La Vida de los Hubers: Spring and Summer 2015

Finally an end to the seemingly endless school year and the long awaited summer has begun. The longer the better for the kids even if they are bored much of the time.

Before the End

This was my 2nd grade field trip walk to the duck pond. Just before the end of the school year the kids had their class field trips. Mason and Kamree went on this "boring" annual duck pond walking field trip while Morgan lucked out and got to go rock climbing and caving.

Our field trip was cut short thanks to the rain. We took shelter under this bridge until the rain let up a bit. The kids weren't allowed near the water on the right or near the incline on the left. While keeping the kids corralled and eating our sandwiches for an hour or so, I was surprised that no one else seemed affected by the pee-you loo stench under this bridge. There are very few public restrooms in Spain and this park was no exception, so it is not uncommon to see kids and men doing their business just about anywhere.

Birthdays

For the boys' and Kamree's birthdays we took the kids to Pino a Pino which is a ropes course adventure park. This was much funner and simpler than a Spanish birthday party.

Morgan and his friend went on the advanced circuits, Kamree and Mason's friend on the simplest while Mason and I went on the intermediate. After one circuit, Mason decided I wasn't fun enough so we parted ways when he left me for his friend and I joined Morgan.

Morgan and his friend scurrying across this bridge.

Here is Kamree and then Morgan zip-lining.

After the ropes adventure we began our hike back to our cars and stopped briefly to enjoy this view.

I handed out crackers to curb the appetite they had built up, but they generously began to give them up to a poor lone duck.

Soon after the first couple of crackers were thrown, ducks came zooming from just about every corner of the pond.

We really were stunned by the beauty of this area, but eventually we had to head back to reality and on to McDonald's.

Madrid, Here We Come

We have been planning to move to Madrid for nearly a year now to go to a better school, to be closer to friends and to get back to our old ward.

(the Madrid church is just across from the kids) We are more than ready for the new adventure in Madrid but there is much that we will miss about San Agustin Del Guadalix and this decision has brought many final opportunities or "lasts" for us.


We will miss this extremely short walk to school, and work. This was the kids' *last* walk home from this school following the painted blue line. They were as happy as they look.

June 30th was my last day of school/work which was a week and a half after the kids' last day. The first day of work without the kids apparently was good enough to celebrate Spanish style with beer, wine, whiskey, tortilla, Spanish bread, croquetas, chips, empanadas, jamon iberico, shrimp etc. It is still too early to tell if I will miss working at the school.

This was the last day of Spanish class with our sweet teacher Carolina. She is older than she looks. Kamree especially loved her and Carolina adored Kamree. They will seriously miss each other.

This was my last Young Women's activity which was at the Hospital Niño Jesus in Madrid. For the entire month of June, the girls prepared a play to perform for the sick kids in the hospital along with the other wards in our stake. Disappointingly, no more than 10 sick kids showed up.

This was Kaiya's last performance with Musicalix beginning with a solo to "We Will Rock You". This was her third performance within a week, beginning with flute, then piano, and the final was this group concert.

This was Morgan's and Kamree's last acrobatic performance. They first performed a Mario Bros Dance followed by tumbling and ending with the silks. In this video- Kamree had just begun when the other acrobats were finishing up, she continues until they pluck her off. At the end of the video is the end of Morgan's silks performance with one of his new moves.

This was Morgan's last time hanging out with his British friend Lucas at his pool before Lucas left on "holiday" to his summer home in Tenerife.

This was our last day of church in Alcobendas doing the usual while we waiting for Brent to finish his clerky calling.

Our last 4th of July with a pool was celebrated with a swimming party and a 4th of July style barbeque.

Summer Camps

Our town hosts summer camps during the month of July. Kamree chose the rollerskating camp, Mason the basketball camp, and Morgan the multi-sport camp. Kaiya thought she was too old so she stayed home with me to do boring mom stuff instead.

The camps are 4 hours a day for 2 weeks. For the last hour or so each day the camp directors walk them across town to the municipal pool. The kids and I will sincerely miss these camps next summer.

In the evenings, to keep the kids additionally occupied I signed them up for swimming lessons. Here Mason and Kamree were finishing their class while Kaiya and Morgan were getting ready to begin.

As I went to pick up the kids from camp one day the mom of Kamree's best friend informed me that they were moving back to France and this was their last day at camp. Instead of giving the kids the bad news at the time we just told them to say goodbye for the weekend as we got some photos. The boy on the left is Chloe's little brother Remy who is so dang cute. It was such a sad day!

We swapped weekly after school play dates throughout the year.

Kamree, Chloe and Remy walking to Chloe's house after school. The picture on the right shows Kamree towering over Chloe which initiated Kamree's big sister attitude towards Chloe.

This was part of Kamree's performance the last day of skating camp without her friends Chloe and Remy. She is the one in the silver skirt.

Here is Mason surrounded by the big boys on his last day of Basketball camp.

Morgan enjoyed his camp so much that he asked to do it again with his friends the 2nd half of July along with Mason. This was on the last day of the 2nd camp. Spain has a tradition of partying on the last day of everything with a bag of chips to share. We went through several bags of chips after each needed a bag for the last day of school, last day of soccer, gymnastics, basketball etc. and the last day of each of the camps.