Day with Tito David and Tita Cindi

A few weeks ago we talked about Sasha coming to stay with us for a night, and the only time we could fit it in between work, camp and her school was the day after camp. For those of you that don´t know, Sasha is the daughter of one of Davids best friends, she´s five and too cute. She made herself right at home and we didn´t have even ONE problem.

The first night we got back to our place late, but she was so wired up that we played the Wii and watched a movie. Of course David "lost" at Wii so he had to do push-ups....Sasha helped.

The next day Sasha and I had a girls day. I painted her finger and toe nails, curled and braided her hair and we were off to shop!!

Her mom had never painted her nails before, so it was a new experience for her, she looked at me a little weird when I started painting but she thought they were pretty! Her parents were surprised to see her nails when I took her home, but they liked them...thank goodness! They didn´t get to see her hair because she took a bath before going home.

She´s only five, but already a great shopper!! She doesn´t just pick stuff she likes, she actually puts the shirts with the pants with the shoes and with the purse to see if it all looks good together! It was so much fun!

This is one of the little outfits we picked out. It was sooo funny...for those of you that know me, you know I LOVE black, but not so much for kids. Well, I don´t know what got into Sasha but she fell in love with this little black skirt made from faux leather! We left it at the first store and went to three other stores - I was hoping she would forget about it, but she didn´t. So here she is with her black "leather" skirt, grey sparkle shoes, purple and black shirt, black headband with a bow and a black leather bracelet with a bow....we forgot to take a picture with it, but she also picked out a little black purse with pink rhinestones! She wouldn´t hold still so I could get a really good picture, but I think she looks so cute!!

Besides shopping we also, played the Wii, made pizza, painted a jewelry box, bought some cars for her little brother, watched a movie, drew some pictures for mom and Tito David (who had to work) and sang primary songs on the way back home.

I love being Tia Cindi and had so much fun!!

Love you Sasha!!!

ps. needless to say that after camp and Sasha, today I´ve been doing a whole lot of NOTHING!! :)

Girls Camp 2010

Not much to say. I LOVE the girls in my stake and we have a great time together. I hope they learned something and had fun. Most importantly I hope they know they´re loved by Heavenly Father and that they can always count on Him.

Do as I´m doing...in between skits.

Last day...cindi has a tired face!!

Princesa, hija de un Rey

Thanks David for coming the last two days!! I know it´s not a great nights sleep but you help me keep going!!

3 Musketeers together again

Hans and family moved to Canada about 5 years ago and this is their first trip back to Spain.

David, Hans and Abi

They look like three old men chatting about life, which they did. But when they are together they also act a little bit like 16 year olds again too!

It´s interesting how you can really know who your best friends are by they way you act together. We hadn´t seen Hans and Yolanda for 5 years, but we all acted like it had just been 5 days.

Since David and I don´t have kids of our own, we borrow other peoples for the pictures!!

And all the kids got along great...like they had been friends forever too.

I, of course, grabbed baby Ruben as fast as I could. Sorry I don´t have a better picture of him, but I did get a great video of him in the pool I´ll post soon.

It was a delightful afternoon with great friends and fun kids.

A big THANKS to Hans´mother and sister for the wonderful food and letting us enjoy their home.

7 years...

Who knew 7 years could go by so fast?!?!

Love you honey!

Nice to know.

For those of you that don´t know, David and I have been trying to get pregnant for 5 years now...without any luck, obviously!! Here in Spain we have socialized medicine which in a lot of ways is really nice, all of my tests are free and I have a very nice doctor, but waiting lists are long. So about 2 years ago with my same doctor, but privately, we tried artificial insemination 3 times...also without any luck, obviously! Because of costs (and I just got sick of it all) I went back to my doctor to ask him to put us on the list for in vitro fertilization (the free kind) and then took a break from doctors and worrying about it.

In November of last year I got a letter notifying me that I would have my first appointment with a new fertility doctor in March of this year. It was a wait, but it was nice to know things were moving along. We went to my first appointment, which was basically a "get to know you" appointment and then made other appointments for tests etc. So, last week I went back to the doctor to get an ultrasound and results. What it comes down to is that unlike my sister-in-law and cousins that are totally "fertile Myrtles", I´m not! I won´t bore you with the gory details but I will say that it is nice to know there´s a "reason" why we haven´t gotten pregnant. Finally, the doctor told me that because of our situation we are able to be put on the "priority" list for in vitro which is nice....even though it´s still a waiting list of 6 to 12 months.

So, now you know....even if you didn´t want to!! But I have to say, for me, it really is nice to know!

*Side note for all my brothers (Nathan, Chris, Bobby and Jeff): If the in vitro works I do expect you all to come over to participate in the baby blessing. If you start now you´ve got a good year / year and a half to save your pennies!! Don´t say I didn´t warn you!!

Guest room...

When we moved in this is what the spare room looked like. And just so you know...the mattress is on top of a bunch of boxes!!

After about 8 months of ugly spare room, I decided it needed to be, at the very least, usable. So I pealed off the border, painted over the ugly redish and yellowish with paint we had here and went to Ikea for some basics. It was good enough to get by for a while, but I knew it wouldn´t last!

Finally, this past month I have been painting different rooms in the house and got obsessed with "home improvements" .... and my mom told me that if they came over to visit they would have to be able to walk on both sides of the bed (as you can see above the bed is up against the wall)... so I decided to change the room completely.

The only thing that really frustrates me is that because the room looks small and simple now, it looks like it was easy to do..... and it wasn´t!

Who knows if I´ll get sick of this "decor" too ( or if a kid will ever come?!), but at least I think that with each make-over the room has gotten better!!

So, now that my guest room is pretty and usable and there´s even space in the closet, all I need now is............... a guest or two!!!!

Snow in Terrassa too.

From outside my windows you can see that we got even more snow in Terrassa.

These were taken the day after.

Our side of the street gets lots of sun, but the other side is almost always shady and there was snow over there 3 days after it had snowed!

Snow in Barcelona!!

Barcelona hit with heaviest snowfall in 25 years

Schools were closed, roads were blocked and power was knocked as Barcelona was hit with its heaviest snowfall in 25 years.

Those were the headlines this week. On Monday we got snow.

Now, I know to most of you snow isn´t too news worthy since you live with it half the year...but here in Barcelona it´s pretty much a novelty. You should have seen the people taking pictures (ok, so I was one of those people). Roads were closed, buses and trains stopped working. Let´s just say, it´s a good thing it doesn´t snow often or we would be in big trouble!

Snow on the beach. Something I don´t think I´ve ever seen before.

The funniest thing to me were the umbrellas. I don´t think I´ve ever see people use umbrellas in the snow before either?! And the people that actually work in Barcelona (not the tons of tourists) were visibly annoyed by the snow, and of course all the problems and inconveniences it was causing.

I got to leave work early so David could pick me up because the trains weren´t working. We picked up Julia and sat in traffic for a while, until I thought of something better to do....we went to movie and had dinner and by the time we got back on the road everything was cleared up and we got home nice and quick!!

Andorra

The first weekend in January David surprised me with a little getaway to Andorra (look at the map below to see where it is). We went with a couple from our ward. It was just a two day trip, but we had a nice time. It was nice to be in the cold and see a bit of snow.
Of course these good little return missionaries found a half gallon bottle of beer on the sidewalk (almost completely full, it must not have been very good!!) and decided to take some funny pictures!

You may not believe this but Andorra is actually a little tiny country. And it may be stuck between France and Spain, but their official language is Catalan!!

12 dongs = 12 grapes

This is a Spanish tradition... Everybody gets 12 grapes and when the clock strikes 12 it "dongs" 12 times and in order to have a good year you have to eat a grape each time it dongs, without falling behind. I have to admit that I´m not a big fan of this tradition since the grapes here have seeds in them! But what I find HILARIOUS is that there are some people (like my mother and sister in laws) that have to actually PEEL the grapes before eating them!! I had NEVER heard of peeling grapes before I came here!

getting ready....

Everybody with grapes in hand....

HaPPy NeW YeAR!!!

We had some friends over for dinner to celebrate the New Year.

My wish for everyone is that 2010 is better than 2009!

The 26th is a holiday in Cataluña, so I thought I would give Julia a day off of cooking and cleaning and had everyone come over to our house. We ate lots, played games and as you can see everyone had an opinion on how to cut the ham!!

Christmas Day 2009

Christmas day we still had lots of food, but not so many people. So after eating it was nap time for these four while I "played with" Miriam´s hair.

This picture proves that Christmas is pretty boring when there aren´t any little kids around!!

Christmas Eve 2009

Lots of food and family on Christmas Eve at Julia´s house.

FHE fun!

At FHE we played "Cuantos Puntos" (how many points) and these were the players that ended up with points. If you look closely on their faces you´ll find the points!