Allie in the South of Spain

Only a few days ago, Jose, the girls and I arrived back in Spain after spending six weeks back in the States. I wrote about the first half of our adventures here and about our annual GAGME family trip here but I figured I needed to chronicle the rest of what we did before school starts again and I forget. At the beginning of August we went up north to celebrate our extended family´s annual reunion (PUFO) on Lake Huron. This year was an extra special weekend since almost all of my cousins were there, plus all of their kiddos. We had a lot of children under foot for a few days and the weather cooperated enough for us to spend time at the beach. My aunt and uncle had just recently finished a huge renovation on their cottage and it was beautiful. Jose, the twins and I stayed a few extra days up north and were visited by our friends Erica and Ernie who drove over from Mount Pleasant. We all stayed at my cousins´cottage for a couple of nights. Unfortunately we didn´t have th...

Daphne's face says it all My family and I just recently got back from our annual weekend trip and this year we went to Indianapolis. We have dubbed our gathering GAGME and this was our third time escaping with as many members of our group as we can wrangle together whilst wearing themed clothing. You can read about past GAGMEs here  (Washington D.C. in 2014) and here  (Grand Rapids 2016).  We arrived on Saturday around lunchtime to Indy where we stayed at an Airbnb house in an up and coming neighborhood close to the city center. Our first day we hung around the house, letting all the girlies run around like crazy before heading to a local playground and then a brewery for dinner. It was a long day if only for the four plus hours we spent driving, each car laden with kiddos. Day one's themed clothes RACING On Sunday we went downtown and most of us headed to the zoo while a few others decided to hit up a bar and wait for us. As part of the group that went t...

Summer officially began for us when Jose finished school at the end of June. We only had a few days to say goodbye to everyone in Spain and pack our bags before we headed by high speed train up to Madrid to catch our flight to Chicago. I was incredibly nervous for our nine hour trip but it ended up being ok. Thank you to everyone who made suggestions to us to ease our travel with the girls. They didn't cry at all and only Laura slept for a while so it was a lot of videos, walking the aisles and trying just about everything to keep them entertained. We don't do a lot of screen time normally so they were pretty excited about having unlimited access to videos and music during our flight. We bought baby-sized headphones that worked out really well and everyone who sat around us was really nice and patient. This is the second time we have flown IBERIA with our girls and I highly recommend them to other families. They were very accommodating not only of us but the seven ot...