In a Week: Tuesday

Camryn's pool, school day with friends from her class.
Sloan and I spent some extra time at the library.
Ethan's end of school year class party.
He just lost another tooth about 20 minutes ago!

In a Week: Monday

Bedtime story telling with Dad.

In a Week: Sunday

In a Week: Saturday

In a week: Friday

Orangesicle cookies

This recipie is dedicated to my sister Tami. She loves to drink Tang so I bet she's going to love these cookies. Ethan made them from his new cookbook and we all thought they were pretty good. (I still prefer chocolate chip or oatmeal cookies but these were good for a little change)

1/2 cup Tang
3/4 cup white sugar

1 and 1/2 cups vanilla baking chips

1 and 3/4 cups flour

1/2 teas. baking soda

1/2 teas. baking powder

1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
1 egg

1 teas. vanilla extract

*preheat oven to 350 *combine all the ingredients *roll heaping Tablespoonfulls into balls *bake for 12-14 minutes, cool on wire rack

Peace abounds

Everything feels right today! The stars must be aligned just right for me. Peace is something that I think everyone seeks and desires and right now I feel peace in my life. It's such a wonderful feeling!

First of all, my man is back in town! Ahhhhh. We survived our three week separation. Having him back with me again is like putting on rose colored glasses. I suppose I won't be doing anything different with my schedule and priorities, but just knowing that he'll be here to support me and be with me makes my responsibilities seem much more doable and pleasant. And I loved waking up this morning and rolling over into his arms. This must be true love...

As if that's not good enough, this morning, we spent almost an hour gazing at the miracle of a new life. My baby is only 1 pound 3 oz right now but he is perfectly formed and very active! Five fingers on each hand, perfect little feet, little eyes, nose and mouth. Perfect spine, bones, kidneys, brain, and a healthy beating heart! What a true blessing to my heart and soul. It's so amazing. It was so peaceful to lay and watch the screen and see him squirm around at the same moments that I felt him move inside of me. Indescribable really.

What more does a girl need than a man who loves me, a healthy developing baby , and three little people to love and nurture. God is good to me today. Thank you Lord, for all of these blessings.

Carrier

The USS Nimitz is the set of a new t.v. reality series. Have you seen the show, "Carrier"? Well, I recently discovered the show and am very interested in watching it each week. Travis was assigned to the Nimitz for two years, 2000-2002. This was while we lived in Virginia. It was actually in the shipyard for a complete overhaul while he was stationed on it. I think he only went out to sea on the Nimitz two times for initial testing floats. Shortly after he was transferred off, it deployed for it's home port in San Diego, CA. He worked in the medical department as an Independent Corpsman. I think he pretty much hated this tour because the staff and the work conditions were both difficult. However, this is also where he discovered his desire to pursue his education toward FNP and be commissioned as an officer.

Anyway, I'm not convinced that this reality show portrays Navy life in a real positive light or not. The two episodes I've watched each focused on a specific theme that wasn't necessarily positive. One was mainly about the sexual frustrations of ship life the other one was about racism issues on board. But overall, it's very interesting to see what the enlisted life is like on a ship. If you're interested, check out the show next week.

grapevines

When we moved into our house, there was a stubby stick, stuck in the corner of our courtyard garden. We were told that grapevines grow up and around the entire courtyard wall each summer. For a science project, the kids and I documented it's growth throughout the month of April with weekly photos. Boy, has it grown fast!



It continues to rapidly grow since this last shot. The vines are now almost long enough to secure along the top wires around the courtyard walls. It looks like a big, uncontrolled bush at this point. I'll take another picture on the first of June to see the growth after a month from this last picture.

My American Sailor

I miss Travis. He's back in the States for the rest of the month for special training. I didn't want him to move me to Spain and then leave me "alone" in a foreign country but it seems that, that's whats happening right now! The idea of it and planning for it was actually harder on me than actually doing it right now. The children and I have a nice routine and a comfortable home so after the first couple of days of getting used to no husband/Daddy around, I think we're doing pretty good by ourselves. We've been able to talk a couple of times but the time difference makes it tricky to catch each other on the phone so daily emails have been wonderful to wake up to.

We had a date night a couple weeks ago for a big Navy Dining Out. We met at the restaurant, Bar Jamon, and enjoyed a four hour dinner and officer ceremony/program. It was really fun being together and very nice to celebrate being Americans. We were even able to bring out the American flag and sing "God bless America" during the dinner. I'm a proud Navy spouse! Travis has served over fifteen years in active duty service. He's my hero!

Embracing Spanish culture

Feria is the big Spring festival full of activities, dancing, eating, drinking, dressing up, horse shows, carnival rides and games and lots of fun. Each city hosts a week of Feria and then it moves to the next town. We've been three times in two different cities. We enjoyed delicious food each time. Our favorite meal was rotisserie chicken, salad, green olives, potatoes, bread. Otherwise expressed as a meal of pollo, ensalada, aucentunas, patatos fritos y pan. Either we are getting used to the food choices around here or we're getting better at reading menus. Probably a little of both.

Camryn was involved with Sevillana dance classes for several months. She really enjoyed it and did a wonderful job during the family performance. I'll include a short video clip of one of her dances.

Feria is also the official start of the Spanish Bullfighting season. The kids and I recently went on a field trip to tour the inside of the El Puerto bullring. From what we've learned, it's a very bloody performance so this will probably be the best exposure to bullfighting that my kids will have. Travis wants to attend a bullfight so we'll probably make a date out of it at some point while we live here.

Zahara de la Sierra

A small village of white houses and buildings is known as a pueblos blancos. There are many of these white villages throughout the area. This is one of the pueblos blancos we toured as we hiked up to the castle you can see at the top of the hill. The the olive tree groves and the lake views were awesome! Enjoy some Spanish countryside shots...




On the rooftop of the castle, we had some snacks and a family photo. We were the only ones in the castle at the time so we had fun picking our rooms and pretending we were the king, queen, prince and princesses of our own castle. Can you imagine?! Sloan was really impressed that real princesses used to live in it! We all enjoyed this day and I imagine we will come here again since it's less than an hour away.

Writing Class

Camryn has been focusing on her writing skills for the last couple months, with the help of the I.E.W. program. We decided to include a friend to join our writing lessons. Together, Camryn and Doris, have improved their skills and have become great friends. Here are a few of Camryn's paragraph assignments.

Shadows
Darkness was setting in. Lights hanging from poles turned on which stood by a tree that cast a strange shadow.

Wise Sayings
Once there was a young boy who found a pitcher full of nuts and he willingly reached in and grabbed a handful and tried to pull out his fist, but his fist was bulging so much that he could not get it out and he was unwilling to drop any of the nuts and he burst into tears. A nearby girl heard him and told him wisely, "if you will be satisfied with fewer nuts, than you would be able to get your hand free." Sometimes you must give up a little to get what you wish.

A Numerous Population
Dolphins migrate in the summer and the fall. During the fall they migrate south because they need to follow the food source. They consume fish, squid and cod. In the Spring, the dolphins mate and the babies are born a year later which means the females are pregnant for a year. Since they migrate to warmer waters, the babies are more comfortable. Dolphins continually migrate year round so they can mate, if they didn't then their numerous population would fail.

A Race to the Place
Books are exciting because you can have adventures when you read them. They are made with many words and printed on papers. The problem with loving to read is that when you reach the end of a wonderful book you will desperately want to read another one. Without extra books to read you will have to race to the library and get another one, which is not always convenient.

Bienvenido!

Welcome to my new blog site. Apparently my original blog wasn't posting the pictures for anyone but myself! Since I'd like to share them, I decided to move over here to blogger.com instead of continually trying to figure out the posting problems. I hope this will work, but maybe I'm just blogger challenged so please give me feedback if there are problems here (fingers crossed)! I love browsing blogs from homeschoolblogger and wish I was still over there. However, I'm not the only one from there that has moved beacause of technical issues. I just wish I could have brought the comments over from the original postings. Without further adieu...below is my cut and pasted and updated blog WITH pictures scattered throughout.

Baelo Claudia

I am constantly in awe of the historical, ancient land that we are living on. It's such an incredible feeling to realize we are walking on the same paths and touching the same rocks that the ancient civilizations worked with. A couple months ago, we ventured out to tour the ruins of this seaside Roman Empire. We walked among the Roman columns, temples, the theater and the fish salting factories. Can you believe where we are sitting!!
And here are my children playing in the Roman streets, building little rock formations!
Picking wild flowers and decorating Mommy was fun for them too.


After looking at this view all day, we had to walk along this beach and watch the fishermen. It was a perfect way to wrap up this sunny, windy day in Spain!

our hometown, Rota

Here's a few shots of us walking the downtown streets of Rota shortly after we moved here.