Marco & Bella just want to have fun

This month has been a little stressful for all of us. After the relaxation of the summer getting back to a routine has been hard. Although the kids love school and are very happy going there everyday, they are still a little anxious and sometimes need to let off a little steam. Today they decided they just wanted to have fun so we put some music on and they just started to dance.. It was so cute just watching them try to choreograph a little piece.. They were laughing so hard, we were all cracking up..

It made me realize now and then we as adults need to burn off some steam and have some fun. It could be watching a comedy, telling funny stories with friends, or just plain dancing and screaming like little kids, they know how to have fun.

I hope all of you take some time out of your lives to simply enjoy life and have some fun.. gather the family and just start laughing.

Hit the PLAY button above to see the video......

Eye Doctor appointment for next year

For those of you who don't know about the medical system here in Spain, here is a little rundown.. There are good things and bad things..

The good things: ITS FREE.. yes, 100% free.. all doctors visits (very short waits, most of the time) hospital stay, operations and medicine is about 90% off even very expensive cancer medicine.

The bad things for specialty medicine, you need a referral and if they feel that it is not urgent the wait could be long..(if they see its urgent the time of wait is almost immediate).

Overall, the medicine system works well here in Spain. You can opt to pay for private health insurance about a couple hundred euros a month for an entire family and pay a small co payment and percentage of hospital stay and medicine just like in the states.. Many people here have private insurance but use both systems depending on what answer they are looking for.. In the end if there is a real emergency the socialized hospitals are the ones with the most advanced technological equipment and experienced personnel.. put it this way if you were in a horrible accident and needed urgent care they would send you to a free hospital..

Having said all that, I went in today to my doctor because for sometime now I have been having a lot of eye infections and I haven't been able to wear my contacts for about a year now due to allergies and infections. My doctor gave me a prescription for antibiotic eye drops (as well as prescriptions for my allergy medicine, that way it costs me almost nothing) and gave me a referral to the eye doctor. When I went to the counter to make an appointment the lovely lady at the reception area told me.."ufff, there is a long wait" and I said "ok "she then said "how about January 30th , 2008 at about 10 am" and I said "ok" then she said "in the mean time you can leave your eyeballs here and pick them up then" at to which I said "ok" .... and so now I have the option of waiting until next year or paying 115 euros to go to the vissum center in Alicante Friday morning at 11 am. where they will look at my eyeballs right away.. not sure what to do...

photo google

Our storage room is under water

I was thinking about cleaning out our storage room and throwing out all the crap we have in there that we don't even know we have but keep because we are too lazy or just don't have time to go through or if we do we are too sad to give or throw away. Well.. sometimes like they say , be careful what you wish for, for it might come true..and so this weekend we had a one day of very hard rain called the "gota fria" This means The Cold Drop. It happens due to warm air still coming over from Africa hitting the cooler sea and causing rain clouds. These clouds cannot get over the mountain ranges so they drop their load. thus, The Cold Drop! explanation thanks to angier blog. And what this means is it rains what is supposed to rain in about a week in about an hour...so you could imagine the chaos it holds for us here in Alicante, a city not prepared for rain...

Anyway, this lovely rain, very much needed in our neck of the woods has caused flooding everywhere including our storage room.. Yes, the water crept in about half way in so our stuff lets just say is a little stuffy and humid smelling.. there was so much water in the hall way of the storage area and in our elevators.. yes water got in the elevators.. when you got in you could hear the water gushing about ...(they are not in use at the moment) a huge truck had to come and suck out about 7,000 liters of water from our garage, elevator and storage area.. hahah... yes very funny...

I had to take the day off tomorrow so we could go through all our crap and see what we could salvage.. I will let you know how much we were able to get rid off.. sometimes, things happen for a reason.. it was time to do some cleaning and the rain has helped a lot of us not only clean our stuff but refresh our spirits....

photo flckr

Marco getting lost

What a scare, last weekend Marco was invited to a birthday party at one of his school friends house and we gladly went. They live in an urbanization of chalets which all look alike, the urbanization is like a mini city. Having said that we were at the boys house when around 20 of the kids decided to go to the football court on the other end of the urbanization to play soccer. Marco went with them and I stayed back at the house with the parents. When it was time for the cake we called the kids and they all came running back except for Marco.. I figured he just stayed behind at the court so I went to get him but to my surprise the court was completely empty and Marco was no where to be found. I started yelling his name but nothing. My heart started pounding as I ran back to the house to find the birthday kid's parents to have them help me. They quickly gathered everybody and we all went in search of Marco. We were all screaming his name but nothing. I could see that the doors to the urbanization were open and only the worst thoughts entered my mind. Marco was gone...

My screams became louder and louder and my heart was pounding louder and louder..until I heard someone yell, he's heree, he's here..after a very long 20 minutes we found him. As soon as I saw him all I could do was hold him and try to hold back the tears in my eyes...It seems the kids had left him behind and he couldn't find his way back to the house. He decided to just sit in a bench and wait. I asked him why he didn't respond to our yelling and he said he thought it was the bad people going after him, then I asked him didn't you hear my voice and he said yes but that he didn't want to yell back because he didn't want to wake up the neighbors!!!

Anyway, he now knows he needs to answer everytime he hears me yell for him, he has momorized our address and our phone number and hopes this never happens again...

Forgetting Birthdays

I have to admit this year (and yes for a few years now) I have forgotten many of your birthdays and I don't do it on purpose but life gets in front of the way sometimes. With that said I would like to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the following people who have had or will have birthdays in September:

Margie- ok, I forgot to call her but she forgave me because after 27 years of calling her every year on her birthday one year of forgetfulness was forgiven.. Stay safe!!!!!!

Sheryl-yours is probably the easiest how I forget,, I'm sorry.. hope you had a great time.

Ana Marie- girl how old are you now!! I promise I will call you soon

Tom- I hope you have a happy birthday, haven't missed yours yet so I hope you read this

Marisela- I hope you are having a very good time... are you coming back??

Ok, there you have it, I will make sure to do the same next month.

Getting older sucks but like my 80 year old neighbor told me, it is better to have a birthday than to not have a birthday.. yea...makes sense...point taken...

I just realized I don't have a picture of any one you..expect for Margie so send me some....

The trouble with books

The tittle to this post is a little misleading, I love books, but when we talk about purchasing school books and all the confusion in that, its when there is trouble. Here in Spain although education is free you need to purchase books, although there is a new law that gives all first and second graders a check for the total amount of the books.

Anyway, like always I start to talk about nothing related to what I want to say. The thing is that we were given a huge list of books for a first grader, there is a math book, language book, English book, valenciano book (the offficial language of the Valencian community), art book, religion book, relacion del medio (no freaking clue what that is)..lets see am I forgetting something, probably.. but the list was not specific and I had to go to the store and fight with all the other moms to try to get the books before they were all gone. When I finally found them, (still missing 2 of them) I get to school, only to learn that they were that wrong ones and I was not the only one with this problem, it seems the list they gave us was not very explicit...so back to the store to fight some more and hunt down the right ones, exchange the others...

I just can't believe that something that seems so simple can cause so much stress, I'm still waiting for the other two books anxiously calling the bookstore daily to make sure Marco has them as soon as possible. And if that's not all, the books need to be covered with this clear plastic sticky thing and labeled.hahahahaa.. thank God Melisa our live in nanny took care of that part for me..or I would not be able to write this post because I would be stuck...

So, until next time...

picture google

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!!

I thought the day would never come, but it is here and both Marco and Isabella have survived their first day of school. They woke up very early both eager to get to school...Isabella wanted to dress up and had Melisa our live in nanny curl her hair and put lipgloss on, she wanted to look her best. Marco was not so concerned with his image he just wanted to see his friends and eat his sandwich.

Isabella started pre kinder and loved it! her teacher named Nuria like me said Isabella is a very decisive girl and has a very strong character, hahahahaaa.. and she was only in school a couple of hours..hahhahaaa.. poor thing (I mean the teacher).

Marco didn't say much like usual just that his teachers name in Maria Jose and that they painted and that he sat next to his best friend Alvaro and that he ate his sandwich. hahahaaa.. its the important things with Marco.

Well, lets see how this school year goes for them, Marco has a lot of work cut out for him, being in first grade he has a lot of books and will have a lot of homework. Isabella, I'm not so worried about yet...

The countdown to the first day of school

Well, it has been a long summer and the first day of school is almost here. For you guys in the U.S. kids have been in school for a couple of weeks now, but here in Spain everything just takes a little longer.

Marco will begin 1st grade, I can't believe it, he is very excited and wants a new spiderman backpack with wheels and wants me to buy his books right away. Isabella starts pre kinder and wants a Barbie backpack her teacher called me yesterday to introduce herself, her name is Nuria as well, so Isabella will have no problem remembering her name.

The preparation for back to school is a little stressful, buying them clothes, books,supplies, figuring out what type of after school activities they will do and so on. I'm pretty caught up and can't wait until Friday the first official day (I know Friday, helloo...they could have waited until Monday, but this is Spain where nothing works the way its supposed to but it works).

I will keep all o you updated with the school year and the kids progressions.

Welcome Arancha to the world of Blogging

Our good friends Arancha and Traci (Aracha is from Spain and Traci is an American from Ft.Lauderdale) have started a new blog (they say thanks to me) about their adventures. They have two beautiful sons Nicolas and Alec. I just want to welcome them and also welcome you to view their blog which in on my list of favorites.

view blog here nicoalec