Pictures of Spain!

What a week! So much happened, and I have a lot of pictures!

We made new friends at church; a family invited us over for waffles at 6 pm last Sunday. They eat their waffles with chocolate syrup and whip cream! Only problem was we didn't leave there until 9 pm and still had not eaten dinner. The husband speaks perfect English (he has to for work) but he grew up in Mexico, went to BYU for school and met his wife there while she was just visiting her cousin in the states. She speaks pretty good English and is such a sweet lady. I think we'll be seeing more of them in the future.

The rest of the week was the normal busy things of life. Kids school, homework, swimming, Emma stayed home sick from school. Columbus Day Holiday both the kids and Jimmy had this day off. We literally did nothing but hang out at the house, this was day two for Emma being home sick. Clara had the busiest week of all of us. She learned to hold herself up on all fours (I catch her in a plank position often, I think it's hilarious), she has forward motion, it's not very coordinated. Place an object out in front of her and she'll get to it eventually. She also learned to sit up from lying down on her stomach to sitting up. She has only done this in the bath tub so far, the first night she did it 4 times in a row. Now you lay her down in the tub and she's up within a few seconds.

Friday we had to drive down to Huelva (the town where Jimmy works, an hour away) and get our residency card applications in. Our appointment was at 8:45 with the Spanish Police. We had to walk almost a mile from the closet parking we could find. We finally got there and they explained to us that their computer systems had gone down the day before and they weren't taking appointments for the day! Luckily the lady from the hired company that was with us was stubborn enough to stick it out. We only had to wait an hour, then the paper work took us another two hours to complete. All of us were finger printed (even little Clara, hers looked like a little snowman). To finish the day off we ate a fantastic lunch at Iguana Ranas an authentic Mexican Restaurant, I can at least get my Tex Mex fix every now and then. We also did some shopping; we got Landon a set of golf clubs for his after school golf classes, and some groceries.

Today we woke up and went and picked up my car from the mechanics again. (This time Chevy cleaned out the exhaust system and reset the whole system, let’s hope we don't have any more problems!) Then we had an impromptu rest of the day. We drove about 40 minutes north to a drive through African Safari zoo. This turned out to be a lot of fun. The drive north was beautiful! Much older olive farms up there then where we live. The zoo had emu's, bears, zebra's, llamas, ostriches, elands, oryx, hippos, elephants, chimpanzee's, and of course dinosaurs. It was funny they had this huge beautiful bridge and below it they had these statues of dinosaurs along with ostriches and buffalo walking with the dinosaurs. Emma enjoyed seeing the animals, she even petted a zebra, but she was definitely nervous as the animals approached the car. Landon couldn't stop laughing, he loved feeding all the animals, and trying to pet as many as he could. Clara only noticed a few (she did ride on my lap the whole drive through), her favorite part was looking in the side mirror at herself.

On the beautiful drive back we noticed some signs for Italica, our friends that we had waffles with last Sunday had told us that this was a town with old Roman Ruins. Jimmy and I looked at each other and said we're here let's go for it. So we took the exit and just followed the signs. It was very close to the freeway. This little town had preserved an ancient part of history. There is an old theater it is under construction to help restore it. We were able to look at it, but not go in it. Up the street a little ways was the main part of the ruins, Spain has done a fantastic job of preserving this part of history. You walk in past this little gate and the grounds are beautifully manicured. There is a building with some of the history and a little video that you can watch of what they believe the town to look like during the Roman Empire. When you are out on the grounds the main part of the ruins that you can see is the coliseum, here they had gladiators fight to the death. You're able to get inside the coliseum and walk through the tunnels under the seating areas where the gladiators would have walked. Markers showed which rooms were used for gladiators to get ready for battle in. You could see the floor open to the tunnels below in the middle of the arena. This area will forever remember when the Wilkins visited. Landon was looking over the edge (it had a small gate around it) and he was playing around a bit and his flip flop went over the edge down into the tunnel. A very disgruntled worker retrieved it for a little boy who was very upset that his "favorite flip flop" would be lost forever. The grounds wind their way around to an area where there are less evidence of the ruins where they believe a local Parthenon was placed. This area was a little less exciting for the kids to see much, so we didn't spend too much time there. The kids overall really enjoyed seeing the ruins, and Jimmy and I had a great time.

Here are some pictures marking this week’s events! Enjoy!

Clara discovering movement, she does a pretty cute booty shaking move as she's in motion. 

Emma caught her first lizard on her day home sick.

Clara discovering new moves at the dinner table.

This is how she eats most of her meals now, with one leg out on the tray to play with.

A scenic look at the city of Huelva.

Iguanas Ranas, ahh Tex Mex.

This church is on our drive to our mechanics. We've seen it way too many times already

We'll have to get over there and see it up close one of these days.

This little town is nestled into the hills of Spain.

This is a Western Village in the parking lot of the African Safari Reserve.

There was also go cart racing and paint ball.

This is what you can see from outside looking into the reserve.

Dinosaurs for all you Vernal people reading this!

A living dinosaur! An emu, what a strange looking creature up close.

Emma was a bit nervous with these, so was I, they kept eyeing Clara like she would be a tasty treat. 

The bears, you had to get out of the car and look over this ledge to see the bears.

love this photo I captured of these two bears.

Emma liked the zebras. She even got to pet a few of them!

Clara looking in the mirror while I take a picture with her and the elephants.

The chimpanzees were up moving around as we drove around.

When we got there and got out of the car this is what we discovered.

Lazy chimps.

Landon petting an oryx.

Hippo's, there are three a mom, dad and baby.

They were fun watching them come up and down for air.

Italica

This is a theater that is under construction to help save the structure.

 

Landon and Emma at the entrance of the gardens

I love how the coloring came out in this photo.

Emma loved these flowers. What a beautiful girl.

Clara at the entrance to the coliseum

Landon and Emma in a beautiful archway

The entrance to the coliseum

Landon staring down into the tunnels that run under the coliseum

(Notice how close to the edge he is, and where his feet are, and both shoes)



About two seconds after the picture above

This is where Landon's shoe ended up.

We told him it was a loss cause and his shoe was gone.

Poor kid got really upset about his "Favorite Flip-Flop"

we asked a worker and he went and got it, but wasn't too happy about it.

Thank you Sir!

This is looking down into the underground tunnels.

Also giving you an idea of how far down Landon's shoe went.

A look at the stadium seating

This is a look into the gladiator’s room, where they sat preparing for battle.

Dad and Lad walking through the tunnels.

Three cute kids sitting on the steps of ancient Roman Ruins.

This is what's left of the Parthenon area, along with some other small buildings.

There wasn't as much to look at here, but it was still pretty amazing.

 

Whew! I also got some new family photos today! We took them the day we left for Spain! Thanks to my good friend Katie, and mom and dad. We were able to get some great photos of the kids. The computer doesn't want to load them onto the blog right now, so stay tuned for those this week!

Hope this finds everyone happy and healthy! *Hugs* to all!