5+ Hour Layover in Madrid

If you have to have a five hour layover anywhere, Madrid is the place to do it. We found a McDonald's for breakfast and then we went to a play place they have there (more for the really little kids, but Addy and Alex found some fun puzzles to do). I think the best thing we found was the courtesy roller carts...YES! Alex was hauling around a backpack as big and heavy as he was. I was hauling around a roller bag and a very heavy Trek bag. We were so happy to find those carts! Luckily we found a kids store called Imaginarium. They had the coolest stuff! I wish I could have bought up a bunch of stuff, but we ended up with a floam kit. Don't know what floam is? It is this sticky gooey stuff that you can make into shapes. Best of all, it doesn't make your hands sticky. So all the kids went crazy and it killed about an hour or more of our wait time.

The Madrid airport is very sleek and Euro feeling. It seems like you are inside the belly of a whale, with cool celadon green and wood covering the entire ceiling. I will include some pictures....

and last but not least, the photo of the airport...

Overheard

Connor and Alex got new hoodies the other day (Alex forgot his and we need a jacket here). As we walked away Alex said to Connor, "The girls are going to think we are hot in these!" WHAT??!!!

I noticed that Connor's two week old tennis shoes were showing some wear and tear, so I asked Connor how he is so hard on his shoes. He responded, "It's because I'm an adventurer, Mom."

Churros y Chocolate

Last night we trekked across Seville in search of some churros and chocolate, a well known Sevillian dessert. We asked some locals where to go and they led us to a spot by the Triana Bridge. They fry the churros fresh for you and serve them with some very thick chocolate (a little more runny than warm pudding). You are supposed to dip the churros in the chocolate, although I did witness my kids sipping the chocolate straight a couple of times. On our way home we ran across a movie theater that shows the movies in the language in which they are made with Spanish subtitles. This is a great way to review and learn some Spanish, as long as you can read the subtitles fast enough! We saw the movie Hugo, which was a cute movie with a great message and easy for both kids and adults to watch. Earlier in the day we had gone to the Museo Belle Artes, the local art museum that has preserved a lot of early religious art. Many of the most famous paintings are by Murillo, a couple portraits by Velazquez and lots of art by Zurbaran. My favorite was a Mary and Baby Jesus painting by Murillo. He seems to paint the connections and emotions from the scene, whereas many of the earlier artists were quite dark (and a little demented....think haunted house pictures with Jesus bleeding and demons). We made it to sacrament for our first day of church today. We are still struggling to get up early (and sleep at night) and when you tack on the 45 minute walk, 11:50 sacrament was as good as we could do. Today was actually the earliest we have ever been up and it was foggy and cold and no one was out on the way to church, but as we walked home it was sunny and there were lots of people everywhere. It seems like a great ward and we are excited to get to know people and to learn from them (hopefully we can pick up some Spanish from them!) Home school starts tomorrow...wish us luck! My goal for the week is not to swear at my kids....

Our Spain Adventure Begins!

We left for Spain on Tuesday at 12:45 in the afternoon. We arrived in Sevilla at 4:30 pm on Wednesday. It was a really long flight, and everyone was really good, I even had people say how well behaved my children were! When we got here to Sevilla, Pepe and his friend Ivan picked us up from the airport and took us to the apartment. Pepe showed us around the apartment and then we went and explored the neighborhood. We found the local bakery, Chinese shop, and grocery store. Then the kids wanted to go and exchange their money so we went to El Corte Ingles, which is a huge department store and exchanged their money. On the main floor there is a bookstore, upscale patisserie shop, and lots of jewelry and makeup counters like Chanel and Clinique. Then downstairs there was a grocery store. It has everything. We stocked up on a few essentials like cereal, milk and yogurt. They have leche fresca which is fresh milk and they also have boxed milk that is kept on the shelf. They both actually taste really good. We also went down to a playground on the river that has a big ship play structure. The kids ran around and played tag and had a good time. We ended the night with some tapas at Bar Rodriguez just down the street. My favorite was a pork loin with a whiskey solamente (?) sauce. It was so good. We also had some pork on some crostini. The pork had lots of fat through it and it wasn't my favorite. Addy ate most of the crostini anyway (and left all the pork). I'm pretty sure she also spit out her chewed up pork on the plate. We also had a mayo salad with some shrimp and lettuce that was OK. When we finally got to bed, we all passed out and slept very well. So well in fact that I was a bit late to my appointment with Ivan to go and look at schools. I managed to blow my hair dryer up, as well as flip the circuit breaker...oops! We went and met with four schools. Only one had any openings and that one only had openings for Cassy and Alex. Cassy is so excited and wants to go to school there, but Alex is so not excited. I think I will just send Cassy, but I don't want to feel like we are tied down to a certain schedule. I am hoping to go and visit some local cities and learn about those places as well. We are hearing lots of Spanish, but we definitely don't speak the language too well. Actually, I think we can get our point across, but when people respond back, it is really hard to understand them.

After meeting with the schools, we met up with Pepe and walked to Alameda, which is a large plaza that has a couple of playgrounds. We all grabbed some gelato and explored the plaza. Afterward, we walked down to the boat park again and the kids had a great time. We met a friend named Marco. After playing at the park for a while we went back to Alameda, which is really close to the house, and had some tapas and hamburguesas. We came home and went to bed. Unfortunately, Alex started throwing up and between him and the cell phone ringing, we were all up most of the night....except Addy she slept most of the night. Our plan was to wake up at a decent time and do some school and go visit the tourist sites. Unfortunately, since we all fell asleep at about 4 am, we couldn't get up til about 11:00. We all got ready, then headed out to have a dessert at the corner bakery. YUM! Then we were off in search of a park with lots of trees and grass. Cassy thought it was 5 minutes away, but it was more like an hour away. It turned out to be a great park, although the whole purpose of finding this park is to find a place to play futbol, and once we got there signs were posted that soccer isn't allowed. We were glad to find a bar (with full alcohol selection) in the park so we could get a drink after our long walk. The park is close to our church, so I think we will try to stop by after church for a picnic. On the way back we crossed a fabulous bridge that was built for the 1992 world expo. Walking along the river we watched the rowers (lots of Germans out training with their coaches in motorboats) and the fisherman fishing from the side of the river. Cassy took lots of pictures of graffiti. There is so much graffiti here it is crazy! We don't know what it says, so we can just enjoy the creative artistry. Cassy wants to do some tagging before we go, but I told her she needed to wait until Matt gets here.

At first Sevilla was not what I expected, just different somehow from what I had expected in my mind, but as we get to know the area better it is even better than expected. I love finding the unexpected moments. Like watching the rowers go by on the Guadlquivir with just the right kind of sunlight in the air it was awesome. Another fun moment was last night when we found a square that we stopped at to play a game of soccer (I just took pictures). It was so fun and the kids had that magic glow about them in the lamplight that it was one of those moments that I won't ever forget. I think we are beginning to relax and enjoy. Sevilla is a beautiful town. Tonight we had pizza/cereal in and we are watching Disney channel (in English no less), so we couldn't be having a less Spanish experience. Oh well!

Adventure Update

Apparently I have been so busy making plans that I haven't uploaded a photo or even written a post since October. Could have something to do with that little thing called THE HOLIDAYS! I am just coming out of the holiday fog and I have been saying that for 2 weeks. We actually still have a flocked tree standing up in the family room upstairs (only because I need Matt's help to get it down). He believes that once you put a tree up, you don't ever break it down and store it in the box again. This hasn't come up in the past, because we have never had a fake tree (we still do the real one downstairs). It would have been good to know this before I bought a twelve foot tree.... Maybe I could store it in the gym, the ceiling is tall enough.... Anyway, things have changed a lot since I last posted. We are scheduled to leave for Sevilla, Spain in exactly three weeks from yesterday. I did some research and just felt that Spain would be a safer area for me to travel by myself with the kids. We are getting so excited for the trip. People keep asking if we are already for the trip and I guess we are as ready as we are going to be. We have the apartment, we have our passports, and we have our flights. The only thing we need to do is pack our bags. I do still need to meet with some teachers and figure out the school thing. We are going to just go and see what we think about school when we get there. Cassy wants to go, but nobody else does. If we end up home schooling, I think it will still work because then we can hire a tutor to take us around to different venues and help us practice our Spanish. I am just trying to figure out how many books to take and if we can get books while we are there. I am planning on everyone doing some math, science, memorization and lots of reading (as well as some Spanish, of course) everyday. As long as everyone keeps a good attitude, it should work out well. But of course that is a big "if"!

Addy's Scout Plans

You can definitely tell that Addy has older brothers. She doesn't mind talking about (or showcasing) a variety of bodily functions. She likes wearing camo, shooting guns, and playing with legos. And she would give up just about anything to be a scout! She always like to dress up when we go to pack meeting with Connor. Last week she changed into her fancy sun dress and put on bright red lipstick and tons of gold sparkles on her eyes. I told her she could go to scouts like that because she looked kind of crazy (think scary doll that you are afraid will come alive in the night and get you). She gave a big sigh and a huge eyeroll and went to the bathroom to become more presentable. Soon she returned, and lucky for us she has changed her whole look by taking out her piggy tales that she had in her hair all day. So now she looked like a homeless, scary doll. I gave in and we left for scouts. We got lots of comments at scouts....Addy thought it was great. Wish I had a picture...

Bad JuJu

I took Connor to Farr's Fresh for an ice cream and a little chat the other day. Actually it was the big chat about the birds and the bees. I decided to follow the advice from the Talking To Your Kids About Sex book by the Eyre's. They present the idea in such a positive manner and I think in a way in which it inspires your child to realize the importance of being married to share something so wonderful. It went well. Of course Connor was embarrassed somewhat and we read the book "Where Did I Come From?" But he was a good sport about it. "I bet your are going to do this with all of my siblings aren't you?" "What?" "You know, take them to get an ice cream and tell them all this stuff." He knows me so well. When we left we went to get a movie at Redbox. The line was too long at two different places, so we went to Smith's. Then someone stole my parking space. As we hopped out of the car, Connor replied,"Mom I think we have got some bad JuJu going on because of all that stuff we have been talking about..."