Allie in the South of Spain

Although my parents have been over to see us a few times since the pandemic started, it has been almost three years since I have seen anyone else in my family. We were lucky enough to have gone to Michigan in the fall of 2019 during my maternity leave to attend my sister's wedding and then spend the holidays. We returned just in time for the world to shut down and haven't been back to visit since then. So when my oldest sister said she wanted to come visit during their spring break, I couldn't wait! My sister and her family arrived and we spent our first few days locally, seeing Seville and catching up. I sometimes forget with the hustle and bustle of everyday life just how beautiful Seville is and it is nice to be reminded of it when people come to visit and I'm able to play tourist for a while. First we headed to the Plaza de Esp a ña which is one of my favorite spots in the city. It was created as part of the Ibero-American Expo of 1929 and is a located right next to...

In the past month and a half we've advanced a lot in our renovation. The floors were installed in almost all of the rooms. The ceilings were all finished and our bathroom and kitchen are almost complete. You may remember that when we bought the house there were two small bathrooms which we decided to convert into one larger bathroom, using some of the space to expand the kitchen a bit. We opted for a shower stall instead of a bathtub and had our builders construct a narrow closet in the remaining space along the back wall. We had enough room for a double sink as well. I'm still happy with our tile choice (it's fake marble with brownish-gold veining rather than the typical grey. We've opted for black accents throughout (faucets/shower stall etc) and although things aren't finished yet, I like the way it's coming together. In the kitchen we decided on white cabinetry and will have a white countertop installed. Since the space is still pretty small and the floor is...

I'm back again to update on how our past school year went since it just ended last week. My last post was written just having started back and I was nervous. I'm here to report that things went much more smoothly than I thought they would. Carla was in daycare and LOVED it. She walked in happily every day and went with her teacher (who constantly had to wear a mask) without even waving goodbye. Laura and Vera were in their second year of preschool and have learned a lot. They are starting to read in Spanish and have started to learn chess. Jose was back at his school full time and I went back to teach part-time while finishing another Master degree in bilingual education. Here in Spain there were a lot of health restrictions at schools (and in life in general). Kids from primary up had to wear masks all day, there was social distancing in classrooms and windows and doors were open for ventilation. All that said, we were in-person schooling for the entire course and besides one ...

  After what turned out to be a strange spring, we followed it up with a summer that we struggled to make as normal as possible. Online school ended in June for both the girls and Jose and I think everyone involved was ready for a break. Our community pool thankfully opened after much debate between neighbors and we took full advantage as the heat started to bear down on us. Summer here in the south of Spain is awful and after having spent months inside all day we used the pool as a much needed break. We also decided to book a house in the mountains for a few weeks early on when we saw what travel restrictions were going to look like. Since we weren't sure what the beach scene would be (and because going to the beach with three small children is a daunting task), we decided to head to the nearby mountains to a place with a pool all for ourselves. We stayed in a tiny village with about six houses so social distancing was not a problem and our days looked pretty much like they do whe...

Week 2 of our quarantine has ended and we have another two (minimum) to go. In Spain the lock down has been extended until mid-April but few of us think it will be over by then. I follow the news enough to know that things don't look great and that there are still a lot of very sick people and over-worked hospital staff. I would prefer this to be a longer quarantine period rather than ending it too soon and having to do it all over again. We have continued with the same rhythm of life more or less as the first week, although the addition of the Disney plus app has certainly made things a bit easier. The girls have been enjoying watching a few movies and shows during down time each day and Jose and I have taken on the Marvel movies challenge. We are trying to watch all of the films in the MCU and have gotten through four of them so far. We are still doing a craft activity almost every day and trying to get everyone running around or dancing for about an hour. Jose and I...

We are officially getting into autumn and so I want to record what we did, where we went, who we saw and the important stuff from the past summer. You know, so I don´t forget because one of the things that I really love about blogging is being able to look back at posts and have my memory jogged. I feel poorly about basically skipping a year but will try to go back and write about specific things that we did, like Christmas and having my family here to visit. The past year was sort of typical of our life (daycare for the girls, work for Jose and I, being pregnant, our routine).  The past summer was a waiting game for Carla to arrive. Her original due date was July 7th and my mom wanted to be here to meet her and help out. So she bought a flight from the US to arrive on the 4th of July. My doctor had been telling us all along that she would probably be born early (around 38 weeks) due to the location of the placenta. I even took off work in May because I was supposed to be taking...