Having Fun

This last week has been a lot of fun. We have really started to enjoy our new house. We have been in the pool even though the tenmperatures have not been that high and we have had friends over to play and swim. We have been to friends houses to play as well as meeting friends at playgrounds. While I took Ali to have her ears checked Sofia got to go with her friends to a fire station. She said she had a lot of fun and got to spray the fire hose. I wish I could have seen that! This past Saturday was loaded with fun since we finally had Ali's birthday party. We decided to have a joint birthday party with the girls friend, Michelle. Since we were doing it together and Michelle had her heart set upon Beckiland (an indoor play place) that is where we had the party. I'm so glad we had the party there. It was the easiest party ever. We had 15 kids to watch and 4 adults to watch them. We each took a zone and made sure everything went smoothly. There was no fighting, crying or injury. Everyone had a ton of fun. After the party we went home for a little rest and then headed over to a friends house for dinner. We had a great dinner and the kids played well all night. We were even treated to a nice fireworks display from the next village. After watching the fireworks our friend broke out some sparklers. Ali was a little too scared to hold one but Sofia really had fun holding hers and making lines and circles with it. This week has us full of friends as well so I'm looking forward to another fun week. Supposedly the internet guy is coming to the house tomorrow so keep your fingers crossed and maybe I will have internet at home again!!!

First week

So we have lived at our new house for a week now. We are completely unpacked and can really start to enjoy ourselves. The girls have been playing in the yard and in their playroom by themselves for the last week while Jason worked and I diligently unpacked everything. Sofia made me feel good about all the work I have been doing when we had the following conversation:

Sofia: "Mommy you do a LOT of work and daddy doesn't."
Me: "Daddy works sweetie. He is at the office right now."
Sofia: "Yeah but daddy just sits at a computer all day making money but you do a LOT of work that takes a lot of muscle. It is hard work."
Me: "Well...."

It just made me laugh and Jason got a laugh out of it too when he got home. Anyway, the girls have had a lot of fun playing in the yard. They play in their sandbox and under the trees, in the flower bed...basically everywhere. Their imaginations are amazing. My friend, Joanna, came over on Friday with her daughter. The kids had fun playing and I it was nice to catch up with Joanna since we hadn't seen each other in a while. My friend, Julie, and her girls also came over Friday afternoon. Sofia and Ali were excited to have them over since Julie was the nursery teacher for both and her daughters are "big kids" which my children love. We broke out the sprinkler and the girls had fun playing with Julie's daughters since it was warm and we hadn't quite sorted out the pool at that point. I loved it too since Remy and Eden are old enough to watch my girls and keep them entertained. It made it easy for me to sit back and relax. I think we have figured out the pool now but we still need to do a lot of vacuuming since there is a lot of sand at the bottom of the pool. I'm hoping to have that done today and tomorrow. We also had friends over for dinner on Sunday night. Entertaining after a move always makes me feel like we have finally made the house a home. I finished the last few boxes of unpacking yesterday and it felt good. Since I finished the unpacking yesterday and the kids, while having done great entertaining themselves, were a bit stir crazy we decided to meet some friends at a nearby playground. There is a new playground a couple minutes drive from us so we went there and ended up spending over three hours playing. It was good for the girls to play with friends and have my attention as well.

The kids are at czech lessons this morning and I have finished mopping all the floors in our old apartment. Next Czech lesson will be the final cleaning on this apartment. The nice thing about coming back to our apartment is I can get online! We still do not have internet in the new house. As a matter of fact, we don't even have a computer since we had to bring our computer in for service becuase it isn't working AGAIN! I'm hoping by the time we get our computer back (within a week they tell us) we will also have internet. We shall see.

Moving

My blogging will be limited for a little while since we moved to our new house over the weekend. We still have our apartment until August 15th so I'm sitting in an empty apartment with our laptop now while the girls are around the corner at Czech lessons. I'm not sure how long it will take us to get internet set up at the new house but since this is Czech, I won't be holding my breath. Anyway, The move went great. The movers came and packed up our entire apartment Saturday in four hours! They came back on Sunday and started loading the truck. The men were amazing. They would carry 6 boxes at a time down from the third floor strapped to their backs. I was shocked when I saw one man carrying our big livingroom chair by himself and another man carrying Sofia's bureau by himself. They had our apartment empty in three hours! They took a lunch break and then showed up at the new house. The unloading was a little trickier since they had to figure out how to get our furniture in the house. They ended up having to bring our beds and bureaus over the balcony since the stairs were too narrow. As I watched one man holding the balcony by one hand and pulling the mattress up with the other I couldn't help but think, "no OSHA regulations here!". They had everything moved into the house in 2 1/2 hours. We have started the tedious task of unpacking but it is a slow process. Luckily we have a covered patio to put all the empty boxes, paper and bubble wrap to get them out of the way. There is just something gratifying about moving empty boxes out of the house. Once we have internet at the house I will post pictures.

Wonderful Spain

We had a wonderful time in Spain with beautiful sunny skies every day. This was our third summer going to Spain and every year we have stayed a little longer. This time we spent 2 full weeks and my mom joined us for the first ten days. I loved having my mom there and the girls loved having Grandma with us. Grandma rubbed Ali's legs and scratched Sofia's back. (She massaged my back too!) She gave them baths and read them stories and sang them songs. Ali had a fun partner to walk with too since Ali and my mom love flowers equally so they enjoyed walking together and stopping every foot to smell a flower.
Our trip started out a little shaky though when, as we waited to board our flight, Sofia said the dreaded words, "my ear hurts". She got visibly worse as we waited to board the plane. Luckily I had my handy medicine pack in my carry-on and gave her some motrin. This seemed to do the trick and she was fine but I still worried. By Saturday we couldn't deny it anymore, she had an ear infection. I'm glad that Jason and I are now pretty comfortable finding healthcare in foreign countries. After finding a doctor and recalling my Spanish classes so I could speak broken Spanish we left with a prescription. Being a saturday and also during siesta time we headed to the nearest town, San Pedro Alcantara, with a 24 hour pharmacy. While I was there getting Sofia's antibiotics and ear drops I also picked up some decongestant/expectorant for Ali since she started in with a horrible cough the previous night. With our medicine cabinet stocked up we stopped for lunch at a little place on the main pedestrian road in San Pedro. Jason and I decided to order the fried seafood plate for two since we had read that it is a common local dish. The plate came with fried calamari, baby squids, anchovies and a couple other things. We ordered the girls pasta but they continue to amaze us with their willingness to try new foods. Once they saw our plate of food they started to ask for some. We gave them one piece each since we weren't sure if they would like it but they both loved it. Ali really liked the baby squids and Sofia loved the anchovies. It was a lot of fun to watch them. Sofia continued to ask for the "little fish" throughout the trip.

The first week we spent at a resort just outside of Estepona. This is further west than we have stayed the last 2 years. While we still had fun, the beaches in that area are not as nice as our favorite beach, Cabopino. (I do admit though that it is really just nit picking because we have been so spoiled with Cabopino.) We could walk to the beach from our hotel but we only did that one day since the beach was very rocky. After the first day we decided to check out different beaches in the area.

We went into the town of Estepona to the main beach (Rada Beach) there for the day and had fun. The water dropped off a little steeply for the girls so they didn't do a lot of splashing in the water but spent a lot of time playing in the sand. We enjoyed lunch at one of the restaurants on the beach and completely skipped the pasta for the kids and ordered half orders of fried sole, anchovies and calamari. After filling up on seafood Jason and the girls headed to the playground on the boardwalk and my mom and I decided to see if there were any shops around. After two beaches that were ok but not great we decided to head back towards Marbella for the beach. We weren't sure exactly where the beach was and the coastal highway exits are not very well signed we did the best we could and ended up at a nice beach. It wasn't the beach we intended but it was quiet and not rocky. Next beach stop was in Puerto Banus. This town is where the rich go when they are on the coast. The marina had 100ft yachts which were beautiful. There were so many big boats that even the 36ft boats looked small. My mom and I walked along the Marina and window shopped as well. We weren't actually going to buy anything from the shops since the shops included stores such as Dolce & Gabanna, Dior, Cartier etc. The kids had a lot of fun at this beach since there were no rocks. They spent some time in the water an building sand castles. Our final beach destination, and where we went for the remainder of our beach days was Cabopino Beach. This is by far still our favorite beach. It is also the kids favorite. the slope into the water is gentle and they can walk out quite far. The sand is perfect powder sand and it isn't busy in the morning so it is easy to get a spot just out of reach of the water. We built many sande castles and collected shells. The kids had fun collecting muscle shells after we explored a rock covered in live muscles.

After the first 10 days in Estepona, we moved location to Calahonda (the town we have stayed in the last two years). This year we didn't stay at the same resort but rented a condo for the week just up the hill. The condo unit was nice and comfortable. The balcony was amazing and had views of Gibraltar and Morocco. We used the pool some at this condo but being so close to Cabopino beach meant we spent most of our days at the beach. It was nice to come back into the town we know so well. We ended up eating out more here since we knew exactly which restaurants we wanted to go to. We also spent one afternoon/evening with friends who own a condo in Spain. We got together with them last year as well. It is fun to hang out with friends on vacation. We got to see their new condo which they bought over the winter. The condo is beautiful with stunning views. It also has great pool and a tennis court. We swam, played tennis (which I haven't played in ages) and enjoyed a gret meal with friends. We are sad though becuase they will only be in Prague for another 3 weeks and then they move back to England.

It was a fun filled 14 days in Spain and we are already looking forward to next year. I will post some pictures soon.