Blog From Brazil

Willie Young was over a few weeks ago. As he as here over a weekend, we thought we would visit the vineyards to the north of Porto Alegre to pass the time.

The area is Bento Goncalves which has a lot of Italian immigrants - hence the wine production.

Anyway, we visited the Miolo vineyard. Miolo wine just happens to be one of Anne-Marie's favouries. As you can see, she seems happy.







Anne-Marie's joy was short lived however, as later in the tour she was shocked to discover that "kerry oots" were available only by the bottle and that the barrels were reserved for commercial customers only.







Bitter Disappointment




Fortunately, we were able to recover the situation - and Anne-Marie's earlier good humour - by purchasing a case of her favourite chardonnay.

It is long gone needless to say.










There There Dear




Willie also had a good time, struggling manfully to cope with the large quantity of wine on offer.













One For The Road

After a long time with no updates we had a really busy week. Dan graduated from middle school, it was Dan`s birthday on Saturday and - as a special birthday treat - we all got to see Sam's drama class play on Saturday.

Dan`s graduation was good and he gave a nice speech. We'll put up some videos later (also of Sam's play - what a treat).

Anyway, we all went out to Koh Pipi - which is a very nice Thai restaurant for Dan`s birthday meal. He got a lot of good stuff as presents - clothes, money (thanks Mark), shoes and a guitar. Here`s a video of Danny Guitar Hayward in action ---

Marvel at the ease with which Samuel tames this savage beast!

We saw a really weird thing today. The sun had a ring of light around it - like a halo. It was almost perfectly circular.

Between the sun and the ring the sky was darker than normal. The ring was very well defined as you can see from above.

Unfortunately it wasn't possible to get the entire ring into the picture as it was so large.

Don't know what could have caused this. Someone said it was a freak ice formation in the clouds. Someone else said water vapour.

Maybe it's something like a rainbow - but there were no colours other than brilliant white on view from where we were.

Anne Leaving Porto Alegre
No problem getting to the airport, no big queues at the check-in, everything went very well.

At the time of writing, she should be on a plane from Sao Paolo to Heathrow.









Cute or Just Plain Gay? You Decide.
Anne-Marie's latest bout of madness has manifested itself by way of Toto being forced to wear a blue ribbon in the shape of a bone.

She thinks it's cute. We think it's gay.

It might just be cruelty to animals (but Toto deserves it).











Just Plain Stupid
Not much doubt about this one so no need for any debate.

Have you ever seen anything so stupid?

This is Toto in his raincoat. It was taken just after Christmas and if you look closely you will also see his festive bow-tie.

It's a dog's life.

Happy Christmas to everyone from Brazil. Here's some videos - the first is just to say happy Christmas - Anne- Marie is so full of joy that she even breaks into a spontaneous, if short lived, rendition of Jingle Bells. Ho ho ho.

Staying with the musical theme, Dan, Dan the guitar man rocks the house.

Finally Sam - who has been hyper for the past couple of days and shows no sign of calming down, seems happy with his Christmas presents.

Happy Christmas everyone.