Better late than never?

I have been called out for being a blog slacker (hi, Robyn).
I know, it's true. And I am without excuse.

Here are a few things we've been up to lately...

-- My baby girl had her 8th birthday! We celebrated with cake from a box mix, yet another visit to the amusement park, and with only half of her presents having actually arrived on time.
She declared it to be the "best birthday ever."

8-year-old are easy to please.

We are lucky to have a US mailing address at the embassy that allows us to order from Amazon in the US, since the prices are so much better than in Spain, but it comes with it's downsides as well. The delivery time is really unreliable, often arriving in a normal time-frame, but occasionally taking much longer.
Alex's birthday package with her gifts from Josh and I, as well as the items for goodie bags for her classmates, somehow ended up stuck in New Jersey for several weeks and didn't arrive here until last Wednesday (her birthday was on Sunday).

She wasn't too upset, as it kind of gave her a birthweek instead of a birthday. And the kids at her school seemed to enjoy the novelty of American junk versus Spanish junk.
We introduced them to the slap bracelet. I'm sure the teachers were thrilled.

I haven't uploaded the pictures from her birthday yet, so they'll have to wait a bit.



-- The kids have 4 weeks of school remaining, which makes for kind of a long school year when I remember that they started in Monterey on August 10th.
I guess technically they only have 3 weeks of classes though, because we are taking them out for a week in June while we make a run to the beach. Yippee :)
Josh has quite a bit of leave saved up (a product of many deployments and training courses--when you earn it but can't use it) and he is restricted from taking much time off once his course starts up at the end of August.
So since he has an opportunity to take some in June, we're going to take advantage of it.
We plan to head east to the Mediterranean coast and spend a couple nights in Valencia, and then a few more nights in a resort a little farther south. The resort has multiple pools and water slides, so the kids will be in heaven.

-- This weekend we discovered a new park in the city, guaranteed to be a summer favorite due to the fountains you can play in.
 

Forgive me, I hadn't showered.

 They had unique play structures spread along the park. We only saw a small portion, since the whole park is 7 km long, running alongside the river.

The fountains! We let the kids go European like all the other kiddos there in their undies/shorts. When in Rome...

They should have put the fountains a little closer to the hill of slides, since it would appear that you'll end up with third degree burns in the summer.

--Today on the way to church, Derek told Alex: Tienes mariquitas en tus orejas. You have ladybugs in your ears.
Which was true, she was wearing her ladybug earrings.
We still can't get enough of hearing him speak Spanish.

We were approved for funding from the government schools program for 6 hours a week of tutoring for the kids during the summer, so hopefully that will help them keep up their progress.
Maybe they'll let me sit in ;)


And lastly here are a few leftover pictures from the festivals a couple weeks ago...

These ginormous things dance their way down the streets.

We grabbed dinner after school in a bar while we waited for the parade to start.

Big Chulapos.

Hopefully it wont be so long before the next post!