Playing Catch Up

So it has been a while since I have posted so I thought I better do a quick recap. Life in general is good. Leo is doing great working at a bank as a manager despite the current financial crisis. He also keeping very busy as Bishop and of course as a dad and husband. I am still working in the morning at a lawyer´s office at a nearby Golf Resort. I also keep busy with my calling as the first counselor in the Relief Society.

Charlie finished his first year of school at the end of June and I can truly say that I am amazed at how much he has learned. He can write out his name all by himself and he can recongnize almost every letter and many numbers. He understands both Spanish and English perfectly but he is struggling a bit to speak in complete sentences in English. He has a large English vocabulary but conjugating verbs is hard. We have recently started to have some English classes in the afternoon so I hope that will help. Charlie is now signed up for swimming lessons which he enjoys a lot.

Clark is now seven months old. Unfortunately I cannot post a picture to mark his seventh month because about 3 weeks ago we lost the cord to charge the digital camara. So the picture of my two cowboys above will have to do even though the picture was taken on the 20th of June. I truly think there must be a troll that comes in to my house and hids things from me so that I go crazy. Clark is such a good baby although ever since he got sick a couple months ago, he doesn´t sleep as well at night. We are still waiting for the fist tooth to appear. He has started to eat vegetables and chicken this month. At first he wasn´t toO sure about the new flavors but now he eats the food right up. In fact, now he refuses to eat just plain baby cereal. Clark is oficially Spanish and American. On the 24th of June we applied for his Spanish passport and on the 30th of June we took the train at 5:30 in the morning to Madrid to apply for his US passport. We got to Madrid at 10:30am and our appointment at the Embassy was at 11:30am. After 2 hours and presenting many documents and filling out even more, we left the embassy. We didn´t get the passport right away but we have it now. To take advantage of the trip to Madrid, we walked to the Plaza de Colon to have lunch and then we rested from the heat in Parque Retiro. Then we had to rush to the Atocha train station to catch the 7:00pm train home. We didn´t get home until after midnight; exhausted but happy to have another American join the family.

Although it is summer, Leo and I are still not on vacation, but we will be soon. In fact, after debating whether to go to the States or not this year we have finally decided to go. We will be in Utah and hopefully Oregon in August. We are so excited. Charlie doesn´t stop talking about going to the States. When we told him that we were going he went to his bedroom to pack his suitcase right away.

As you can imagine things are hot here. Thank goodness that after living in this house for almost two years we finally got our ceiling fan installed in our bedroom this past month. It is very rare to find a home with central air here so we only have air conditiong in the living room. Now that it is summer most people go to the beach on the weekend. You would think that since we live only a few minutes from the Mediterranean Sea we would go to the beach more often, but in our family, it is actually a rare event. We are almost half way through July and we have only gone to the beach 3 times since Summer began. The person to blame is me. When people ask me why I don´t go to the beach more often I tell them two reasons: 1) too much sun and 2) too much sand.

My family and I are so fair skin that we don´t tan, we only burn, so I prefer to stay out of the sun as much as possible. In fact I wear a 50 spf sunscreen on a daily basis. (I am always telling my husband, "I might have very pale skin now but when I am older, I will look so youg and with out a single wrinkle"). OK, back to the beach story.

Although I am not a big fan of the beach, Charlie loves it, so recently we went to the most famous tourist beach around, La Manga del Mar Menor to visit some friends who were staying in a beach apartment. We had a fun filled day. (Check out the Smilebox photo album to see more pictures.) La Manga is the long skinny strip of land below. Just picture a strip of land with tall apartment building on each side. The water is very warm in fact right now the water in the salt water lake which is formed by the strip of land is so warm you have to get out of the water to cool down.
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Clark is 6 months old.

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BIG BROTHER

Charlie is an excellent big brother to Clark. He is always looking after Clark and protecting him. Whenever Charlie receives a treat he wants one for his brother "hermano" as well. He loves to play with Clark and make him laugh especially by jumping up and down. At first the transition to have a new baby in the house was hard for Charlie but you can really tell now how much he loves his little brother. In fact the other week I was asked to give a talk in a Stake Relief Society Activity about the pioneer women who crossed the Plains to the Salt Lake Valley. Leo and Charlie came along so that they could here me speak. For this talk I decided to share personal journal entries of some of these women. One of the entries I shared was from a woman who was staying in Winter Quarters with her five month old baby. For lack of food this women contracted scurvy. She was so ill that she stopped producing breast milk and could no longer feed her baby. They didn´t have fresh milk either so with 5 months the baby had to survive eating corn bread, but eventually the baby died. As I thought about this women´s struggle and in my own baby, of course I started to cry. (I wasn´t the only one. Later Leo told me that he cried a little as well. Upon seeing me cry as well as his Dad, Charlie was crying a little too). Charlie didn´t say anything to me about my talk but after we got home from the activity, Charlie asked me for a glass of water. He drank a little bit and then he looked at me and gave me the cup. He said he didn´t want any more and I asked him why. He looked at me and said, "Here, you drink it, so that you have milk for Clark" and then walked away as if it were nothing. But I knew it was a perfect example of....

True love of a BIG BROTHER!

Clark Five Months and Cute as Ever

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Spring Recap

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4 MONTHS AND COUNTING

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3 and 7/12

Charlie has always done very well in school. In fact at the beggining of the school year the teacher, Silvia, commented how well he participatesd in class which suprised us a bit considering how timid and shy he is usually with the people. However right after Christmas when he went back to school, something changed. One day the teacher asked me if Charlie was different at home because he had changed drastically at school. Before, he would tell everybody what he had done (including the time he fell done the stairs with Leo) now he just shrugged his shoulders and wouldn´t speak. Before he was very independent and now he would just sit in the corner and cry because he couldn´t zip up his jacket or find his gloves. We knew that the birth of Clark had affected Charlie but we didn´t realize just how much. We knew time was the best cure but we also decided to make an even greater effort to make Charlie feel special, including special play dates with mommy and daddy and prizes for being a good boy. We also decided it would be fun to celebrate Charlie´s birthday at school. Charlie´s real birthday is at the beggining of September but school here doesn´t start until the end of September so we didn´t have the opportunity to celebrate it before. Every time Charlie brought home a paper that said that he didn´t have to bring a snack because it was some child´s birthday he asked me when we would celebrate his. So in the end we organized it to celebrate Charlie´s at the end of March. At first I wanted to try to celebrate right at his half birthday mark but that didn´t work out so it was more like 3 and 7/12. We brought little sandwiches, juice boxes and homemade cupcakes to share with everyone. (There are no rules for only store bought items here) What made the day interesting is that normally there are 24 kids in the class but the night before and that morning it had rained a lot which I guess means a day off for a lot of people here becuase of the 24 kids only 14 showed up. I told the teacher that if kids didn´t show up if it were raining where I come from, then they would never go to school. In the end, we had fun and Charlie really enjoyed wearing the special crown, passing out the food and blowing out the candles even though he did have some difficulties.

As a special gift for the kids we made little necklaces and goody bags that Charlie got to pass out at the end of the day.
Charlie has made a lot of friends at school. He had talked to me about them so much that of the 14 kids there I knew everyones´name but two.

School update: Although Charlie speaks mostly Spanglish he is improving in both languages. He recognizes when he is speaking in English and when he is speaking in Spanish. He can also write his name with out any help and he recognizes many letters and numbers. As we walk around town he will tell us what the letters are on the signs and if it is in his name or not. In fact, at school they have taught him to spell his real name Charles so when he sees his name Charlie he says it missing the S and that he doesn´t have a I.