The Erwins: First week in Spain!

Monday, March 16, 2015

First week in Spain!

I said I wanted to do better blogging once we were in Spain so while we have a lot of downtime I figured I'd start now! Mark is taking a mandatory class this week so the kiddos and are stuck at the hotel while he's gone (we do have a car but it's a manual which I don't know how to drive...yet...Mark is determined I learn since pretty much everything here is manual :/ ) Anyway...like I said we have a lot of down time while we wait for him to be done so I'll just do a little update on our first (nearly) week here!

The day we flew it was kinda crazy..we had to drop off our car to the shipping people but our flight wasn't til 8pm so we had a lot of downtime in between but had to check out of our room or pay another full day...ugh...it was nuts...so we got to airport early, which luckily they had a big playroom for kids (it was an airport on the air station there cuz it was a military chartered flight over...which was nice because it was a direct flight from Norfolk to Rota!). SO we spent all our time in the playroom waiting for our flight..which then got delayed of course..and we didn't actually leave until like 10pm...so everyone was cranky and tired and hot but we finally got on and settled and the kiddos all went to sleep fairly easily (it was about a 6 1/2 hour flight), but then the two littles kept taking turns waking up and both wanted me so I barely slept the whole flight :( Luckily they actually played good movies on the plane so I was entertained by that :)

Overall though the flight wasn't too bad..helped a lot that it was at night. We got into Rota at like 9:30 am or something there time, then had to deal with checking in/going through their lines of info, getting our bags and kids and carry ons...which was quite the ordeal :) Luckily there were quite a few people from the command that were there to welcome us and help us into the van they brought and they brought us over to the Navy Lodge where we settled into our room and took naps! :) haha...

The next couple days Mark was busy with paperwork and checking into the command and all that fun stuff. One of the other wives though contacted me on facebook and came over to meet us with her kids and then she drove us around Rota, took us to the beach, and went out to lunch with the hubbies afterwards! Then she very nicely took Evelyn off my hands (she has a little girl that Evelyn was playing with) and me and the littles took a nap. :) After that we went over to a friends house for dinner...they lived in Jacksonville with us and came to Rota last summer so it was nice to have a contact here to ask q's before we came and get info from. And it was nice to have a place to go to for even dinner to get out of the hotel! :) Anyone who has stayed in a hotel for a length of time knows how quickly it becomes old and stressful :) especially with three kiddos! :/

Friday was much of the same, paperwork and such and then we met up with a photographer I got in touch with a few months ago. She took us into the city part of Puerto de Santa Maria and showed us the Castle of San Marcos and took us to a yogurt/dessert place where we got some yummy treats! I got a nutella filled crepe with chocolate gelato on the side and the kids and Mark got frozen yogurt with toppings :) It was deeelicioso!

Saturday was kind of laid back...we did go out later in the day to a neighboring town, Jerez, and walked around Ikea and ate dinner there...took up some time and it's fun to walk around :) Sunday was the same...we went to the beach on base to check it out and then the littles took a nap while Evelyn and I went to the base theater and saw the new Cinderella...which was AMAZING! Beautiful job on it and so good!!! I loved the costumes and scenery. Then that night someone from church stopped by to meet us, she has a little girl Evelyn's age who was anxious to meet her and it was nice to meet another friendly face here :) It seems to be a pretty small, everyone pretty much knows everyone in a roundabout way type of place.

So yeah...it's not too horribly exciting right now...we are going to look at houses off base all this week and hopefully pick one (the ones on base are small and old and half are empty cuz no one wants to live in them and the newer renovated ones are full to end of summer so we can't get one ;( )...but the ones off base look pretty awesome! Spanish tile everywhere and not your blah-cookie cutter on base housing :) So hopefully it's goes well on our search! I hope hope hope it goes quick to pick/get one cuz these kiddos need to get into a steady place soon...for their sanity and mine! :) :) :) It's not fun being in a one room hotel room with three kids...it's not horrible yet except baby girl is sleeping terribly (which she's teething as well so that doesn't help at all)...which luckily the other two aren't woken up by her at all but I am so I'm exhausted...we're doing pretty good with the time difference, it's just naughty little baby girl making me tired! :)

Well I think that's all for now! Mark is done with class and we are going to go look at a couple houses today! :)

in the playroom at the airport

finally on the plane!

Welcome to Rota!

Lizzie enjoying some outside time and sharing her food :) She loves to share now

Evelyn made some friends the first day we were there :)

Rota Beach!!!

This crazy little girl also loves the slide now...

but she likes going up instead of down! And she can do it too!

the yummy desserts we had! crepes and gelato might be my new favorite thing :)

castle of san marcos!

This girl...man! she's so quickly getting out of the baby stage :( and she's trying to prove it too! Lately her favorite thing to do has been to use a fork at every meal. She tries so hard!