Back in Spain

It's three in the morning in Spain and four out of seven of us are awake.  We are still on Utah time.  We had the best trip ever visiting our families.  It was pure torture flying with all of us to and from, but the time we spent with family and the memories we made were totally worth it.  We also got to see some of our friends too that we've made along the years.  We wish we could have seen more but some schedules didn't permit.  Definitely next time.  More pictures of our trip to come but I had to post the babies turning one.  It was so great being able to celebrate their birthdays with our family the day before we came home.

As you will see in the pictures, Tanner does NOT like getting his fingers dirty in the cake but Spencer LOVED it.

Nick's dad runs an awesome recreation center. So he was so great and reserved the indoor splash pool just for our party.  The kids had so much fun.  It was a great time until we had to say goodbye to family. We already miss everyone!

cRaZy for the WORLD CUP!

It is so fun being in Spain right now.   The Spanish are so excited about going all the way to the finals.  EVERYONE has their flags out on their houses, cars, bikes. etc.  It is such a cool way to experience the culture of Spain.  We had Javi, Beatriz, and Lucia over with some of our other friends the Taylors to watch the semi-finals last night.  You can see in the pictures the excitement about the win.

After the game everyone was running around outside, lighting firecrackers, and honking their horns.  The kids thought they were so cool to stay up so late and run around in the dark.  Good times.

Verano!

The boys are done with school for the summer (verano).  I'm really proud of how well they did adjusting to so much this last year.  Just after the babies were born last august, the boys started in a spanish school.  Luckily, they were already great spanish speakers before they started but it was still a big change from the great American on base school they went to in Japan.  Caden has always been really well adjusted and this change seemed to not phase him whatsoever.  He made some quick friends and also improved from his chicken scratch handwriting to beautiful cursive. Max had just finished kindergarten before coming here but because of his age, they had him skip 1st grade.  So he went from just learning to write and the very basics of reading to 2nd grade all in Spanish.  It was a tough change for all of us, but he ended up doing a great job and became one of his teacher's favorite students.  Jake was in the four year old class and had Señora Inma as his teacher.  She was so great to him and even adored his little stubborn streak.  She said that he was one of the top in his class.  He loves to learn and is doing a great job learning to read.  These pictures are at their end of the year performance. Each class put on a great show.  Because of the Spanish time schedule the program didn't start until 8:00 p.m.  (Our kid's bedtime).  Jake's class performed at 9:15 p.m. Max and Caden were after 11:00 p.m.  The party ended at 11:45p.m.   Crazy-  Anyway here are the pictures for now.  We have some great video coming soon too. 

In Spain when a child loses a tooth, a little mouse named Ratoncito Perez comes, takes the tooth away, and leaves some money.  No tooth fairies here.  Jake's class all dressed up as the mouse and danced.  Yes, Jake danced.  Not as big and out there as the other kids, but there were some movements and I was proud.

His toothbrush fell off and it was really important to fix it during the performance.

With Señora Inma

Jake and his buddy Jaime

Max and his BF Pablo.  Pablo was in a lot of the skits.  Max said he'll participate in more next year.

Am I in trouble with the girls?  Look at these girls smiling at Caden!  That is a boy behind him from his class probably feeling jealous and trying to get some attention.

Max looking thrilled

Now we are just counting down the days until we can go home to America and spend the summer with our family.  A couple more weeks!

Spanish Tortillas

One of the things I've enjoyed about living in different countries, is learning to make their food. I enjoyed learning how to make sushi and yaki soba while we were in Japan. And now that we are here in Spain, I plan on learning a couple of their traditional dishes as well.  Luckily I have a good friend that will suffer through my spanish and spend time teaching me.

This last week Beatriz came over and showed me how to make a Spanish Tortilla.  Tortillas in Spain are nothing like the regular flour or corn tortillas from latin America.  They don't even use those at all.  Their tortillas are chopped potatoes, onions, and eggs.  Cooked in A LOT of oil.  Definitely not a dish I will make on a regular basis. I love them but now that I've seen how to cook them, probably not too often.  My heart hurt just watching the oil get poured in.  Anyway, it was a lot of fun and they are really good.

Beatriz said that if you stick your tongue out while you're cutting up onions, you won't cry. She said that the strong fume of the onion likes humidity so if you stick your tongue out, it goes there and not to your eyes.  Weird, I know, but I tried it and I didn't cry.  Anyway, here is our Spanish tortilla.

First haircuts

First haircuts at 9 months.  The babies were starting to get to that mullet phase, especially Tanner.  His hair is so funny.  It sticks straight up on top and I can't get it to stay down.  It's really cute but not when accompanied by some longer locks going down the neck.  Anyway,  here are the before and after pics.  Not a huge difference but just enough.  Nick said he couldn't tell a difference.

Spencer Before

Spencer After

Tanner Before

Tanner After

Both After

Slideshow of England

We were able to see a lot of different sites in England and as usual we documented them all pretty well (lots of pics). We love to share our experiences with family and friends so below we have embedded a slideshow of some of our photos. It is about 8 minutes worth and set to "The Beatles" music since we were in England and even Liverpool and even went to "Penny Lane". The video should be viewable in YouTube hi-def and good enough quality to watch full screen to really appreciate the beauty of the country. Some of the pics are repeats from the last couple of blogs, but most are new. We hope you can see how amazing of a country England is (if you can last the whole 8 minutes of the slideshow). Enjoy.

Days one and two

So here goes.... I can't put in all of the details but here are the basics.  We started out tired since we landed in London at 11:00 p.m.  They did really well on the flight despite not getting a good sleep.  With all of the boys, everything takes so long!  So between getting our bags, and getting the rental car, etc. We left the airport at 12:30 a.m.  Only to get lost on the way to our first hotel for a REALLY long time.  During that journey, we went through some really cute little towns.  We saw two deer, an owl, a fox, and about forty rabbits.  They were cool to see but we would have much rather been sleeping comfortably in a bed.  I'm not even going to say when we finally got to the hotel but lets just say the sun was coming up.  So after a short sleep, we had to get up and get going since we had lots of things to see.  Already too many details, I'm moving on to pictures.

First stop...  Stonehenge:  Such a cool place. I got to go there 13 years ago with my parents but I knew Nick  and the boys would want to see it.  It really is mind boggling to see the rocks in their form and think of how they got that way so MANY years ago.

After Stonehenge, we drove up to Warwick Castle.  I was so excited to take my boys there.  It's was like heaven for them.  I knew they would love it and they did!

This picture below, Nick took from the tallest tower of the castle.  It's a lot of steep steps going up but so worth seeing this view when you get there.

Then on to Stratford Upon Avon to see William Shakespeare's home and the church where he was buried. The boys were so excited to eat at Pizza Hut since we don't have that in our little town of Rota Spain.

We had a busy first day and still made the drive up to Nottingham where we stayed our second night. We had a traditional English breakfast the next morning.  I love the beans on toast but I don't remember having stewed tomatoes when I lived there.  We drove by and saw my apartment I lived in when I was there.  Then we went in to the city center as I told the boys stories of when I was a missionary for the LDS church.  It was so great being back with my boys. We went to the Nottingham Castle which they loved since they are way in to Robin Hood.  Since the new movie of Robin Hood just came out with Russel Crowe, it was a big deal there.   They had a display that we weren't allowed to take pictures of in the castle.  They were the original clothes that were worn in the new movie.  So now I'm excited to watch it and know I saw the real clothes they were wearing.