Fall 2015

Cantabria

Somehow I forgot to post our trip to Cantabria with my friend Brenda back in October, but better late than never.

Beach in Comillas

We spent part of the first day at the beach.  It wasn't hot but warm enough to shed some clothing and play in the sand.

...and for the die hards briefly get in the water.

While my friend and I were basking in the sun we were briefly entertained by a busload of giddy nuns. 

Palace Chapel-Pantheon and Sobrellano Park

The beautiful Sobrellano Palace and the chapel-Pantheon are located in the town of Comillas and built in 1881-1888.  I'm not sure why there were cannons placed out front.  

Playa de Santa Justa

Before returning to our hotel we decided to take Brenda to one of our favorite locations along the Cantabrian coastline. 

Instead of following our path from the previous time we...

...noticed this path along the fence line and we decided to explore it.
 

 And this incredible view was what the pathway led us to.  

After Brenda had had enough of my kids she attempted to throw them over.

Luckily for them, she didn't go through with it.

The next day we took a drive into the enchanting Picos de Europa.

We wanted to explore one of the numerous caves inside the Picos but after traveling up hills, over mountains, following this guy and hiking up shade-less and often steep trails...

and we kept failing (the dang Spanish siesta).  Morgan at least got to climb above this cave. 

Fortunately the amazing views made it all worth it.  

Castillo de Fuentes de Valdepero

On our way home we passed this castle and as usual pulled off to do a little exploring.  Kamree is the best, she joined Brent, Brenda and me while the other 3 stayed in the car complaining that we had seen enough castles.

It helped that Kamree had her Heeleys on,  which she wears every chance she can even on stone walkways.  Brenda and Brent are in the picture on the right.  This castle was built between the 14th-16th centuries.

Back Home

The building on the left is a building near the kids' school.  I'm not sure what it is but it is eyecatching.  The picture on the right is Morgan and a couple of his friends walking to school.  We live about 12 minutes from the school and two of his friends live a couple of streets away from us so they often walk to and from school together.  

This is a cute video of Kamree and her super adorable Korean friend Sharon.  

Thanksgiving

The last couple of years we did Thanksgiving by ourselves and invited a couple sets of missionaries but this year was a bit different.  This was the cute little girl table.

There are a few American families in our ward and in the other ward in the building, we all joined forces and invited all 12 missionaries.  This was the older kids' table with 4 missionary chaperons. 

We had 7 and a half families with a total of 50 people including the missionaries.  We have not been around so many Americans since being in Spain, it felt like an American ward party.  Yes, I am the one in the center stuffing my face.

With all these people we still all took home enough leftovers for another Thanksgiving meal the following day.  

This great greenie missionary entertained some of the littlest kids after dinner.

San Lorenzo Del Escorial

This was the Saturday after Thanksgiving.  We spent the first half of this day with some friends from Brent's work.  We've been here to visit them before, but they had just finished renovating their new home and we wanted to see it.  

El Escorial is most known for it's amazingly big monastery. These photos are of the back-end as we were walking toward the "Casita de Principe"  which is one of the many residences of the Spanish Royal Family.

This is the back yard of the palace.  It was built between 1771 and 1775.

 I should have joined them!!!

This is the lush front yard of the Palace. 

Fall was obvious here.  The kids miss the piles of leaves we had in Utah,  until we return and they are responsible for raking and bagging them all.   

Can you guess who helped decorate our humble Christmas tree?

This interesting plant is at the park across from our church.   I am enjoying the flowers and nice weather we are having even though my kids would much prefer lots of snow for Christmas.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

The Big Surprise.......

One much anticipated Saturday morning in October, my sister Corey and her family covertly waited behind our front door, as we surprised our kids with the news of a trip to Paris and Disneyland for the following day.

On cue, my sister's family knocked on the door to add themselves to the surprise.

Within an hour of their arrival we drove to Segovia for a few hours before retiring to bed early for our 6:00 am flight to Paris the next day. 

Segovia

Our kids have taken several pictures from this spot, but none with as much elation as they did on this day.

Kamree and Adrielle have always been inseparable when they are together, and this time was no different.

The Alcazar of Segovia and my sister's head up close.

This surely looked better in person.

Paris and the Eiffel Tower

^This is the closest I'll ever get to a selfie or to the top of the Eiffel Tower!



We spent the first day around the Eiffel Tower, or at least most of it as you can see in the following photos.  

We seemingly had to have
pictures of the tower from
every angle and at every
time of day.

The surprises continued even after 
arriving in Paris. Mason has always wanted 
to ride in a hot air balloon and even though this was 
not an actual hot air balloon it was good enough.


It was a quick 11 minute ride which
was plenty long for most of us. 

The views were fantastic of the city and the Eiffel Tower.

Cool cars and Kool kids.  

Paris Catacombs

The Catacombs of Paris are underground ossuaries.  To enter the catacombs you must descend a narrow spiral stone stairwell down 19 meters into the darkness and yes we had to ascend 19 meters of stairs to exit.

After the stairs you must pass through a long (about 1.5 km) and twisting hallway, until you eventually make your way to the ossuary entry.  Somehow we missed the inscription at the entry that says, "Stop! This is the Empire of the Dead," in french.

This is said to be the "World's Largest Grave," holding the remains of about six million people.  The remains fill a renovated section of caverns and tunnels from historical stone mines.  

The halls and caverns of walls are stacked with carefully arranged bones.  Some of the arrangements are quite artistic, such as this heart-shaped outline formed with skulls embedded in surrounding tibias.

If you hadn't noticed there were no girls with us.  We couldn't agree on this or the Notre Dame and we did not have time for both since the catacombs always have at least an hour long line to enter. Therefore, we divided and conquered them both.  Brent, the boys and I went here while my sister's husband drove her and all the girls to the Notre Dame Cathedral.

Notre-Dame de Paris

Kaiya took this picture for us of the Notre Dame.  This 12th-13th century building is one of the largest and most well-known church buildings in the world.

Seine River Cruise

That evening we all met back up on the banks of the Seine River for a surprise nighttime river cruise.

We were the last to board and thus got last choice of the seats.  We were outside on the back side of the boat.  They were not as cold as the roof top seats, but cold enough. They look as if they were not enjoying this, but in reality they were quite exhausted by this point. 

This is the backside of the Notre Dame.  In the end, we all got to see the Cathedral de Notre Dame.

Disneyland

Our kids had never been to Disneyland even after all the years of begging.  We had promised that we would take them when Kamree was 5 and could ride most of the rides.  Those plans were put on hold when we moved here to Spain and she was still 4 years old.   Better late than never, right?  It was really cold, but no one seemed to complain.

It's been a long time since I have been to Disneyland CA, so I could not remember all of the rides.  My sister and her kids went a few years ago and were able to tell us which rides were the same and which were different, etc.  Most were basically the same.

My always well-prepared sister  brought us yummy jelly beans that we pulled out to entertain the kids while standing in line.  I think we also entertained everyone around us.  Kamree was so hungry at one point that I offered her the only thing I had, some of these left over jelly beans. (she had missed the initial round) She downed about 5 of them one at a time before realizing they didn't taste so good.  She thought the 5th one tasted like cheese and wanted to spit it out.  It was supposed to taste like a booger, but I didn't think that was necessary information.    

We did great at keeping track of everyone until the very end.  

Half of us got to try and enjoy the light show behind super tall people with kids on their shoulders while the others got locked outside the front gates unbeknownst to us.

It took us over an hour to round-up every last one of us.  It was a late night with early flights the next morning.  We flew home to Madrid for school and work while my sister and her family flew to Ireland for a few days.  

School Track Meet

The boys and Kaiya had a school track meet on the last day of my sister's visit.  Mason and Morgan wanted to participate and since it was just a few blocks from our house we all got to go and watch. We missed Mason's heat, but we found him here later, chilling with his friends.   

We got there in plenty of time to find (thanks to his standout hair) and watch Morgan run. Payden is on the right waiting to cheer on Morgan during his race.  

These two great shots of Morgan were taken by my brother-in-law.  I'm not sure where all the other kids were at this time but he did come in 6th place out of 150-200 boys his age.  

Our school did quite well, I think there were three other schools involved in this particular track meet.  Most of the track meets are on Sundays so this is the only one our kids have participated in so far.

The Week Before Halloween

The day before my sister left we found out that the neighborhood that does the annual trick or treating had scheduled it for the following night, a week before Halloween.  We scrambled to find decent costumes for everyone.   

The kids had a great time even though less than 20 houses were participating and it was a sea of people down every street.  Can you find Kaiya?  We did have to donate 60 pieces of candy per kid to participate.

We met up with 4 other American families from church.  Most of them made it into this picture.

Now off to plan another surprise...