Hippity Hoppity Easter's on its way!

As a kid, I used to love getting an Easter basket on Easter morning! I loved the excitement, the goodies, the peeps! And as I got older, the Easter bunny kind of quit coming. It was a serious blow! However, I was always able to go to Target and get my peeps fix. Fast forward to living in Brazil, the Easter bunny doesn't visit and now I can't get peeps! Oh the travesties of living abroad. Last year, we had a little Easter brunch but without my bunny visit, my holiday was relatively candy free, which was great for my waist line and bad for my sweet tooth.

This year, the Easter bunny came in the form of my students, isn't that sweet. I had so many bring me candy I had to either freeze or give it away(Maria is getting a nice little Easter basket from me:) ). However, baskets aren't really the Brazilian thing to do. Instead, they get BIG chocolate eggs and when you break them open they have candy inside. It's kind of like a Hershey's bar and a piñata had an Easter baby.

The stores fill up with these big eggs in January, and when I say fill up, I am not being dramatic. They actually hang them from the ceilings.

I took this on Saturday so it was pretty picked over.


It's like the Golden Egg from Willy Wanka.



Don't let these eggs fool you. They can be pretty pricey. They run from R$20 - R$80 depending on the candy. Although I am still a lover of Easter "baskets" I love chocolate even more and I will take it any ole way I can get it. Even if it is in the form of a giant egg.

Elton and the gringoes!

Being from Nashville, I am used to a fair amount of live music. It is Music City, USA after-all. Living in Brazil, you don't see a lot of North American musicians coming to town. If they do come, they usually stick to Rio or Sao Paulo.

Back in December I got an email from Sue saying, "Elton John is coming to town. Want to go?" Being that I love Sir Elton, my answer was swift and decisive, "YES"! The Collins' were in as well!

Growing up, 70's music was one of the few genre's my family could agree on, that and the Amy Grant Christmas CD during the holidays, but I digress...my parents wanted country, the kids wanted pop/rock, so 70's was the compromise. Our favorite was Cat Stevens.

I was so excited that when I told my Mom, I even mentioned my grandfather aka the Colonel's Elton run in, which she had never heard. Essentially, back in 1972, he and Elton John spent a week together having cocktails on the QE2 traveling from New York to England. A couple of months later he saw his friend, "Reginald", on the news. He had no idea how famous "Reginald" was till that moment or that he was known to the rest of the world as Elton John.

When March finally rolled around we began getting excited about our big concert and made plans to have supper with Barry and Lee(the Head of school from Graded) before hand. Barry had assured us that the concert would begin closer to midnight, even though the ticket said 9:30. So, we moseyed on over to the convention center to see "Reginald." Once we arrived at 10, we realized that "Reginald" most certainly ran on gringo time, which would was 9:30. haha!

Even with our late arrival, the concert was great! He played all his old stuff, which is really what you want to hear at a concert, right? Nothing is worse than when they play their "new stuff." We sang, we danced, we had fun! It was a great night and even though we were having a professional development conference at school, it was worth it to stay out late and get up early!


Sir Elton


You can barely see him, but I swear he's there.


At one point, Sue looks at me and says, I guess they haven't set up the electric spot lights! Yep, those are men sitting in chairs above the crowd(basically touching the ceiling) adjusting the spotlights1 YIKES!


Heather, Sue, and me.


Kevin and Heather, the sweetest, cutest couple!


Me and Sue.

March is an exciting month for us, this week we are heading to Buenos Aires for the ASSAA conference. March is gonna be a great month!