Catching up in Spain!

(This was written at the end of April so on top of the apology below this is another apology for taking so long to post again :) )

I apologize for waiting so long between posts after promising to do good here in Spain…it’s been out of my control though because we went from a hotel with spotty wifi, to a temporary house with no internet, and finally moved into our house, picked a provider, signed up, and then discovered that the technicians for the company were on strike and wouldn’t be able to come out to install until the strike was over…which was pretty sucky! So that whole time my sole internet connection was the data on my phone, which I used up a LOT, let me tell ya! Goes by so fast on the phone.  But anyway! I’m back and starting with some posts I wrote in the meantime so I wouldn’t get backed up!

So since my last post...like I just said, we went from the hotel to a temporary house (I think we stayed there almost two weeks? I honestly can’t remember now!). We had been looking at houses in different towns outside base for a house and nothing topped the initial one I found and liked online before we came so we got the contract going on that but the house wasn’t going to be ready to move in until April 14^th so that’s why we decided to go to a temp house. No way was I gonna stay in a hotel for two more weeks with those kiddos! It was way too crazy. The temp house was a nice go between though, I could separate the kids for naps and have space at night to not go to bed when they did and there was a yard and parks nearby. That two weeks went by quick thankfully!

One big thing that happened in those two weeks is that we found a car to buy (since we’re living 20 minutes from base it was kind of a must to have two here)! It’s been so nice because it has an optional third row so we’ve had the kiddos separated for the first time! SO NICE! The only downside is it’s an automatic and I don’t know how to drive it  I’ve practiced a couple times here and there since we got it but not enough to drive it on my own. I’m gonna have to buck up and just do it though cuz driving the kids in one row in the Subaru is gonna be hard to go back to!

Since I was stuck in the temp house with the kiddos all day with nothing but what we packed on the plane, we’ve been going around to the close surrounding areas getting to know places and see what awesome stuff Spain has after Mark got off work. It’s been super fun so far and I looove everything we’ve seen! Spain is so cool! I love how much amazing stuff there is to see within 25 minutes of base! We’ve done more here in the past month than we did in the whole three years in NC! 

So I’ll just go through each town we’ve been to and share what we’ve seen there so far. We really have been doing a lot, in part to getting out of the house, and second because my niece Santana asked us to have Flat Stanley visit (which he visited us last year for Abrahm in NC but that was right around the time Elizabeth was born so we really didn’t do too much with him). This year is WAY different though and I think they’ll have to narrow down all the pics we’ve taken with him because there is a LOT! He’s been having a lot of fun with us in Spain 

First up is Rota, which I touched on a bit in the last post with the field trip for that class. We did go back to some of that same area with the kids and FS (Flat Stanley from here on out). We went to the beach in Rota for a little bit one day, which was GORGEOUS! Nicest beach I’ve ever been too! They win awards for it too I’ve heard and not hard to see why! We showed the kids the castle and church right next door to it, which it was Easter week when we went, which is pretty big here. They have processionals (parades) every day of the week with these intricate, gorgeous floats with statues of their Saints and of Christ. It’s pretty cool how much detail and care they put into it but man was it busy!!! We barely got a glimpse of the processional when we were there.

 Another town we went to was Cadiz, which is the longest continuously inhabited town in the entire world which is pretty cool! We kinda went with no knowledge of what to do there but someone had told me that there were these routes around the town (four in total, each color had lines on sidewalks to follow so I figured as long as we followed one of those we wouldn’t get too lost and we’d see some of the important stuff ) We didn’t see everything there cuz it’s pretty big for a little area but it was really fun! We did a LOT of walking (we walk around a lot here…which is good because we eat yummy treats ALL the time!) so the kids got tired of that but it was still fun. We took a ferry to and from there so that was a fun part for the kids though. But anyway, we wandered around the colored paths and took lots of pics! We didn’t know what most of the monuments were since it was all in Spanish but it was still cool 

My favorite parts of that walk were seeing all the amazing architecture around the city and seeing these amazingly HUGE trees! There were two of them near each other and man they were massive! SO cool! Cadiz was really gorgeous and definitely a spot we are gonna go back to some time! I’ve been making a list of awesome places to do for sessions too and can’t wait to start going with my photography here. It’s seriously so amazing and beautiful! I really hope some of you come visit!!!!

After we officially chose our house we decided to spend a weekend exploring the area of the town we’re living in, which is called Sanlucar de Barrameda. Sanlucar is bigger than Rota and we haven’t seen all of it yet but we’ve got a few familiar spots we’ve been to multiple times now and I really like it! We live on the outskirts of it, which is nice, and about three blocks from the beach, which is AWESOME! But more on that when I talk about the house . The first day out in Sanlucar we went to this area where it’s all “walking streets” and shops and restaurants. I think most towns here have a walking street/shop area, which is super fun to walk around in. The shops are fun and interesting, there’s always bakeries and treats everywhere (SO good but SO bad!), and it’s usually in the city center so the buildings and roads are always really cool to look at.

So we were walking along the area like that in Sanlucar (we’ve been back a few times, it’s super cute!). One thing Evelyn has been asking to do since we told her about it is eat snails…I know crazy right?? She totally braved up and at the restaurant we ate at they had snails! (which was next to this open plaza area and was so gorgeous! The kids played next to us while we ate cuz there was this guy with bubbles for the kids to play with…such a great distraction for them   ) Mark did it first, which he wasn’t too excited about but she got nervous so he did it, he didn’t quite like it but he said it wasn’t horrible. So Evelyn tried it for a second, chewed it and made some interesting faces and spit it out. It was disgusting to me but it was pretty funny to watch them eat it!

Next to this area was one of their main markets I guess…it was full of vendors with fish, butchers, fruits, veggies…pretty interesting to walk around in but also super gross and smelly! There’s fresh fish everywhere here, which is great if you like it but not so great if you don’t! (Although I don’t mind tuna and man do they have GOOD tuna here! They put it on the salads at restaurants and it is SO good!).

They have a lot of cute shops in these areas though, my favorite being the ones for little kids. People in Spain really DOLL their kids up! All the babies and toddlers have on these adorable outfits with tights and shoes and little cardigans and cute hats/bows. Then they have these amazing, super cute strollers that make mine look like ghetto sadness. They are SUPER expensive though!!!! But I guess they tend to have their kids a little later in life and don’t have as many here so they spend LOTS of money on them. That’s what I’ve heard anyway and by the price tags at these stores I can see it easily! I’m totally getting my girls matching outfits though for family pics or something though!

 We also went by the Sanlucar Castle which is pretty cool!

The latest town we’ve gone to is right next to us and is called Chipiona. It’s a cute little town and where Evelyn is going to school! She’s super excited to go to Spanish school and before we even came here was talking about learning Spanish. So that’s the goal there! We’ve only gone to Chipiona one day but we walked around the walking street there, ate some doner kebabs and homemade potato chips, and walked around the beach boardwalk type area that they have. It was SO pretty over there! It’s one of the areas I’m excited to go take pictures at.  It even has a working lighthouse! It’s so pretty!

There are a couple other towns nearby that we’ve gone to too but haven’t done as much as these towns mentioned already. Puerto de Santa Maria is a big town real close to base and is where a lot of the people we know live. It’s also where our church building is. We’ve gone there to go to some stores (we bought our feria dresses in Puerto) and we bought our car there too  The other town we’ve gone to is Jerez de la Frontera. We’ve gone there quite a bit but mainly because it has the biggest shopping center, including an Ikea  We’ve gone there quite a few times to get things for the house and sometimes just to go somewhere and walk around. The kids like walking around the upstairs area that’s all set up and sometimes we put them in the kids area downstairs to play while we walk around.  

Week two in Spain!

 Well not a horrible lot to write about this week but I did want to write a little bit since I've been having problems with my Facebook since we've gotten here...and I can't really fix it thoroughly because I'm on my phone and can't get on our laptop because I tripped over it in our hotel room and now it won't work...ugh...that was a bad day :( I'm still mad at myself over it :( 

Anyway- this past week has been a lot more of classes, paperwork, mark starting to go to work, which is mostly just more paperwork and stuff getting situated. We've also seen more houses, met some more people (mostly from church) and spent a lot of time in the hotel room! :/ not so much fun there but there have been a lot of rainy days so me and the kids have been pretty stuck :( every couple days it's sunny though so we try to enjoy those days as much as possible! It's so nice here when it's sunny :) we have our houses narrowed down to two though so should be in one in the next couple weeks so not too mucho get! Although we'll probably ice into a tempt part house on base while we wait if it's gonna be a couple weeks...this one room hotel has long past it's "we're ok here" status :) 

Here's some pics from our past week though! 

I went to marks class the day they went on a field trip out in town...nice to get away from the kids for a little while! ;) (they were at the child care center on base) 

One of the stops was a yummy bakery! 

Next was the local church...which like a lot of the buildings, was super old and awesome! This is the ceiling

And a pano of the altar area!

We also went to the Wednesday market- this little tent was full of olives! I've heard they are really good but the line was too long so I didn't try yet 

Some pics of the kiddos playing at the hotel...a new friend let us borrow some trains for Andrew, which he was so excited about! Then little lizzie is just so good! I love watching her play- she is starting to him and talk to herself  as she plays :) :) :)

This past weekend we went to a flamenco dress store to look for some dresses for me and the girls for the upcoming festivals or "feria". It was so fun looking through the dresses! But so hard to find one for me...those suckers are tight!!!!

This is the first one I tried on evelyn and I looove it!!!!

And this was one of the very few they had in Lizzie's sizes but luckily it's adorable on her :) 

Some more hotel room pics...evelyn wasn't feeling too well a couple days this week- whih was nice because she spent most of the day quiet and calm!!!! ;) 

She fell asleep on one of our walks :)

And this is how she spends half her naps in the hotel! In my lap :)

Enjoying some sunshine! He's not too bad with s soccer ball!

More rainy days :( 

We've been super bored...

And this is little lizzie today! We sent the other two to the CDC to get out and play for the morning so me and lizzie just hung out :)

So that's pretty much all for now! I'm very anxious to get out of this hotel and into a house! And then the wait for our household goods REALLY starts :) 

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! 

pano pic of the beach on base!

There's some cool trees in the courtyard of our hotel and Evleyn loves to climb this one!

napping at the beach! :)

This girl has the BEST bed head! :) 

seriously love her!

enjoying some sunshine while daddy is in class! :)