This and That

With this post I will be up to date-yay!  Tomorrow my Dad arrives from Utah!  My Mom’s passport didn’t arrive in time for her to make the already-purchased airline tickets.  So we are still hoping and praying that it arrives before her rescheduled flight.  We have been looking forward to my parents visit for a long time.  We have a lot of travel planned and we’ll have a lot more to post about, so I’ve been trying to get caught up.  This post will be a little of this and a little of that.  I will have to do another post when we get to the USA with videos.  The internet here is so slow and it takes forever to upload a video—and most times it won’t ever load completely.  But I wanted to show the day-to-day pictures we’ve taken too—to show what it’s like to live here in Spain.

We found this yummy spread in the store—it’s kind of like Nutella.  We’ve already gone through one and are on a second jar.  We may bring home another jar… :D

I don’t think I showed this before—it’s in our kitchen.  We don’t have a dishwasher, so we have to wash everything by hand.  They have this unique cupboard where the dishes can dry.  It is just open on the bottom so the water can drain out and into the sink.  

Kind of cool.

Glenn got some new trucks that he has loved to play with.  

He also loves to play with the many pillows we have.  Because the beds are so hard, we have requested more and more—so we have a lot.  He comes up with all kinds of ways to play with them.

Speaking of hard beds, I’ll show you what we’ve done to make our beds be a little more comfortable.  We bring all the couch cushions and put them on the bed.  Then we cover them with a blanket and the bottom sheet.  We also put a pillow or two at our feet.  We joke that other people make their bed in the morning--not us.  We make our bed at night.

Since we've done this, we sleep so much better!

Here are some pictures of sleepy and sleeping boys. 

And some pictures with friends.

 This boy playing with Glenn is Garrett Sonnefeld.  I was so surprised to see the Sonnefelds at church here in Madrid-but here they were!  My family knew the Sonnefelds back in North Dakota--and I used to babysit their kids.  Except Garrett--he wasn't born yet.  I love seeing people I know!  They have been so good to us.  They let us come weekly to do laundry at their house.  It's been a saving grace!  I don't know what we would've done without them being here!

 And these pictures aren't of friends, but it is for a friend.  Glenn showed us this picture he drew of his "best friend Reagan".  I thought we'd share it so he can see it and know that Glenn misses him so much!

A blog post wouldn’t be complete without pictures of food…

When Cheryl came, she brought us 4 boxes of Macaroni and Cheese.  We were so excited!  I looked at the calendar and saw that we had 4 weeks from the time Cheryl left until my parents were scheduled to arrive.  So we've enjoyed one box each week...and that too has been a saving grace!

 The other week there were some temporary booths set up down the street from us.  They were local vendors selling all kinds of things.  We bought some yummy cheese, a few handmade donuts, some nuts, and these yummy French tarts.  

 Oh, this was funny to us.  Kris and I have talked a lot about food here in Spain.  She told me that she would wash her eggs.  I laughed and asked her why.  She said that she has gotten eggs with feathers and dirt and all kinds of things still on the shells.  We had bought eggs a couple of times and hadn't noticed that at all.  But then we bought some and it had a feather stuck to it.  Makes us appreciate clean food in the USA.

 And Paul got another Spanish recipe from someone.  It's rice, tomato sauce and a fried egg on top.  When he told me, I didn't think they sounded like they went together.  But it is really good!  It's one that we will definitely make when we go home--it's simple and delicious!

And just a few other random pictures.

Being silly at home...

 That's a car with lots of bird poop on it...sorry about your horrible parking spot!

 Glenn loves to do this on the escalators.  We ride a lot of them when we go on the metro.  He tells us to ride like that too--with feet on different steps and our hand outstretched.  Not sure why, but there it is!