It's Great to be Eight!

Now that my posts about my Spain trip is done, I have some catching up to do!  I know, I know.  I still haven't finished posting about our Great-American road trip (NYC! etc) but I thought it best to first fill in what has gone on between our Spain trip and right now, and get back to the road trip when I have more time after the holidays. Good? good.

Lets start with the most important thing that happened this fall.  Caleb turned eight!  In our church, eight is a banner year, because that is the year you get baptized and become an official member of the church.  

Eight is great!  So we did a little photo shoot on his birthday.  Here are some of my favorites.

Man I love this kid!!!

Caleb is awesome.  He is so creative and artistic, and when he gets it in his mind to create something, there is no stopping him.  He loves to stamp and make cards, and he loves to write and illustrate his own books.  He is constantly stapling papers together to make his books, and the main character of his books is "The Man", someone who is always getting into all sorts of trouble for being a bit too manly.  (Between you and me, I think the stories are autobiographical.  Caleb is The Man!)

Caleb works really hard at everything he does, and really gets into what ever is occupying him at the moment.  I love the insightful things he says at random moments, and his sense of humor.  I love this extra tall kid with his broad shoulders and small waist (built like a swimmer!), his floppy blond hair, huge brown eyes, and smattering of freckles on his nose.

He is so excited to turn eight and to get baptized.  He is super excited to be a cub scout too.  For year and years he has watched his brothers have so much fun and do so many cool adventures with scouts, and has begged to do it with them.  Now it is finally his turn and he is beyond excited.  Caleb will be a great scout!

For his birthday we took him out to dinner at Cheesecake Factory.  He insisted on wearing his new suit that his grandparents got him.  He picked out the huge bacon double cheeseburger!  No kid's menu this time.

We also had a little family party for Caleb and other October birthdays with swimming and food.  Caleb got to open a bunch of presents and blow out more candles.  Caleb was so cute.  I guess he thought his pile of presents wasn't quite big enough, so he found a bag and filled it with gifts for himself.  To: Caleb, From: Caleb!  And he was just as happy and surprised to open them as his other gifts.  See why I love that kid so much?

Eight is great!  Its so fun to have an 8 year old in the house!

Madrid: A Royal Reception and a FInal Farewell

Our very last event in Spain was a formal dinner.  After our Saturday afternoon siesta we got ourselves all gussied up for the big event.  I have to admit, I was a bit worried that I would not be able to fit into my dress after all the food they had stuffed us with this week!  I have never eaten so much in a week in my whole life!  I think I gained 10 pounds!  Luckily, I was able to get the dress on anyway.

We all boarded the charter buses and headed through the city and out of town for about 45 minutes until we got to a long stone wall out in the countryside.  Once we drove through the big gate we continued driving through the estate for at least another 10-15 minutes.  We saw numerous deer and big game on the property for hunting; a 7,500 acre royal game preserve, where the Spanish elite can come and hunt.

Finally the buses stopped and unloaded all the party goers here...

at the Castillo de Vinuelas.  This small castle with 4 towers and an intricate facade was built in the 17th or 18th century, and is fabulous, well, because it is pink.

Right across from it is a small church...

which is even more pink!

What a beautiful place!

A great place to pose for a few pictures.

My handsome prince.

The pre-dinner cocktails and fabulous appetizers (tapas) were served out on the lawn while a troupe of traditional Spanish musicians played for us.

I loved their colorful old world costumes.  They were really wonderful!

Music filled the air.

It was such a beautiful evening and a lovely setting overlooking the vast hunting grounds,

and a beautiful old castle loomed over us.

I love gargoyle spouts and the writing on the eves.

One more taste of the yummy jamon!

It was a great reception, and everyone was having a great time with the new friends we had made over the week talking about the wonderful adventures we have shared this week, and our families that we were missing at home.

I, however, we more interested in taking pictures.

When the sun got low on the horizon just before sunset, it set a bright orange glow on everything!  It was just beautiful!

Which meant I now had to take more pictures.

I love the details!

Time to head inside!

The castle itself was not that large, certainly not large enough to accommodate our whole group, but there was a modern addition built onto the back - a giant ball room that was all set up beautifully for our dinner.

Dinner, interestingly, was French, not Spanish with foie gras, crepes, and tenderloin, and a trio of yummy desserts.  Awards were given and recognitions made by the company, and I just enjoyed my dinner and thought of getting home.  Some people stayed late into the night for dancing and drinking, but we caught the first bus back to the hotel, because we were tired and still had to pack for our flight home in the morning.  Our fantasy evening at a castle, and indeed our fantasy week in Spain had come to an end at last!

We had to leave early Sunday morning to get to the airport, even though our flight wasn't scheduled to leave until later because there was supposed to be a bicycle race through the city, and the buses wanted to make sure they got out before all the traffic was held up.  Man, how I would have like to see a bit of that!  We ended up getting to the airport at about 9am, and unbelievably we did not take off until 5pm!  We spent an entire day at the Madrid airport!  And entire day!  Just think of what we could be doing with one more day in Spain.  Oh well.  Our flight was delayed, and delayed again, even though we could see it sitting right there at the gate for hours.  They we started boarding, finally.  But when I went through the gate they called me back and said my seat assignment had been changed because they had given my seat to someone else.  What?  That meant I would no longer be sitting next to Dennis on an 8 hour flight!  Why would they just give my seat to someone else when I had my ticket for weeks?
Then they announced that there was a problem with the plane and we hand to all get off and go to another gate where we waited for several more hours while they prepared a new plane and moved all our luggage and the food to it.  We finally boarded again, and this time, they told Dennis his seat was not changed, and they gave him MY old seat.  WHAT?  Why was my seat suddenly available again, and why did they give his seat away to someone else?  What the heck was going on?  Iberian Airlines was so messed up!  When I boarded I explained the problem to the flight attendant, who also couldn't understand what had happened, and I begged her to please let me sit next to my husband for the over-seas flight.  Apparently, some guy had talked them into giving him our window seat.  The flight attendant was great.  She just marched up to this guy and told him he had to move so this woman could sit with her husband.  He refused, and said that this was his seat.  She simply said, you can move to that seat over there, or you can get off the plane.  Period.  You go girl!  He moved and he was not happy, but I was thrilled to be back in my seat again.

When we finally arrived in New York, we had completely missed our connecting flight, of course, and so they put us up in a hotel near the airport.  By this time we were all tired and nearly giddy and got a big kick out of being all crammed into the shuttle bus for the airport.  At least we got stuck with some of the coolest, funnest people from the whole Mapfre group.  The bus was so loaded down that we could hear it crunch on the ground over every bump!  We were all laughing so hard that I had to snap a few pictures.

It would have been really fun to make the most of a bad situation and take a taxi into Manhattan and enjoy a night on the town, but we were all just too exhausted!  We had our complimentary dinner at the hotel and hit the sack before our 5am shuttle ride back to JFK.  We finally got home at about 2 pm on Monday, rather than late Sunday night.  I felt so bad that my mom had to teach seminary for me another day, but it was completely out of my control.

It was so good to be home again with my family.  I sure love them and missed them, but wow, what a great adventure we had in Spain!

The more I think back on that trip as I have done these posts, the more I am amazed by the place.  What wonderful memories!  Those Mapfre folks really went above and beyond to show is a great time and get us fat.  We were truly spoiled!  So grateful to my man Dennis for working so hard everyday to earn us this trip!  Hope there will be more like it down the road.  The more I think about Spain, though, the more I appreciate it.

Man, I love to travel!  Where to next?

Spain: Madrid - One More Day

By Saturday we had pretty much done and seen everything that we wanted to see in Madrid with one exception.  We had yet to visit the LDS Temple in Madrid.  Saturday was the one and only free day on the whole trip, so that is what we did with it - we went to the temple!

It took some work to find the temple, but after a long walk, and a few rides on the metro, we finally found it!  We left early, but by the time we got there it was much later.

The Madrid Temple is more contemporary and simple in style than other temples.  I thought it was strikingly beautiful, and the cypress and olive trees we so appropriate.

We had a wonderful experience in the temple.  This temple serves people not only from all of Spain, but from Portugal and parts of France and Italy as well, so everything is done in many languages which I found very interesting.  The session we happened to be in was full, and happened to be in Spanish so Dennis was able to understand, but I had to wear earphones.

I loved that they had all-white Spanish fans for the ladies who were a little warm.  They really do use those fans in Spain.  All the women carry them with them everywhere and flip them open when they get a little warm.  Why don't we do that here instead of finding the nearest piece of paper?

We were so glad that we used our only free day to visit the temple!  It was wonderful.

We took the subway back, but decided to get off a few stops from our hotel so that we could explore part of the city that we hadn't seen yet.

This is Retrio Park, Madrid's answer to Central Park in NYC.  It was huge and just beautiful!

There was a large lake in the middle surrounding a large monument.  People were everywhere, rowing boats on the lake and enjoying the beautiful fall day.

I could see why the park was such a popular place.  I thought these little ones walking their dogs were just too sweet.  There were street performers everywhere, like this "midget" with the large backpack.

A area of the park with more formal gardens was near the Prado.  So pretty.

Out a different fancy gate and back into the busy city near our hotel.

After stopping at our hotel to change our clothes, we decided we needed one last taste of Madrid - there was one thing I was dying to try ever since I had heard of it, but it could only be found in a little shop, which is kind of a trick to find, so we decided to go on the hunt.

But we got distracted once again by the bakery we always walk past near our hotel...

the one with the rotating window display.

This time we couldn't resist and had to indulge.  We shared a pestino which is Spanish for heavenly fried honey goodness!  Why didn't we stop in earlier in the week?

The statue of the bear and the strawberry tree is revered as the symbol for the city of Madrid, don't ask me why.

We kept looking for our destination.  I knew it was behind St Gines church, near a used book shop.  Ooo, I think we are getting closer!

In an alley tucked behind the book shop we found what we were looking for - the Chocolateria San Gines!  This is not your typical chocolate shop.  They only serve one thing here, something I was super excited about.  We placed our order...

and found a tiny cafe table in this pretty little alley and watched the world go by as we waited.

Here it comes!  Oh happy day!

Churros and chocolate!!! It is a Spanish speciality, and I had been wanting all week to try it here.  Spanish churros are smaller than Mexican churros with no cinnamon sugar on them.  But it is the chocolate that is so amazing here!  It is rich hot chocolate only a thick as pudding!  The churros are dipped in the the thick rich chocolate!  It is truly heaven!

I was so bummed that we discovered this place on the last day rather than the first day, because I would have totally come here every day if I could have!  It really was that heavenly!  We bought a bag of the chocolate mix to bring home for the boys.  It cost a ton, but the thought of saying goodbye and never having that chocolate again was too much for me.

A bit more exploring and a few more souvenirs to shop for.

We were told that this Kukuxumusu shop was the place to get fun t-shirts in Spain.  They had some cute cartoony shirts, though most of them were pretty crude, even x-rated - even some of the kid ones!  We found a few tame ones for the boys, though.

One final stop in the Plaza Mayor, just to say goodbye to the crazies.

Our last walk through the streets of Madrid and all of the silly street performers.  By far the most annoying of all were the babies!  Grown men dressed up like babies left alone in strollers.  They would cry like babies with the most annoying crying that you wanted to toss them a few coins just to shut them up, but you also didn't want to for fear you'd just be encouraging them.  I am NOT going to miss those babies!

Back at the hotel Dennis took a siesta while I pulled out my watercolors and painted the pretty rooftop, mosaic, and window of the building across the street, high above the busy streets of Madrid while listening to the glockenspiel bells playing.

What a great way to spend our last day in Spain!