New furniture

For the first time in nearly seven years of marriage, we finally purchased living room furniture. We're obviously not counting the trashy stuff we got second-hand (and no Corinne, Big Orange does not go in the trashy stuff category) or that $200 couch we bought in Provo that we only had for six months before moving to Washington, D.C. Anyway, Eryka loves it, and the kids think it's pretty good too. Me? Let's just say you'd have a hard time getting me out of that Chaise Lounge.

Happy Holidays

Our Holiday season has been full of Christmas Miracles. The first was ordering Internet service from a different company five days before Christmas and having it installed on Friday just before the Holiday. The next was getting our furniture delivered just two days after Christmas when we were told it wouldn't be ready until mid-January. OK, so maybe there were only two Christmas miracles, but the first was HUGE since we've been living without high speed for months. (BTW, don't believe Eryka's promise that she would post regularly once we had Internet. She hasn't even tried touching the blog in the week that we've had internet.)



It truly is a major convenience to have high speed Internet and cable television. We had forgotten how useful Playhouse Disney can be to keep Isaac entertained. Of course, Isaac doesn't need cable T.V. after Santa brought him his Power Ranger legos. Not only will he play with those things for hours, but he will play by himself, leaving us to enjoy a little quite time without catering to the demands of our ever-active three year old. (Not that we don't love taking care of him, just a break every now and then is really nice). And Stella will spend her time either sleeping or playing with her new grocery store toy. I'm telling you, Christmas is fantastic for getting your kids out of your hair for a few hours.



Did we mention that Isaac was a shephard in his school Christmas play? We found out the night before that we were supposed to provide him with a costume, so with a little American ingenuity, we cut three holes in a pillow case, slipped it over his head, and tied it with a rag. Even though we thought the costume turned out pretty well, apparently we missed the Spanish standard on what makes a shephard costume - I guess shephards wear lambswool vests, leggings, and caps. Who knew?



It was wonderful having my mom visit the past couple of weeks. We certainly wore her out leaving her to watch our kids several times while we played in Milan and Madrid (actually, most of it was Eryka leaving her with the kids so she could go to the dentist). The kids loved having grandma here and will miss her now that she is gone.



Work has been relatively laid back for me the past few weeks, but things started picking back up again this week, and the forecast looks to be a high chance of a heavy workload for the next several months. I'm actually looking forward to it, because much of the downtime recently has left me feeling lazy and unmotivated. It will be good to get back into the swing of things again, and it should be much easier on my family now that we're much more settled in with the normal conveniences of life we have come to expect.

As promised. . .

Milan pictures:

Fun times in Italy

A week after jetting our family to Germany for some Christmas fun in the Bavarian capital, Eryka and I took advantage of a visit from Grandma Gail to make a trip for just the two of us to Milan, Italy. We figured we couldn't pass up the chance since we found tickets for 30 euro roundtrip per person! Getting there was the cheap part, then the spending began.

Well, sort of. We didn't do any high fashion spending, which Milan is famous for, of course. But we did do some fine dining. We ate very well during our two days in Milan: pizza, calzone, pumpkin ravioli, panzerotti, polenta with wild mushrooms and truffles, pizza, roasted lamp, beef cutlets with artichoke, panini, pizza, italian meatballs, chocolate pear cake, more pizza. OK, I'm kidding about the pizza, but we did have one or two pizzas. Everything was very delicious. It made us wonder why we're living in Spain and not in Italy. Maybe because my firm doesn't have an office there. Oh, and I don't speak Italian.

In addition to all the wonderful food, we were able to go to church in Milan. We were lucky we accidentally took the long way there because we got to pass through a great flea market set up along a canal. It was perfect. Church was great, the missionaries even had the little radio receivers for us to get translation into english, though the little box kept cutting out so I couldn't really understand much even with the translation. However, Italian is similar to Spanish and Portuguese, so it wasn't too bad. I thought the ward was quite strong, though it appeared that, much like our ward here in Spain, much of the membership was made up of South American immigrants.

We loved our visit to the Last Supper. It is truly an astonishing work of art, and I don't think I could sufficiently describe it here, so I won't try. We also paid a visit to the Duomo, the world's largest gothic cathedral. This building is truly amazing. We went up to the roof Monday morning and were able to get even closer to the detail. All the carvings are so intricate and the spires appear so delicate, it's amazing to think how it was completed hundreds of years ago. Well, they did take their time getting it finished. I think it was worth the effort.

We also saw some great works of art at the Pinocoteca Brera, we paid a visit to a big castle in downtown Milan (I'm not sure exactly of the name, it was just called "Castello").

We passed through the Gallerie, one of the world's first "shopping malls", and we walked down the streets where the high fashion shops are located, feeling entirely too uncomfortable to even consider stepping inside any of the stores.

Sorry we don't have any pictures to share. We're still (yes, still) waiting on internet installation at home. We'll post some of the great pictures of our Italy visit once we have high speed at home.

Merry Christmas from Germany

We are on our first “real” family vacation!! I say “real” because until now we have only been to see family during time off. Not that we don’t love to visit family but it’s been a blast to spend time together in Germany.

We flew into Munich Wednesday night. Munich’s airport was so efficient. We stepped off the plane and down the stairs and our luggage was already out. It was amazing. Then we went out to get a taxi and the Mercedes Taxi had built in car seats! Wow! I was so impressed.

So after safely arriving at our festively decorated hotel (It’s so cute, the perfect mix of crafty Christmas and German ), we ventured to the local convenience store for milk and a late night treat. The convenience store was a treat itself being right next to us and open and packed with everything you need. ( It was just like a 7-11 but clean) I just reread this and thought it was kind of funny – I have to explain a couple of things, first, in Spain nothing is convenient, everything has weird hours and its hard to find anything that’s easy to take with you, they want you to eat it there. So I’m so grateful for simple things like convenient stores and to go food or any kind of fast food!!

The next morning we got up early and ate the yummy German breakfast provided by our hotel. Then off to the train station to get down town and see the Christmas Markets. At the train station we realized that maybe it would have been a good idea to buy a guide book or a German dictionary before our trip since we don’t know a word of German, but oh well.

The Christmas Markets are amazing. This was the whole reason we chose Germany. I went to a travel agency to book a Disney Paris vacation and they told me about Germany. I love Christmas so hearing that the country sets up special markets in all the towns was enough to convince me to go. I love Germany.

The markets are really cute and fun and sell everything ornaments, bratwurst, chocolate, spinning candle things, everything Christmassy. Besides shopping we decided to visit a few other places. We went to a toy museum, did a bus tour of the city, and visited Schloss Nymphenburg, The Residenz, Olympiagelande and Marienplatz.

Today we went to The Duetsches Musuem. It was a lot of fun. Like our guide book says it’s a good mix of Disneyland and a Smithsonian. It was huge so we chose a few areas to explore. Mainly we spent a lot of time in the kids museum (a really cool interactive floor for kids and parents) and the Air and Space floor with all the airplanes and helicopters. It was a big hit with the kids.

We’ve had some much fun and I have internet! (I promise to write on the blog at least once a week as soon as I get internet – this could be a while. Sorry) I hope everyone is doing great!! By the way, I need your address if you are reading this and want a Christmas card. Merry Christmas!! We love you…