A few new moments with baby Jay

The past week has been hectic as we've been trying to finish unpacking and finding a place for everything we own (and didn't realize we owned it). Why is it that every time you move you find so many totally useless items? And yet they are still marked"storage" and stuffed in that already crammed closet because you never know when you might need a 100 foot telephone cord. The nice thing is that in this house we have an extra large - actually HUGE - basement to keep our useless things in. This makes unpacking much easier. Mike asks, "Where should I put this?" and Anna says, "Oh, stick it in the basement, we might need it later." After this is repeated several thousand times, vuala! We're done. Then, of course, we go out and buy more things. Why? Because as Mike puts it, "A house is simply a place to store your things in while you go out to buy more things." Truth be told though, we are extremely happy to have all our stuff here. Finally there is a nice, soft place to sit in the house... not that the wooden furniture with foam cushions wasn't nice. It did have that beautiful florescent blue color that we miss so much. We've also never been so grateful to have our own bed. There's nothing more comically frustrating than sleeping on a Spanish bed with American sheets. Most nights Mike ended up sleeping directly on the mattress - ewww! Baby Jay loves having his things here too. His swing is a life savor! Anna would get nothing done all day without it. All in all we're having a great time and we've even been able to watch Jack Bauer's seemingly superhuman ability to thwart the bad guys on 24 this past week. Have fun seeing the new pictures of baby Jay. He turns 4 months tomorrow! We love our little boy more each day.







Here's baby Jay with his new favorite stuffed animal.

Jay's attempt to pull off the mad scientist look.

Like the shirt says: Jay was the property of Alcatraz, but he was so cute we has rejected.

Tummy time again mom?

See Jay laugh!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5035502412833154793

Ronda

We had a wonderful Martin Luther King Jr. Day in Spain visiting the beautiful city of Ronda. It is spectacular! Ronda is one of the places to see for vacationing Europeans in the south of Spain. The city stands on a towering plateau in the mountains of Malaga Province, and is famous through Spain for the plunging river gorge which divides the medieval from the 18th century parts of the town. We definitely felt the effects of vertigo as we looked down the cliffs and out to the farmland about 1000 feet below. On the 18th century side of town we toured the beautiful, if not a little disturbing, bull ring. The ring is renowned as the most beautiful in Spain. It also happens to be the oldest and the largest. Bull fights still take place there today. We also had the opportunity to see the Moorish bathes while we were there. The bathes are located on the older side of town and were built in the 13th century! Apparently, the Moors who lived in Ronda at the time, used the bathe house not only for cleanliness but also for religious purposes. We were also surprised to learn that woman had the opportunity to use the bathes on certain days. It is pretty amazing to stand in a building built and used so many, many years ago. The bathe house is the very best preserved in all of Europe.

Besides all the site seeing, we ate at a wonderful Italian restaurant in town and also widow shopped in the town's large shopping district. We were tempted by many beautiful things, especially since the rebajas are on (huge sales after Three King's Day). Jay had a great time too - he even endured more rattling as we pushed his stroller down cobblestone streets. We can't wait for all y'all to come visit so you can see these beautiful things too!

P.S. Anna was rather amused by these statues... I guess the men didn't learn the most necessary phrase to know while visiting Spain - Donde esta el bano?

The Many Faces of Jay

Why does Christmas have to be over?

Dia de los reyes

On January 6th we had the opportunity to celebrate Dia de Los Reyes in Espana. Three Kings Day, as it is known in English, is much like our Christmas day. The Spaniards celebrate Christmas on December 25 as well, but they wait until the 12th day of Christmas, Dia de Los Reyes, to give out gifts. The tradition is that Jesus was born on the 25th and then 12 days later 3 kings came to give him gifts and so the Spanish give gifts this day as well. It really makes a lot of sense. The actual celebration of Christ's birth on the 25th isn't mixed up with commercialism. The commercialism is saved for later. A huge parade is held on the 5th for Three Kings Day. The parade held in Utrera, where we live, is one of the biggest and best around. Literally thousands of Euros are spent on candy and toys that are thrown out at the parade. We had a great time! Jay was mesmerized by the floats. We brought him down town in the front pack and once again all the Spaniards were amazed to see him in it. As we walked down the street we were hailed by shouts of, "Mira! Mira! Que guapo!" Mike had to protect Jay from the insane amounts of candy and toys being hurled out of the floats. The parades are not as safe here as they are in the States. Although there are barriers, no one actually abides them. People are jammed up against the floats and it's a wonder no one is run over! Since Spaniards don't use front or back carriers, the streets are made even more crowded by strollers. After the parade we had to go buy a traditional roscon de reyes. Everyone eats this postre on January 6th. We waited in line for about 1 hour just to get ours! Somewhere inside the roscon is a toy and whoever finds it in their serving has to buy the roscon the following year. Mike found it in ours - of course it wasn't too hard for him because Anna doesn't really like roscon and Mike ended up eating most of it. On the 6th we walked down through town and the streets were extremely sticky and covered with broken pieces of candy. We think this is because Spanish candy tastes a lot like cough drops :) No, the Spanish actually like the candy a lot! The kids had giant bags full of it by the end of the parade. There is just so much candy thrown out at the parade that much of it is stepped on and crushed. Later on Three Kings Day we went to a really good Spanish restaurant with John and Maria. The restaurant is called El Castillo and it is located inside of an ancient Moorish castle in town. It's pretty amazing to be surrounded by so much history! One last thing we are SUPER excited about is that our stuff is finally coming tomorrow!!!!!! YEAH!!! Por fin! Now we can settle in and make Spain really feel like home.

Feliz Ano Nuevo!

Happy New Year everyone! We hope you had a blast ringing in the new year in the states. We had a great time here in Spain. We had the opportunity to have a real, traditional Spanish New Year's Eve. Our friends, John and Maria, invited us over to their family's house for the celebration. We had the BEST food! hmmm... it seems like every time I get on this blog I'm talking about the food here :) Really though, this has been the best Spanish food by far! in the picture you can see John's mom, sister and brother-in-law (For clarification - John and Maria are in our branch. John is half Spanish, half American and Maria is full Spanish and from Sevilla). For dinner we had Spanish soup, bread, jamon, chirizo, cheese, a REALLY good turkey main dish, oysters, clams, and shrimp! Everyone was pleased that we liked the food so much - apparently many Americans are afraid to try Spanish mariscos (sea food) because it looks "weird." We were more than happy to eat it! Here's a picture of Anna de-heading her shrimp :) Nice work! Jay slept most of the night we were there, like the good little boy he is. He was only startled awake twice, surprisingly not by the crazy amount of fireworks outside but by the family dog. At midnight everyone participated in the traditional uvas eating. Every time the clock strikes you must eat a grape. All in all you have to eat 12 grapes in 12 seconds in order for your wish to come true for the new year. It's pretty hilarious to see everyone trying to get the grapes down in time! I guess we both will have a happy new year because we were able to eat all our grapes in time. Yeah! Of course, we can't tell you what we wished for - sorry!

Now we want to make sure we get some new pictures of baby Jay in here too. We know - it's more like "Mike and Anna's tribute to Jay" blog, but what can we say? He's so cute!