ancestors and do the work for our family members where possible.

We stayed at the McMillens' house for dinner. We had yummy tacos and we shared our excess of monster cookies and shared our Nutella brownies for dessert. It was super fun to hang out and chat and eat yummy food.

We got home and called my dad to chat and wish him a happy Father's Day. Matt tried calling his dad, but they were having too much fun on their vacation in St. George, I guess. We sent him a WhatsApp though. 

It was a great way to spend our day. :)

The plus side to living in Peru over the Payson temple dedication is being here for the Trujillo temple dedication! We didn't fly to Trujillo for the open house, but it is a temple Matt and I still want to visit (his mission is in the temple district). Originally I thought it would be too close to my due date (June 5th) since we were planning on the baby arriving mid-May anyway, but then Andrew was actually here during the temple dedication. I actually did look at flights for a day trip or even just a quick overnight trip, but it wasn't worth it. Still, like I said, we weren't originally planning on it due to the pregnancy, but it was still hard watching everyone post their pictures from going up for it (same as everyone back in Utah visiting the Payson temple open house). However, the church is still awesome and broadcast the cultural celebration, so we hooked our laptop back up to the TV (eventually) and watched from our house.

President Uchtdorf was so cute at both the cultural celebration and the dedication, offering some greetings and love in Spanish. (The rest they used a translator, which made it extra nice for me :)) Also, the 1st counselor in the Area Presidency is in our ward, so we got to see them too.





The actual celebration was all performed in Spanish. (Okay, nearly all, there was a bit with Quechua too, so that was pretty cool.) It was fun to see all sorts of traditional dances and things. I took a lot of pictures, but since I was taking pictures of a screen on which people were dancing and pretty much not holding still at any point, most are pretty blurry.






We had a good time making a family night of it. Henlie liked dancing around to all of the music. There were a couple numbers that told stories that were enjoyable for me since I don't speak the language. It was also fun to see the different costumes of the various areas and time periods being performed.

My friend Rachel Engle offered to host a baby shower for Andrew. The original date was March 20th, but we had to postpone since Andrew decided to come on the 15th :) The new date was June 8th. Rachel was hosting that month's lunch bunch - a monthly pot luck lunch for the English-speaking sisters in the ward to get together - so she asked if we could combine it. I don't usually go to lunch bunch because of kids, traffic, and no car, but we made arrangements with our driver, Andres, so we went. (To date, that is the only lunch bunch I've been to. Another deterrent is coming up with something to take to share! :) In case you're wondering, I made peach cobbler.)

It was lots of fun to chat with my friends and make some new ones. Since we're in the primary, we really don't visit with people much. We had yummy food. Henlie had a blast playing with all of their toys. And then we had presents and took a group picture, which I don't seem to have a copy of. Oh well.

Rachel was going to have her driver come get us, but they were in the process of finding someone new. Fortunately, we'd started really using Andres, so we just had him pick us up. He was also super helpful in getting all of our gifts in the house too. Rachel sent me home with the balloons she got for decorations, and we were having a wee issue getting them out of the way so we could drive safely, so I handed Andrew to Andres and tried to fix it. Andres loves Andrew. Probably because he was always taking us to and from the clinic and Andres and Matt are friends. And maybe because they have the same name, just in different languages haha. He loves Henlie too, but I think there's an extra special spot in his heart for Andrew. :)

We got some lovely things, and fortunately everyone got the email to give us larger sized clothes since he was outgrowing his newborn clothes. Everyone was so generous, and it was wonderful to get out of the house and socialize. I really should try to do that more...