Grammie's visit

Grammie came to Spain for a visit for a week and half earlier this month. Andrea was able to take a couple of afternoons off and while Grammie was here she was able to see...

El Escorial:

Alcalá de Henares:

Madrid:

Toledo:

Segovia:

Aranjuez:

and let's not leave out the prestigious pueblo of Camarma de Esteruelas! :

Everyone had a great time and the grandkids were especially sorry to see her go.

A loose tooth!

Well, tonight we discovered Corrie's first loose tooth. If you could have seen the pride and delight on her face and heard the giggle as she experienced the phenomenon! She has anticipated this event for some time, and now at six years, two months, and five days...a wiggler. Take a good look at this smile for it will soon be changing. For the grandmas, it is her lower left central, and actually her lower right central is moving slightly, too. Daddy was a little shocked at the turn of events, and realized that he simply wasn't prepared for holes in her smile and grown up teeth! But he'll probably have a couple of weeks to get used to the idea.

Roasting Marshmallows

Corrie and Ransom have been lamenting for months the fact that we do not have a firelplace - mainly because they want to roast marshmallows. Corrie decided to take matters into her own hands and made her own fire. Here's a picture of the kids roasting their marshmallows in the middle of the living room.

Little House on the Prairie

Lately, Corrie has been begging to watch Little House on the Prairie pretty much every day. She likes to turn off all the lights, make popcorn, and move the couch so that we can sit in the "Jackson Movie Theater." We bought Season 1 while we were in the States and we are half way through. Even Brian is starting to find a place in his heart for that buck-toothed girl.

Corrie Story #4

I was stopped from entering the kitchen one morning by a little girl anxiously explaining that she had learned her lesson and she would never do it again. My curiosity piqued, I inquired of the circumstances of the lesson learned while easing my way into the kitchen. Corrie went back to cleaning her mess and told of how she had decided to try peanut-buttering her toast BEFORE she put it in the toaster!

Easter

The week's rain paused for a beautiful, sunny Easter. We met a group from the school for a sunrise service (at 7 AM no less! You've got to love Spain.) and breakfast. The hill we were to scale being too muddy, we climbed the stairs to the dry and warm third floor of the school to watch the sunrise behind glass. We spent the hour singing resurrection hymns and with individuals sharing verses or praises. Our "shy" 6 year old stood up among the first of the volunteers and read a song she had written for Easter:
"Glory to the Lord
Glory to the Lord
Glory to the Lo-o-ord
You are the greatest
I love You
Thank You for Easter
Thank You that you were bo-orn
Thank You for everything
You are wonderful, Lord"
Later that afternoon, we had the Nichols (the family we "church" with) over to our house for an Italian Easter dinner. Corrie did an encore of her song for us, this time with the drum (it was written to be a drum song!) Here's a pic. We had a couple visiting the school with us as well. We hope you had a pleasant Easter, too. =)

Sevilla

Here are some of the sights from Sevilla.

The Torre de Oro:

The Plaza de Espana:

The Cathedral:

The Bullring (with a lovely head in front):

The Alcázar (with a not-so-lovely crowd in front):

and its gardens:

The Guadalquivir River:

La Giralda Tower:

And Sara picked up a hot date (below) using her come hither look (above) for flamenco night.

The Pepecar

For Andrea's Spring break, we decided to do a little traveling, since Sara was leaving for home half way through the break. That means Brian worked up the nerve to rent a car and attempt driving in Spain. Remember that all of his life-experience in driving a stick shift adds up to about 2 hours. So we rented the "Pepecar." If you rent a car from pepecar.com, it is a lot cheaper than other places because they put advertisements on the car. I think the average Spaniard would feel too silly to rent a Pepecar, but since we are already the weird Americans, we figured we would save the money. We hoped that at least everyone would understand Brian's bad driving maneuvers if they could see at a glance that we were tourists. Fortunatley our Pepecar didn't look like the Pepecar pictured above. Here's the one we got:

Nothing takes you out of your comort zone like renting a car (in broken Spanish) that you can barely drive, to go to a place you have never been, which is 6 hours away, with a car full (I cannot emphasis the word "full" enough) of innocent loved ones, with funky road signs, lots of pedestrians, and a Pepecar sign on your doors. But, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," and needless to say, we survived.

Ransom's Birthday

Ransom's 4th birthday was on March 28th. He requested a "bull" birthday, so that's what he got. Now that he is four, he has changed his favorite color to red, his favorite number to four, and has decided that on his next birthday he is going to be ten.

Corrie wore her hair in "horns" for the event.

Say "bull!"

Adventures in Ransom #4

One day we decided to get the kids (and the dog) out of the house. While at the park, Ransom had to go to the bathroom, but there wasn't one within 15 minutes walk. Brian tried to get him to hold it, but in no time Ransom had his pants down. What can you do? Brian got out the camera, Sara fell into laughter, and Snowball joined in the entertainment. Here's Snowball (minus the sweater) and Ransom (minus the propriety):

The dog.

One of the teachers had to go back to the States for about a month (or longer) and asked us to watch her dog. The kids are loving it. It came with a red sweater with a polar bear on it, and its name is Snowball. Just imagine the sight of 5 Americans walking a dog in a red sweater and shouting "Snowball!" through the streets of Camarma. Talk about learning humility.

I would post a picture of him, but it's a poodle, so I won't subject you to that cruelty.

The Driving Lesson

After about 10 years of never driving a stickshift (not that he ever did it well), Brian was able to get behind the wheel and practice with one of the ECA houseparents, Bruce Altemose. We didn't die and the car is in one piece still, so I guess it went well. Actually it went very well, and Brian felt very comfortable driving a stick. Now, it just remains to get comfortable with driving in Spain. Drivers here are maniacs, the signage is a bit crazy, and I've seen sidewalks in America that are wider than many of the streets here. Maybe if we get one of these babies, and just put the kids in the glove compartment...

A Night Out!

The weekend before last, we were invited to a young married couple's ministry at an international English-speaking church in Madrid. Utilizing our guest as a baysitter, Andrea and Brian had a night out! We got to meet several couples from all over the world and had a good time.

Corrie Story #3

Yesterday, while having dinner at a friend's house, Corrie announced to us all that when she grows up, she wants to be a missionary (this was the first we had heard of this). When the friend asked what country she wanted to go to, she told us...Mississippi!

Silly Corrie, that's not another country, that's another world!

Corrie's Birthday!

Corrie turned 6 on February 23. We all made a cake together. Corrie decided to make her own piñata (we have never seen one in Spain - it's a Mexico thing). She took a plastic bag and filled it with candy, got a rope from the garage, and went at it. It's sounds kind of pathetic, but she had fun and that's the important thing.

Easy come, easy go.

After all that sightseeing, the kids were about fed up with car seats, so the girls used our last day of having a car to visit a store that is of out of our way by bus and has a lot of American-type stuff you can't find in town. It is called Hipercor. We stocked up on about 35 Euros worth of peanut butter. Too bad that a week later all Peter Pan peanut butter has been recalled due to salmonella poisoning! (For details on the recall, click here.)

The Rastro

On Sunday morning we tried to go to an international church in Madrid, since we had the car, but got into town too late. We ended up going to the famous Rastro, which is like a flea market. Lots of people and lots of junk. We didn't remember to bring a picture, but here is a picture stolen from a stranger's blog.

Avila

The next day we went to Avila, which is to the northwest. It was a Sunday, so it was very quiet and peaceful. Avila is the highest city in Spain and had a really nice view. You can climb the old city walls and battlements. Here are a few pictures.

Holy Toledo Batman!

The next day we went to Toledo. It is the former capital of Spain and lies to the south. Very beautiful. Here are the highlights.

-We all tried mazapan for the first time. They are little chewy buns made out of ground up almonds. Hard to explain but pretty tasty.


-Sara got reprimanded inside the cathedral for taking pictures with a flash. At least, we think Sara got yelled at for taking pictures with a flash. Spanish is hard enough to understand without a loudspeaker and and echoing cathedral. Here's a contraband picture of the organ inside of the Cathedral in Toledo. It's much brighter than the ones you will find elsewhere, because few are brave enough to be as rebellious as my sister Sara when it comes to flash photography. (Don't try to sell it on the internet, it's copyrighted.)

-The kids got new apparel to keep them from becoming icicles. (OK, it was probably only like 50 degrees, but we are from California.
-Watched a parade which kicked off Carnaval. Carnaval is the week or so before Lent starts. Lent is the 40 days before Easter where you are supposed to give up a bad habit, addiction, influence, etc. and be somber and serious. So Carnaval is basically an excuse to do all the evil things you won't be able to do during Lent. We didn't get the best pictures because of the crowd. Here's the disco bus going by.


I think most of the men in the parade must be giving up cross-dressing for Lent. Not a very good picture, but that fairy had a beard under that mask.

Cuenca

Andrea had a 4 day weekend for President's day. With Sara here, we figured we had better get out and see the sights. So the 5 of us plus a friend from the school (Bobbi Fraley) rented a car and took some day trips around Spain. We made Bobbi drive since none of us is particularly good at driving a stick-shift. Our first outing was to Cuenca which means river basin in Spanish. It is about 2 hours to the east of us. (I'm sure I am supposed to know how many kilometers that is, but the whole mile-kilometer conversion still evades me). The city is built on cliffs overlooking the cuenca below. Here are some pics:

View from the city -

View from the other side of the city -

Corrie and Sara looking out over the cuenca...
...and seeing this -

Main plaza (pronounced platha in Spain) of Cuenca -

The front of Cuenca's cathedral (if you come to visit, be prepared to see lots of Cathedrals) -

Other than Ransom's car sickness and the fact that we never have the brains to plan for siesta (everything was closed and we were pretty hugry), it was a very nice trip.