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.

Grananda's Alhambra

We toured this entire fortress and spent about six hours inside. It was amazing to be inside a real-life castle.




"Granada is an old, beautiful city featering the Alhambra, an extensive Moorish fortress and palace. La Alhambra perches on a hilltop and offers views of the city below and the mountains above."
If you'd like to read more about this, pick up the book, Tales of the Alhambra by Washington Irving. He lived in this fortress for a short time and his writings about it have made it a world famous "must see". During our tour we used an audio guide with exerpts from this book. It made it very interesting!

I even got my 1st kiss INSIDE a castle while we were there! Ahh, my very own prince charming... how romantic...

A trip to the mountains

This is from our trip to Granada. We wanted to play in the snow and this is the closest ski and snow resort, the Sierra Nevada's. (about 4 hours drive)

A busy, busy toothfairy

The toothfairy has been quite busy visiting our house lately. It's been here four times in the last month and once a few months ago. Teeth seem to be falling out like rain! Needless to say, Camryn and Ethan both have cute toothless smiles today. The toothfairy used to bring Susan B. Anthony and Sacagawea coins but now we've been finding Euro coins of all sizes and colors. Very Exciting times!

School news

I'm doing some unexpected things with my kids lately. I'm sending them to public school! (above is an arial view of the campus and a little of the base housing neighborhood) Well, let me explain. the on-base public school welcomes homeschoolers to register with them so the kids can be involved with the extra curricular classes offered and for any before or after school programs, assemblies, library usage, etc. It also give the school more funding each year, so we both benefit without extra obligations. So, I signed them up and have them involved with the weekly music, art, host nation and spanish language classes. Camryn and Sloan go on Thursdays and they love it but are addament that they don't want to go anymore than once a week. So home education is working very well for them. So far, it's been a very positive experience for all of us. Ethan is the one taking a totally new path. He's going to public school full time, every day. Travis and I struggle with trying to figure out his unique learning needs and have come to the decision that we need outside, "professional" help with him right now. I'd rather not turn to the school, but living in a foriegn country puts limitations on options that are available for us. They offer a one-on one,daily, reading recovery program that he got into that goes through the end of the school year. He loves it and his attitude towards learning and sitting down for school work has been very positive. So he's going to finish up the school year there and then I'll work with him during the summer before we decide what to do for next fall. He's reading and writing much better already. Something just clicks right with him in the public school setting and I'm thrilled to see the progress. I'm also having him tested for some develpmental issues that I wonder about but the school wants him to finish the reading program before they make any additional referrals. I really miss having him with me each day but I think this will prove to be best for him at this point.
There is a small homeschooling community of about 10 families on base. It's nice and we love getting together but it's very small and not as active as our other groups have been. However, the military community is unique from other bases we've lived on (or near). Besides the elective classes from the base school, we have a family support program that is a lot like a concierge service. They offer support in every area of family life including language translators, various classes, counseling, and weekly field trips. So by attending thier Spanish field trips once or twice a month and the monthly activities with homeschool friends it works out pretty well. We end up having a nice full schedule with lots of socialization, cultural experiences, and educational supplements.
The girls and I have a nice daily routine now too. With only one car, we spend more time than I'd like driving everyone around but this is basically how our days go. We take Travis to work in the early morning, then back home to get ready for the day. Then we take Ethan to his school, then back home for math, spelling, phonics, writing etc. After lunch we do history or science, reading and housework. By this time Ethan is ready to be picked up so we get him, play at a park for an hour or go to the library, then pick up Travis, stop by the Commisary if necessary and back home for dinner, homework, stories, baths, bed... All in a days work!

To market, to market to buy a fat pig

Home again, home again
jiggity, jig!
Shopping at the weekly outdoor markets! FRESH is what it's all about so it can get pretty gross and smelly but I guess it makes for good meals. Personally, I prefer simply buying the fresh veggies and green olives. I just can't see myself buying chicken so fresh that I have to take it home, chop the head off AND pluck the feathers! But I could do that every week if I wanted to!!

I'm online...at home now

Finally, we are hooked up with modern technology at home! It only took us four months due to a little procrastination and a lot of cultural infamiliarity! We were hooked up yesterday so last night I spent the evening purusing some of my favorite websites and blogs that I haven't keeped up with since our move. Amy and Katie, you both have wonderful blogs. It was so nice to get family updates and pictures. So, now I realize that this blog really needs photos. Now that I can do this at home, I'll start attaching pics with my posts. However, Travis is a little hesitant to move the internet on our main home computer until we get a handle on pop-ups and such. We don't want to be bombarded with trash emails and sites. I'll try to get a picture or two on here soon though.
It has been a very rainy and windy weekend. The wind storms around here are horrible! It blows for days at a time and they are so fierce that you have hold on to doors as you open them and watch out for palm fronds that get blown off the palm trees, etc. It's horrible to go out in and honestly, it affects my mood and makes me feel very grumpy. So, we stayed indoors and had a wonderful weekened at home with fires in the fireplace, a couple movies, a few board games, American Idol episodes, homemade chocolate chip cookies and several naps on the couch. The kids may have been a little bored at times but Travis and I have been loving it!

He's reading!

I am so happy to report that Ethan is now (dare I say) "a reader!" He has struggled for quite a while with the basic phonics needed for beginning reading. In the last couple of months, he has finally figured it out and our reading sessions are going sooo much better! Whew, this is a milestone we are happy to be crossing over. His goal since Jan 1st has been to read for 15 minutes each day. Sometimes, that 15 minutes actually takes 1/2 hour because I won't count the looking at picutres or wiggling around or other distractions. He has a timer that we use and while he's actually reading, the time ticks away. But lately, he's been reading past the required time! Oh, joy! I love hearing him read to me (finally).

A quick update

Homeschooling is taking some different turns for us right now. I miss SOCCO!! I'll have to write more about it on my blog "when I have more time." There isn't a big homeschool community on base but we get together once a month. My kids are the youngest in the group! There are a few other kids the same ages but Sloan is the youngest! Can you imagine having more highschool ages and no preschool kids in a HS group? So, I hesitate to say this but, SOCIALIZATION, seems to be an issue that we are creatively pursuing. My kids don't have much interaction with other kids and they are feeling a bit lonely. The Spanish neighborhood, where we live doesn't seem to have any kids! In fact we don't even see anyone around because every house has 6-9 foot high walls on all four sides of each property. It's different! Okay, my time is up and I have to go soon so, I'll stop here.

Christmas cheer

Celebrating Christmas in our Spanish casa. Feliz Navidad!

My delightful new Dyson!

Okay, my friend Rachel was right! How could I ever go back to my old ways, after using her Dyson vacuum cleaner?! So, now I'm a new, proud owner myself! Mine is grey and bright yellow. It looks like Ethan's favorite transformer, "BumbleBee" (from the recent "Transformers" movie). So, that's what we've nicknamed it. I realize it's a bit wierd to name a vacuum but hey, it makes it fun for the kids to use "the transformer." We don't have any carpet but we've purchased a few area rugs so we can vacuum those and the this thing vacuums up the dust balls on marble floors much better than a broom can do it. So, I'm very happy with my VERY expensive "toy."
Our household goods were FINALLY delivered last week. So now "the gang's all here." We're trying to find places for everything but it seems to be a long process. How exactly will we hang all of our pictures and artwork with concrete and tile walls throughout the house?
Our electricty is still tripping the breaker several times a day. I'm so tired of staggering our electrical usage. For instance, I can't use the washer and dryer at the same time. So it's one load at a time. And I certainly can't dry clothes and run the dishwasher at the same time. In the evening when our radiators are "heating" our house, the electricity trips off if we also bathe the children because of the electric water heaters all working at the same time. Anyway, it's frustrating. Today I recieved a call from the landlord that the electrician has tried to stop by three times when we weren't home. However, they won't set an appointment. I'm just expected to be home from the time the service request is put in until they decide to show up. It's a Spanish attitude that we are trying to used to. Very relaxed.
OH, gotta run... my kids are getting stir crazy and I'm still dependant on this cyber cafe for internet use! Internet hookup at home is another problem we are trying to figure out. ugh!

My unopened gift

I've debated about including this on my blog because it's so personal. But, I guess I feel okay about posting it now. Maybe it will share insight into the emotional difficulties of pregnancy loss. I wrote this in December and it proved to be a good theraputic outlet for me.

Like an unopened gift, resting beneath a tree of light
anticipation and excitement fill your thoughts
of what might be the most prized gift of all.
Oh, the desire to know more about what is waiting beneath the layers of disguise!
But for now, you have to wait
and trust that it will be in your hands and in your life soon enough.

Will it complicate you?
Will it keep you too busy?
Will it help slow life down?
Will it be big and strong or small and meek?
What about colors, textures, weaknessess, strengths, talents, personality...
You can never quite know what it is you will get in this gift
that you can neither see nor hold
until a much anticipated date.

Who can offer me this kind of gift?
I know it comes from the loving hands of all creation
the Alpha & Omega, the King of all kings, the Almighty God,
my Father in Heaven.
Am I worthy of a such a gift,
something made in the image of God?
If so, why would He hand me this gift of new life
with just enough time to embrace it in thought
but not in my arms, not into my life?

It's not nice! It's not fair!
What a cruel joke to play on me!
You can't just hand someone a gift
and then snatch it away
in an exchange of tears and heartache!
I wanted to keep this gift
to open it and treasure it
to nurture and care for it.

I've been given gifts like this one before
I'm surrounded by them everyday.
So why do I want more? Am I not grateful enough
of the gifts I already have in my life?
What's wrong with me?
Why am I no longer complete?

It's especially hard to encounter other people
that are holding their own precious gifts.
Some are unopened, others are newly unwrapped.
May God continue to bless them!
(But what about me? Why did mine get taken back?)

The tree of light is lovely
the garland and ribbons just right.
The gifts are overflowing
I just seem to stay focused on
what might have been...
what should have been...
mine...
to keep...