This is My Forties

I just uploaded 3 new videos. One of Brennan chatting away in the playroom and 2 of Noah recounting his day at school. Enjoy ! :)

Though our upper 60's may pale in comparison to the random upper 70's and 80's heat wave you are having on the east coast, we've been quite pleased with it. The wind is still cold at times, but we're expecting it to heat up any day now! They say Spain is 6 months of winter and 6 months of hell (6 meses del invierno, 6 meses del infierno)... guess we're still in purgatory, awaiting a verdict ;) We've been getting out a whole lot more on the few random days it's warm and sunny. These days are getting closer together and warmer. I even busted out the baby pool and some sports equipment. We have a soccer field by our house so we brought the boys over so they could finally use the baseball bat rather than gazing at it longingly from a distance haha. You can tell by this dirty face they've been having a good time this week :) Brennan has a bit of a cold right now and it makes me feel guilty. He stopped nursing 5 days ago and now he's suddenly si...

We had a nice laid back Easter this year. They don't do Easter baskets here so the kids were out of luck. Noah was the only one who even remembered and asked where the baskets were. He soon forgot his disappointment when he saw that we still had Easter eggs! What a challenge!! We weren't able to get to a butcher, which are the only places white eggs are available, so we went on with brown eggs. Our choice of egg dye was plain old food coloring. They didn't turn out nearly as bold and beautiful as we may have wanted, but they were still pretty! Once Tristan and Brennan were napping we hid the eggs for Noah... and then for us... and then for Tristan... and then for us again. We had a good time. Big kids + Easter eggs = fun! Tom was cracking up because Noah was finding more eggs than him... although he did help hide them so that may have contributed. We even made Sergio and Laura find eggs when they arrived, after sundown. We were kind enough to provide...

I'd like to dedicate our anniversary celebration to Adriana and Tom for making our outing without the kids possible. Thanks, guys! We had such a great time!! We left the house at around 2pm and decided to take the scenic route to Avila, which added about 30 minutes to our trip, but was well worth it. We drove up towards the Guadarrama mountains and had a spectacular view of the Monasterio de San Lorenzo del Escorial, which we visited with Alex and Beth last month. Josh was kind enough to pull over a few spots and let me take pictures. Off again! Avila is only about an hour away from Madrid so it was perfect for a romantic day trip. The city itself is almost completely surrounded by a medieval wall, which is still in amazing condition. There were plenty of restaurants and cafes to choose from for coffee-drinking and eating, which is what Spaniards do best. The Spanish national past-time is eating and drinking for hours while talking and laughing... did I mention I love this ...