Soccer Street

I'm working on another blog that will be published on Wordpress and am saving most of the pictures we've taken for that blog.  In the meantime, I know there are a few of you back state side that are curious about what we are doing here. 

We live in an apartment on the 1st floor, really the 2nd, and even have an interior patio to play on in addition to the four bedrooms, kitchen, 2 bathrooms and living room.  If you add the long hall way, the kids have plenty of space to play... indoors.  We're used to having a large yard and a huge park 1/2 block away from our house and all the time in the world to be outdoors.  While the kids are adapting quite well to the new living arrangement, I feel like they are missing a dedicated green space close by.  There are several kiddie parks within a block or two, but the patches of grass are miniscule.  Barely large enough for a dog to take a break.  If we wanted to walk for ten minutes, there are several parks to choose from, but sometimes, you just gotta play.

We have adopted a nearby street, just a couple store fronts down the block from our piso, and now call it "soccer street."  It is a dead end street with a staircase up to our street Avenida de Andalucia at one end, and a not-very-busy street connecting on the other end.  On one side is a concrete walled church with high windows with bars on them and the other has cute little connected casas, again with windows covered with bars.  The bars are for security, we think, when everyone has their windows wide open in the oppressive hot summer heat.  The convenient part of the bars everywhere is the fact that it makes for a perfect soccer kicking zone.  Que patean la pelota! Bring on the kicks!  With their new red soccer ball sporting the Spanish flag, we've got some major jugadores.

Moved in

We arrived at our new home last Thursday afternoon after our friends Lola and Antonio picked us up in Sevilla.  They had to bring two cars to accomodate our luggage and the five of us.  In Spain it appears that SUVs and Minivans are most definitely NOT the norm. 

 

While the trip went quite smoothly, the boys were more interested in watching movies on the plane and playing with their new electronics, so they didn't get much sleeping done.  By the time we reached our apartment, all three kids were fast asleep in the back of the car.  Inside the apartment, all they could do was take off their shoes, grab a quick snack from their backpacks and plop into bed.  We didn't even worry about pajammas. 

 

While they slept, I went to the grocery store called Dia across the street and stocked up on a few things, knowing that the kids would be ravenous when they awoke.  Ron made beds and settled bags while I shopped.  Toast with salami and cheese with clementines was our meal prior to our three hour nap.  We woke up while the kids slumbered, settled in a bit more, checked emails, ate some more, then settled back in for the night.  At 2:00 a.m. the boys awoke, ready for the day and a meal.  With our limited groceries, I was able to whip up scrambled eggs and toast, yogurt and fruit.  Did you know they don't refrigerate eggs in Spain, and in many countries around the world?

 

Louise kept on sleeping until 4:00 a.m. when she woke to go to the bathroom and eat yogurt, then kept sleeping until she had been asleep for 20 hours.  I joined Ron back in bed until the morning and when we awoke, the boys were still reading and playing games.... eight hours later.  Jet lag does funny things to a body, especially these little ones' bodies. 

 

I took this photo today of everyone out on the balconies of our apartment.  From the photo on the previous post, you can see the place.  The window with Gus and Louise is one of the bedrooms.  Five of the windows belong to us.

Home away from Home

Our friends in Dos Hermanas, Spain have helped us find a new home for our stay.  In Spain, most homes in cities or towns are in buildings that are connected to one another, not free-standing houses as we know in the U.S.  In Spanish they are called un piso, or a floor.  Here's our piso, we think above the Dinamika Center  Four bedrooms, two bathrooms, living room and a kitchen.  What more could we need?  (Though it appears with this image to be on the corner, it is mid-block and not warped like this screen shot.)

The Countdown is On

The other day I went to wake this reluctant morning girl up and she asked about how many days of school we have left.  "Five until Christmas break, and five after break 'til we leave." 

Hurriedly she sat up, smiled, and said, "Fun!"

You see, we're on our way to Spain.  We're heading out in January for a five-month family adventure that I've dreamed about since we first got married.  Having spent two years living over seas in my younger days, I have an amazing desire to share this experience with my family.  We had talked about the hows, the whys, the details and logistics and figured it would happen some day.  Early last spring we decided that given the ages of our kids, the time was right.  Now.  We're headed on our family sabbatical to Dos Hermanas, a medium-sized town near Seville in southwest Spain.

I'm going to start a separate blog to document the trip and also share a few more details here before we depart.  Stay tuned.

Feeling Christmas

Christmas has arrived to our house this year in a simple, restrained kind of way.  Instead of hauling up all the boxes of decorations from the basement, we have only decorated a few, high impact areas.  Our normal ceiling-height tree became a five-footer.  While I love the usual decorations, I'm finding the simplicity quite nice.

The piano becomes our mantle, as we have no fireplace.  Every year Gus asks, "But how does Santa get into our house?"  Hmmm... the door?  The back door?  Molly the dog lets him in?  As a result, our next house WILL have a chimney. 

The pots this year are a hodge podge of purchased and found, clipped from the yard and imported from up north.  I was going for Scandinavian modern... a bit of Ikea in the candle holder and more sparse than usual.

We inherited six bags of almond bark from a friend who was moving.  Six bags?  Tough to use it all up.  Pretzel decoration with friends for afternoon group fun became presents for school friends.

Trick or Treat

And for the year 2012, we have a Washburn Hockey player (with monster pjs beneath for warmth), a Nordic Viking and a Mermaid, with glittery fake lashes and a lot of eye makeup.  Oh the fun!

Happiness Project: Reading over lunch

As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm well into the book The Happiness Project. 

I'm learning that I am quite similar to the author and find many of her comments sound like something I would say.  She mused in the chapter I read while eating my lunch today titled "Be Serious about Play" that when she was eleven, she would sit on the floor in her room, poring over magazines with her scissors and glue stick, cutting, clipping, copying inspiring tidbits and colating them all together in her little Blank Books.  I look back at my piles of these same kinds of books, giggling at the things I too, cut out and pasted diligently on the pages.  Super models, flowers, fortune cookie fortunes, recipes (what 11 year old cuts out recipes?), craft ideas, sketches for future logos, poems about journeys, the Eiffel tower and red headed children. 

The author then questions, why isn't she still doing these same activities for fun, as she once did?  She writes, "Too often, I'd give up fun in order to work.  I often felt so over whelmed by tasks that I'd think, "The most fun would be to cross some items off my to-do list,  I'd feel so much better if I could get something accomplished."" 

This is my daily struggle, now that I'm not working.  While the kids are at school and my husband is at work, my to-do list is pages-long and full of tasks to do to get our house ready, to prepare for the upcoming trip, to get caught up on all the tasks I've put off while I've been working.  Amidst this time, I love being able to check things off, to feel like I'm accomplishing things, but when do I start to find time for the Blank Books of my life now?

And you?  What are you doing for fun?  I'm going to go play outside with my kids on this lovely fall day.  And count this as day two blogging again.  I've missed being here.  Glad to be back.

p.s.  And my lunch? It is ratatouille I made recently for a dinner party.  I'm the only one in the house that likes all the deep, velvety flavors melting together, so I get all the leftovers.  Eating this alone reminds me of the semester I spent in Paris on a budget.  I would buy a can of ratatouille and a can of kidney beans, mix them together and serve on top of white rice.  Cheap, filling and yummy for a college kid on a budget in a city full of fancy delights.  I saved my money for desserts.  Always dessert.

A little trip

This little family of ours is about to embark upon a big journey.  The journey began this weekend as we made the cross country trek from Minneapolis to Chicago to take care of a few details before we depart. 

Within the coming weeks and months you'll begin to learn more as the details unfold of our adventure on the horizon.  Will you follow along with us?

In the meantime, I'm reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin for my book club.  The theme is so timely, given the place we are in our lives here.  The book brings up a lot of interesting points about living a purposefully happy lives, not taking happiness for granted, and ensuring that we are doing the most we can to make every day a happy, adventure and song filled day for ourselves, our families and the world around us.  Have you read it?

Birthday Girl Louise

Today my baby turns five. How is this possible? Wasn't it just last week that I packed my bag to take to the hospital?

Today Louise and I got to go out for a lunch date. She had already eaten at school by the time I was done teaching, so she was more than happy to order chocolate ice cream at Wise Acre Eatery while I lunched on a lovely salad with a poached egg on top.

We sat outside and enjoyed the sunny--and breezy day while she wrapped up in her nap blanket from school to keep warm.

Happy fifth birthday to my red-headed soon-to-be kindergartener who loves to sing, dance, color, dig for worms, eat fruit all day long and play preschool with her dolls and animals. I love you Weez!

Outdoor Adventures of the Best Kind

It has been an odd winter for Minnesota. Last year we got more than we could have hoped for, and this year, not nearly enough. This week we've had a few flurries and lovely 30-ish temperatures, so we have been trying to get out and enjoy it as much as possible before we're dancing in the tulips.
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Yesterday after it had snowed 3 inches, I picked the kids up from school and headed to a new (to them) snow hill on the Minnehaha Parkway. It is a tucked away little place in a neighborhood that you might miss if you weren't paying attention, and not well travelled. We were the only ones sledding on the tree-lined hill, but were later joined in the woods by a group of 10-year old boys with nerf guns. Ahh... to be a kid in the Minnesota winter!
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We sledded and threw sticks for the dog until she couldn't run anymore, then took off on a hike into the snowy woods, along the creek, until we found a magical little hollow. There were two giant oak trees that were lying on their sides, begging to be walked upon. Louise and I busied ourselves playing in the nearby kid-made stick forts while the boys made up stories about knights and tomptes that play there at night. The temperature must have spiked while we were there, as suddenly the snow flakes turned to rain.
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We left in our sleds, pulling the kids through the woods, drenched and happy.

Over the weekend we visited Centennial Lakes park and met some dear friends for a kid ice skating party. It was the first time that Louise actually liked going ice skating and was able to gain some confidence.

Apples Apples Everywhere

This fall may win awards in Minnesota for being our best, most beautiful, ever. It has been sunny, warm, cool, crisp, barely rainy and absolutely wonderful for colorful leaves and playing outside in the piles of them.

Two weeks ago we visited my mom's cousin's apple tree (same place we've picked in the past) and brought home FIVE large cardboard boxes of apples. They aren't beauties, but the flavor is good and with a bit of love, they make great apple sauce.

With an hour or so of chopping and chatting time with my mom plus a few hours afterschool, I've been able to make a pretty good dent in the supply. There are two boxes of apples left on the porch that need to be cut up and cooked, but we have 11 quart jars canned and 11 32 oz. yogurt containers put up in the freezer.

Yes, the freezer. I almost cried today when two of my quart jars cracked when I put them into the canner, letting all of the liquid gold run into the canner. What a waste! Looking at the gallons of sauce left to can, I pondered a few choices. Freeze the jars instead of boiling/canning them? No, that would require me to purchase more rings to seal them. Quart ziplock bags? No, that would require buying more stuff. What do we have on hand? 32 ounce yogurt containers... saved in bags in the garage because Minneapolis doesn't accept them for recycling and we take them elsewhere. I'm not positive on the longevity of preserving in yogurt tubs, but with a bit of foil and a rubber band over the top, they seem to be well sealed.

Working On: Plans for the Future

We've had our farm in the country for over four years now, but we don't feel any closer to moving there than we did when we first bought it. Thankfully we have wonderful people who rent from us and take great care of it, but it is difficult to spend much time there when we have little or no access to the house while it is occupied.

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Instead of visiting, we dream. One of my largest dreams for the farm is that someday we'll have an outdoor wood-fired bread and pizza oven, built near the barn and the outdoor piazza we hope to have. I've read many tales of the lovely breads that are baked in these outdoor beauties, heard stories of the pizza farms that have cropped up near the Twin Cities, watched YouTube tutorials and pored over the listings at the North House Folk School in northern Minnesota for the class I long to take to figure out how to build our own.

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This weekend there was an inspiring article in the Star Tribune about a minister who builit his own wood fired brick oven and decided that it was a great means of building community with his parishioners. Make sure to check out the photos... the one where they are pulling the hot bread out of the oven on a cold, winter day and the steam is rising... it is amazing.

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I noticed that the class at North House is full for the summer. Cheers to all the future back-yard pizza bakers. May our crust be crisp and our families' bellies be full!

I love... the winter

These past weeks have made this winter tolerable. I was getting really tired of the cold, cold and more cold. But these past few have been warm (for winter, that is) and snowy. For me at home with the kids, this is all I need. We've been playing out side every day, many times a day. These photos were taken from Louise's window this morning. We love the morning sun and frost.

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And the icicles... do your kids love them as much as mine? As we drive around in the van, we sing a little song "We are icicle seekers... and we seek icicles...."

I love... Pin cushions

A few weeks back, Freckled Nest's Leigh-Ann had a tutorial on making pin cushions. I've had my sights set on making pin cushions for the women in my craft group since before Christmas.

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They were supposed to be a part of our Christmas gift exchange with eachother. Out of the group, only one has come through with her gift. (It was impressive!) We're busy moms and well, these gifts probably are one of the lowest priorities on our lists. But, as a part of Leigh-Ann's tutorial and pin cushion love, she offered a pin cushion exchange. As with most things in my life, I need some sort of deadline. I joined in the exchange and have already put my pin cushion in the mail to my partner. While I was at it, I created these fun ones and a few more for my crafty girls. (Don't you just love Amy Butler fabrics?

And you? Have you been inspired to do anything crafty or creative lately?

I love... A Chance Meeting in the Blogosphere

A few months ago I was reading the comments on another blog and saw the name of a blogger I thought could be a potential neighbor. Her blog name was Minnesota:Madre. Hmmm... a Spanish speaker, Minnesota, and a fellow mother? My kind of woman! I went to her blog, left her a comment and soon heard back from her. We discovered that not only is she local and a mother of three, but she quickly informed me that we had previously met and she knows both of my siblings. What? Our friendship quickly developed and soon she introduced me to another local blogger and stay-at-home mom who also knows my siblings.
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Kerry, Sarah and I met a few weeks ago for a cup of late night coffee and some amazing conversation. Already it feels like I've known these two since I was five. Last week we planned a play date with the kids (we all have four year-old boys!) but one of Kerry's clan was sick. Instead, Sarah and I gathered with five out of our six kids. Such fun for all.

I love...

I'm a few days late coming into the game, but I'm joining some friends for a month of "things I love..." posts. You can check in here for a list of other bloggers working toward the same goal. It is meant to be an exercise in daily blogging (or occasional, in my case) and capturing the simple and wonderful aspects of our daily lives that we appreciate and love. Stay tuned.
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My first love for February? Working on projects with my kids. Our pretzel house didn't happen this year at Christmas, so we are calling it a Valentine's house this year. We're on our way. The roof, frosting snow and valentine candy decor happen this afternoon while Louise naps.

The Tooth Fairy

The tooth fairy came to our house this week for the second time. In the life of an almost-seven year old, this is big stuff. Huge, even. Carl's first tooth fairy visit was prompted by a visit to the dentist to remove an infected tooth that had been knocked a few years ago. He was fine with that and enjoyed having the tooth fairy come, but this time, the tooth fell out on its own natural time table. It had been wiggly for weeks but he finally gave it the necessary twist this week while playing in his kid-fitness class at the local YMCA. At bedtime, Carl remembered to get a glass of water and drop his tooth in the bottom.

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You see, there are several different kinds of tooth fairy experiences. Growing up, my mom always made a little pillow with a teeny pocket where you lovingly placed your tooth at bedtime. In the morning, there was a small coin stuffed in the teeny pocket. At our house, we drop the tooth in a glass of water and in the morning, the tooth is gone, but the water has turned a different color. Depending on the color fairy that visits, the fairy dust from their wings tints the color of the water. Last time, she was green. This time, purple.

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P.S. To answer some of your questions: The tooth fairy still leaves a financial gift, but I think most of the excitement comes from the water changing colors. The first tooth garnered a golden dollar coin and the subsequent teeth are fetching a whopping 25 cents. Hey, his allowance is 50 cents a week, so he thinks this is a great deal. Half of his allowance, for a tooth!
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I thought the idea of fairy had come from my sister, who is a first grade teacher, but she seemed surprised by the story when I mentioned it last week. So, I'm not sure where this fairy dust idea came from. I still love the pillow idea, but since we celebrated the fairies, tomptes and elves at Grandma camp this summer (see a July-ish posting!), we were hoping that the tooth fairy would do some magical things with her fairy dust.

Chocolate Love

My friend Kristine introduced me to an amazing new splurge: Chile Limon Chocolate Bars by B.T. McElrath, a local chocolatier. She found it at a fun little local store called Sugar Sugar, located on 38th and Grand in Minneapolis, an adorable all-candy store. Fancy and fun, it is full of delicious things to whet your whistle. I was primed when I walked in there yesterday with Gus, my resident candy-fiend, and I saw the tell-tale muted golds and reds from the box. Love, it is love. Go and find yourself a box, really you must. I'm normally just a dark chocolate kind of gal, but this one has a swirl of both milk and dark that you just can't beat. Run, don't walk, go find some. Even just one tiny rectangle will satisfy you, really.

At Home With My Girl

Louise has been under the weather lately. Two weeks ago it was viral pneumonia and today, we've diagnosed another ear infection. We suspected it might be coming, as the insides of her ears were a little red and cloudy when she visited the doctor two weeks ago. Sure enough, today she's a screaming mess of pain. Fortunately, we had a prescription ready to go, just in case. She hates taking medicine, so I have her convinced that it is "unicorn juice" that makes her tummy turn pink on the inside. Love the ammoxicillin! We pass the time by painting, mostly her body and the counters.

A Return to Beautiful

It snowed today. We haven't been outside to play in weeks, really. It has been cold, crunchy and yucky lately, so we've been avoiding the great outdoors and feeling sad about it. So when the skies opened up and let the white fluffy stuff fly, we were out the doors in less than a minute. I haven't ever seen the boys put on their snowpants so quickly! Unfortunately, there was a minor incident with a tunnel-digging shovel that accidentally bumped Mr. Gus in the face and drew blood.