Moros y Cristianos

In the 8th to the 15th century there were many battles fought between the moors and Christians in the battle for Spain. Many cities and pueblos here in Spain celebrate the fact that the Christians kicked the Moors out of Spain. The most famous of these battles takes place in Alcoy which is a little over an hour drive from us.
This festival always takes place around the 22-24th of April. The moors overtook the city of Alcoy for a short time. Supposedly, with the help of Saint George (that's st. Jordi in spanish) who miraculously appeared, the Christians were able to defeat the Moors.
Every year there are parades, battle reenactments, and of course fireworks. We decided to see what it was all about. Thursday and Friday were the parades and this morning began the reenactment of the battle. We got there early as men were parading the streets with their muskets waking up the city. At 10 the ambassador for the moors arrived at the scene with the letter stating the intentions of overtaking the city. Of course the govenor of the city tears the letter and the man rides of crying war. Next come the leaders of the moors to discuss with the Christians to leave the city and of course they refuse. At 11 the Christians begin parading their army in the streets firing their muskets as they go. At this point we could no longer stand the deafening gunshot fire and quickly tried to find an exit plan to get out of the city before losing anymore hearing.
Apparently, after the Christians parade the city with their muskets it then becomes the moors turn to parade. Then we finally get to a battle sometime around mid-day and then everything has to be reversed culminating in a battle where the Christians come out victorious sometime tonight before midnight when the fireworks begin.
These people are crazy. I really don't know how their ears can handle it.

Belgium & Netherlands

A recap of our trip. Tuesday we headed to Brussels. We got in early evening and drove to our hotel. It took a while to find but we enjoyed driving around the city. We saw a beautiful park that made me want to go for a run. We walked to the big plaza and saw all of the buildings with their gold gilting.
The next morning we drove to Brugge. This was our favorite place. It was beautiful, quaint and peaceful. We took a canal cruise, rode bikes, bought belgium chocolate, of course. At night we took a horse and buggy ride. It was a peaceful, relaxing day.

The next morning we drove to Holland. We drove right to our hotel and were there in time to take a bus trip to the Keukenhof gardens which is only open 8 weeks out of the year for the tulips. It was a beautiful garden and the 2nd highlight after Brugge. We roamed around the gardens for a while before returning to Amsterdam. This night we went to the Ann Frank museum and had a nice dinner.

The next day we saw the sights of Amsterdam and took a canal cruise and rented bikes again. Neither of us were that crazy about Amsterdam. It was crowded, dirty, and construction was all around. We did enjoy the Rijksmuseum. This was one of our favorite art museums in Europe because they had a lot of descriptions next to the paintings in English and they also gave you a little bit of background on the history of Holland. We came back to our hotel early thinking we would relax and spent the evening on the internet once we found out about our flight being cancelled. It was a nice get away, but we are glad to be home again.

Home

With the volcanic eruption we were very fortunate to have a rental car in our possesion. On friday night we looked on the website for our airline and found out that we definetly were not flying out of Belgium. After a couple of hours trying to buy train tickets and determine what we were going to do on the internet we determined to get up and drive back to the rental car place in Belgium. When we got to Belgium we asked them if we could drop off the car in Paris thinking that we could catch a train home. Once in Paris we asked at the train station and we couldn't get out until Wednesday. We went back to the rental car place and told them we were driving to Spain. They finally gave us the ok so for an extra $1500 dollars we were on the road to Spain.
The French countryside is gorgeous. We took a small detour and saw a beautiful village with a chateau. It took us 23 hours of driving to make it home but we were one of the fortunate ones. There are so many people stranded.

Help! I'm stuck in Amsterdam

Due to volcanic eruptions in Iceland Brent and we may be stranded here in the Netherlands and Belgium. We are checking into taking the train or driving our rental car home.

Time away

So Brent and I are taking some time away for ourselves. We took a flight to Belgium today and we are spending the first night in Brussels. We chose a great time to leave we had a rainy day in Spain. We landed with sunny skies but it was a chilly 50 degrees. It's chilly for us we are used to Spain's upper 60's right now. We walked around the city center plaza which is gorgeous. Had a great belgium meal of sausage, mashed potatoes and gravy. We saw the famous statue of the little boy peeing. My kids should get a kick out of seeing that picture when we get home. In the morning we are heading to Brugges to spend the day and next night before going to Amsterdam to see tulips. You'll have to wait to see pics.

Future businessman

He has been saving money to buy a toy. This toy costs 19 euros. He has done many jobs around the house to earn this money. He had earned 19 and then one night he didn't want to do his jobs. I told him I would do his job for him if he would pay me a euro, thinking that he wouldn't take me up on it because he wanted to save his money. He jumped at the chance to get out of doing his jobs. 15 minutes later he realized his mistake and was a little sad.
Well today he couldn't find his money and he was trying to figure out what to do to get his 18 euros back. He decided to open a store and sell things to us. He asked us what he could sell around the house. Brent gave him some ideas of some happy meal toys and some gummy worms that we have. He then found some toothpicks that he wanted to sell to me. He had searched the house to find many items that he was determined to sell back to us to earn the money that was lost. We thought this was quite ingenious. Dayna came through and found his money in his drawer in his bedroom.

family

Brents brother Steve and his family came to visit us in Spain. We had a great time! We spent a day here in Valencia seeing the sights and enjoying some relaxing on the beach. The boys even braved the water.
The next day we woke up early and went to Barcelona. Some of us went by train and the rest followed in a car. We walked around the city seeing the major sites and finished off with dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe. (the kids favorite) The next day we rented bikes and rode around through the gothic quarter and along the beach. That evening we flew out to Paris and Steve and Lisa were to join us the next day.
Paris was cold and rainy. Our first day we went out to Versaille to see the palace. After touring the palace we wanted to see the grounds but it was so rainy and cold we all decided to skip it.
The next two days we spend wandering around Paris seeing all of the sights, eating fabulous food, and freezing ourselves. We woke up early one day to get to the Eiffel tower to try and beat the lines. We were so cold standing there we just about walked away. We were all glad that we didn't. It took us under an hour to wait in line and go up.
Steve and Lisa left Monday and we had an extra day. Wouldn't you know it, the day they left we had beautiful weather that was very pleasant for walking around in.