Allie in the South of Spain

So here is my 40 before 40 list and I am actually sort of surprised by how many things I have accomplished so far. I find these kinds of lists help me to motivate myself to actually get out there and get things done. Plus I like to see how my goals change and develop over time.  1. Buy a house (We are currently house hunting since it seems like we are quickly outgrowing our three bedroom apartment. I love my place now but would also really like to have some outdoor space for the girls. We aren´t in a rush but we have been out there visiting houses and have seen some we really liked. The area where we live is absolutely blowing up so we will probably stick pretty close to where we are now, just looking to get into to something bigger. Wish us luck because international house hunting isn´t what you see on TV). 2. Go back to school (This is also in my plans for next school year after Carla is a bit bigger). 3. Grow our family     Done and done! With our latest addition,...

Summer is coming to an end and I am not ready. I am never ready. It means going back to work and our usual routine. Although July was not great for us (Jose and I worked part time for the first three weeks, we painted our apartment the last week and had a lot of not super things happen/bad news throughout), August ended up being pretty wonderful. So all in all, it balanced out. This summer has not been as hot as summers past and yet it is the first time that we have taken FULL advantage of our pool. We have been swimming almost every day and it has been a life saver. If I had to pick a theme for  this season it would be bathing suits and Frozen since both have accompanied us throughout. I have that damn movie memorized by now and so does Vera. The girls probably watched it five times on our drive to and from France to visit Jose´s sister and family for the first two weeks of August.  We went to Paris for the first half of August and stayed part of the time with Miri...

A few years ago, before I turned 30, I created a list of thirty things that I wanted to do before my next big milestone birthday. I had a lot of fun creating the list, revisiting and revising it and of course, crossing things off. That list helped me focus my goals, what I wanted to do, see and accomplish over a few years. It was a good experience for me and I have been throwing around the idea of doing it again. I recently finally decided to try to do the same thing before I turn 40 which is still 8 years away but is looming out there in the future. At first I thought making a list of forty things I wanted to do, experience, try, accomplish, see, etc. would be easy. Turns out in some ways it was, I mean, I want to visit more than 40 different places. But my idea was to try to focus on more than just a travel bucket list. I wanted to include goals for different aspects of my life. It actually had taken since about the start of this year to come up with my first definitive list of wh...