Brazil land of beauty! Land of Twins :)

Embarking on the warm fuzzy feelings of our celebration of 14 years of love as a couple we would like to share with you the most beautiful pictures of Brazil I personally ever found anywhere anytime, Gil actually found it and emailed me the link.
You will be able to find the link below, it's from "Skyscraper City":

HERE

Some of these pictures made me teary eyed...Brazil is awesome.
Now, back in the US, we love it , we really, really do, the United States is part of every fiber in my being, it has been since I was 17 years old and lived in Oklahoma as an Exchange student and played American Football, broke a few bones doing it, learned how to drive a tractor and plow the land for wheat and peanuts, the same peanuts for the peanut butter that you find so expensive in Brazil and when I went to School in Berkeley, California and felt in love with this country and that beautiful place all over again, during 9/11 when we had to evacuate Boston downtown and feared for our lives, cried for days watching the news in disbelief and still cry quietly inside when I remember ... up to this day have a lump on my throat every time I drive into New York city and feel disoriented because I can't find the Twin Towers that used to be my reference while driving around Manhattan and living in a quiet, quaint, coastal New England town and walking Okie, our adopted dog from Oklahoma on the beach on a cool crispy morning with Gil. A couple of funerals, weddings, births, trips, happy and sad moments.
I love the US more than I can express in words...and if I had my family here we would never leave.
But today we got some news that drastically changed our perception of the world as we know it...
My sister Daniela is P R E G N A N T!!!! With TWINS! That is even more cool because she is a TWIN herself, Deborah, her twin, has been featured in a blog post from our summer trip to Oklahoma and back to New England, you can read that post:

HERE

This is dramatic for us because all 4 of us have been trying to have babies. Daniela lost a baby last year early into her pregnancy. Leandro and his wife have been trying to have a baby for the past 5 years with no success. Gil and I have gone thru 2 surrogates with no success yet. Deborah is getting married at the end of this year but my mother wants her to have the baby NOW! Why wait until you get married, that is nonsense, says my UBBER Conservative Catholic mother, she says there is no such thing as traditional weddings anymore. She thinks it would be cool if my sister Deborah had her baby at her weeding party, funny, times have changed so much, to think that 13 years ago I fled the country for peace of mind because my mother kept driving me nuts about coming out of the closet.
So, You see how this is HUGE news for our family.
Baby's are priority for my mother for more reasons than I could explain to you, maybe someday I can share more on that.
Back to my sisters Deborah and Daniela, who are twins and both are Dentists, how cool is that! They are the best Dentists in the world by the way. I am not saying that just because they are my sisters, but because they always give me as many doses of anesthesia as I want and I never feel any pain what-so-ever. I always say they have fairy hands for those instruments and they really do.
I love my sisters and my brother very much. I miss my family very too much to be this far from them and now that we found out Daniela is pregnant, there is a sense of urgency to get back home to Sao Paulo and be close to family.
Below is a picture of my sister Daniela ( who is pregnant with TWINS now) this was on her weeding a couple of years ago, my Brother Leandro, my sister Debora and me, the bold chubby one on the right...




My sister Daniela, my brother Leandro, my sister Debora and I at Daniela's weeding

You will probably notice, if you have been following our blog that this is the first picture of me on the entire blog so far.
I had some work related reasons to want to keep my identity discreet up to this point and these reasons no longer exist, so from now on I will feel free to post pictures of me without any concerns for my privacy, it is a relief, I will tell you. 
Gil has also been talking about wanting to be closer to his family as well...he has a nephew that is growing fast and we are missing out...
So, my dear blog friends, our time in beautiful New England is coming to a close, Rhode Island to be more specific.
We will always be connected to this region because of the life lasting friendships that we have formed here.
I will be actively looking for jobs in Sao Paulo and will be moving back home as soon as we find it, Gil works from home so no stress on the job front for him.
There really isn't any more reasons for us to be here. If you followed our blog from the beginning, you will know why we came here and if you haven't read that post yet, HERE is the link and it will help you understand why we are here and why it doesn't make any more sense to be away from family.
We don't have a set date yet, Gil is in a complete state of panic, he wants to go back as much as I do but there is a fear of the unknown in the air now, we have been away for too long.
Believe it or not, 13 and a half years away from Brazil, I do feel like a foreigner when I am in Sao Paulo and when we fly back to the US I always feel like I am coming "home" not the house home, but home as in the place where we feel we belong after any trip abroad.
We will probably feel like most of you folks when you arrived in Brazil.
Besides the fact that we speak the language fluently.
I don't have much daily life experience in Brazil anymore. Sometimes I read something some of you post and I have to call my family to help me remember how is this or that...etc...
I have never rented a place in Brazil, never bought insurance, never bought a car or hired a maid or faxineira...that would be really weird for me to have a stranger in our house, cleaning, cooking, whatever...
In the US, I have bought about 10 different cars, used and new, purchased two homes and sold one, know everything about car and house insurance. I have hired contractors, have had appliances repaired and replaced and renovated an entire home. I have no experience with real state in Brazil, scary...to say the least...
It is difficult to explain, even considering that we feel more like Americans than Brazilians, family is still in Sao Paulo and even with all the friends we have here, we still feel alone at times...and would love to have family near us, I have to say the Hospital incidents were also a wake up call and brought up the fears of being alone.
So, Sao Paulo my dear homeland, here we come, we will be foreigners in our own hometown!!!
We hope we can make it back before the TWINS are here :)
Happy times my dear blog readers, happy times!!!



Ray