Fall 2016 {Family and Halloween}

This fall has flown by and is nearly at an end! The kids having been chugging along at school, doing their thing :) We haven't done too many exciting things really....we got into a pretty good rut of our normal routine without doing anything special so when we got to the end of October and had some visitors, we were excited for the excuse to get out! So my birth dad, Michael, and his fiance, Liz, came out to visit us! Our first visitors, after Carmen of course ;) Soooo all y'all that haven't come need to...just putting that plug in there ;) We're quickly running out of time here! :( Which I'm not gonna talk about right now....too sad!!!!

Anyway....it was so nice to have visitors, like I said...it made us get out! I took them to Seville one day, which is one of my favorite places so I'm more than happy to go back there any time! We walked around a bit (we only had little Lizzie with us that day, which was nice :) ), took a little carriage ride around the main area, and had some food at the International food festival next to the Plaza de Espana.

Lizzie loved the carriage ride :)

I love the Plaza de Espana!

this girl is so darn cute!

The kids loved having some new people around....they loved the extra attention and play time. We also went out to dinner quite a few times with them so they kids loved that too ;) I wasn't complaining either...I love to cook but won't complain when I don't have to! :) There's some delicious places around here though so it was fun to share some of the local food and places. We took them to one of our favorite "meat" places, Las Tinajas...they have some amazing grilled meat dishes, delicious bread, and yummy green olives :) Another night we went to an Asian restaurant right on the beach (although now that it's dark early it's not as nice to sit at as it is during the summer, but the food is still good!), an Irish bar/restaurant...not really Irish food except during Octoberfest though, but still good, one morning we went to breakfast at my favorite breakfast place on the water in Puerto <3 good.="" nbsp="" p="" so="">

best breakfast spot! yummy hot chocolate, spanish kind, and beautiful views!

We also took them out one night to Cadiz. We walked around, had dinner at a nice restaurant, and were supposed to go to a flamenco show...but stilly me got the dates wrong when I bought tickets :) :) :) Luckily we got it switched to another night and we went back and saw the show still....which was SUPER awesome! I love the flamenco music and the dancing. LOVE it.

sunset over Cadiz!

in front of the Cadiz Cathedral

Michael and Liz got to join us for our Halloween Celebrations since they were here over Halloween. The Base did the same as last year, a big Trunk 'r' Treat event at the drive in with activities, costume contests, trunk 'r' treating of course, and a movie at the end! Besides being a bit cold during the movie, everything went great! We had a pretty cool looking trunk, if I do say so myself ;) The kids were excited for it all and they looked awesome! Evelyn picked out a costume and I ordered it but then didn't want to wear it so I talked her into going with our trunk "theme" and had her wear a feria dress and then I did her face as a sugar skull. She looked pretty cool! Andrew was Spiderman and Lizzie was Anna from Frozen.

On actual Halloween we went to a neighbors house for a tiny bit...they are an engaged couple, he works on base and his dad is American (retired military) and his mom is Spanish, so he's lived most of his life here in Sanlucar. So we met them awhile back and they invited the kids over to trick 'r' treat (which isn't a big thing here in Spain at all but is slowly catching on). It was nice to meet some more people around here (it's hard to meet neighbors when (1) you don't know Spanish, and (2) there's walls around everyone's home). They are super nice though and I hope we get to know them a little better during our remaining time!

Evelyn changed up her costume for Halloween night...can you believe she still fits in this?? she wore it for our last Halloween in NC! Such a skinny minnie...

We did some pumpkin carving this year, which I don't think we got around to last year. The kids were super excited about that! Liz and Michael took a day trip to Morocco the Sunday they were here so we distracted the kids by doing this :) They were pretty cute doing it too.

Michael and Liz lucked out during their visit because the kids had some school off for All Saints day. We used one of the days off and took a day trip to a nearby town, Medina Sedonia...which is a little white village on a hill, like most little villages in the area :) It was a beautiful little town though with some castle ruins on the top of the hill. The kids liked running around that except it was SUPER windy so they didn't last too long there.

such a beautiful view!!!

we got some treats at a yummy little bakery...this one was founded in 1852!!!

It was so fun to have Michael and Liz here! Especially nice to meet and get to know Liz, who was super fun and so sweet. We were so excited to share our little piece of Spain finally and were so happy to do so! It's such an amazing experience to live here and can't wait to share it with more people!