Finally, we are in our “permanent” home.

We have now lived in 3 different places, and they all have had their pros and cons. This place is mostly pros. I’d say the main con is that it is on the edge of town, so we are a little further from most things. That extra distance has to be taken in context however. We are about 3 minutes by bike and 6 minutes walking further out. The other con is we miss the view from our last place. This place also has views, and they aren’t bad.

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The main advantage of this place is the space. The boys have their own rooms.

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The kitchen is really big by Spanish standards.

And we have an oven!

The boys had a big list of things they wanted to be cooked in the oven.

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We also have a small yard. I didn’t realize how much I missed gardening. Our second day here I excitedly pulled a few weeds and pruned the rose bushes.

It makes a great place for the kids to play.

We also have a garage, which is fantastic for our bikes, beach toys and suitcases (we happily emptied them all).

Most exciting, we have a guest room! This room has the best views in the house, a double bed and a twin bed with a trundle underneath! Additionally, there is a trundle mattress under Oliver’s bed and Leo’s room had another bed that we moved to the garage that can easily be put back in. Oliver is eager for visitors! So, don’t be shy! We are ready for you!

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And the beach is still just steps away.

Another bonus is the gigantic solar hot water heater

Where we live now is a two block section of townhouses. Because of this, there isn’t the same population density, so the garbage and recycling bins aren’t as close. Now we have to go two blocks to get to the closest ones. So generally, we go on our way to somewhere else.

Knowing that we will be in this home for 8 months really makes me change my thinking. Immediately upon moving in, we started nesting. We moved furniture, a lot of furniture, to make it work for us. We also put away a lot of the decorations (I call them fru-frus), reorganized the kitchen cupboards, and decided to buy a few of things (whisk, dish drying rack, griddle, measuring cups, a few potted herbs and some marigolds).

We also took down some paintings. This house is a family’s summer home, so there are a lot of gigantic family portraits. We found them a little too intense for us to have looking at us.

Especially this one in our bedroom.

Surprisingly, the boys think the house is too big, even though it is about the same size as our house at home. They got used to our very small apartment and we really grew to love the place. I’m sure this will quickly feel like home.

Halloween is not typically a Spanish holiday, but as Leo’s teacher says, Spaniards love a party, so they celebrate it here. The focus is on horror and the scary.

Our first goal was to figure out costumes. This turned out to be a bit of a challenge. Costume selection is not what it is in the States. We spent several days trying to track down where costumes were sold. We tried toy stores, where we found a few packaged costumes and masks. We tried the Bazars in town (like a dollar store); again, a small selection of a few packaged costumes and masks.

We even rode up to the mall to the Eroski store (kind of like Target) where we found the biggest selection. It still wasn’t very big, and the only costumes were zombies, vampires and witches.

Of course our kids did not want to dress up as zombies, vampires or witches. Leo wanted to be a LARPing (Live Action Role Playing) character. He and Todd decided on a Roman soldier. Todd found a huge piece of cardboard at a recycling bin and we made a couple trips to the thrift stores and then began the big project.

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Oliver was inspired by a street performer that we saw in Málaga and wanted to be Windy Man. His costume turned out to be quite easy. One trip to the thrift store for a jacket, tie and some wire hangers and a trip to the Bazar for a cheap umbrella.

The next challenge was finding a pumpkin. There are no nearby pumpkin patches. We checked the Mercadillo, but only found one that had a large slice cut out of it. We asked our favorite produce vendor at the Mercadillo, and she promised to bring us a couple the next week, but unfortunately she couldn’t find us any. Then one day on the way home, I decided to stop in at the frutería and saw they had one perfect one sitting in the back room. Success!

Halloween is a big deal at Leo’s school. Weeks before, the kids and parents start making decorations. All the kids dress up and wear their costumes all day. Despite the lack of costume selection in town, the kids all had great costumes, and surprisingly they weren’t all creepy and bloody (although a lot of them were). Many of the costumes had masks and weapons, neither of which are allowed at school in the States. We came down to watch recess and noticed several kids fighting with swords and pretending to shoot people with their toy weapons (again, something that would not be allowed in the States).

The parents also put on a “pasaje de terror.” This is where parents dress up as scary and gruesome characters. The kids walk through a decorated hallway and the parents jump out and scare the kids. We could hear the screams from our apartment. Leo said about 10 of the girls were crying because they were scared. Todd and I really didn’t approve of this part. The kids all brought “lunches” with Halloween treats (mostly cookies and cupcakes), except Leo, his mom didn’t get the memo. I tried to convince him that his popcorn were ghost balls and his red protein jello was a cup of blood. He didn’t buy it.

There was nothing at Oliver’s school. I guess they are too old for Halloween.

A couple of Leo’s friends invited us to “pedir caramelos (ask for treats).”

Trick or treating is still something that is not very common here. Since most people live in apartments that you can’t access without a key, the little trick or treating that happens is at stores, bars and restaurants. Many of the shop owners have no idea what you are talking about, some give candy (some without wrappers) and the ice cream shop gave the kids a little spoonful sample of ice cream.

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In town, there is a celebration on Halloween night

Did you notice that nothing starts before 7:30pm and the festivities continue until 1am? Luckily, in Spain the day after Halloween, All Saints Day, is a holiday, and there is no school.

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Maybe one of the biggest differences was that it was 80 degrees today. It’s hard to remember a Halloween where we weren’t cold or wet or both.

Living without a car means we have to get to and from practice and games by bike (4 times a week). We all love the ride. The variety of landscapes that we pass through in the 20 minute ride makes me giggle.

Mom only has a few more days here, so we are trying to fit a few more adventures in. One thing on her list was wine tasting!

We drove about 30 minutes away, up in the hills to a vineyard called Bodega Bentomiz, just outside of Sayalonga.

Grapes in this part of Spain grow on very steep hills. The grape plants don’t look like much, but they are 100 years old. Being older plants, they don’t produce as many grapes, but the flavor is more intense in the grapes that they do produce. The plants grow low to the ground to shade the grapes from the harsh Southern Spain sun. They get some of their rich flavor from the slate in the soil and some from the salt air that blows in from the sea.

We had a very short tour of the vineyard. “Look there it is.”

Followed by a quick trip through the production facility (walk in, walk out).

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But then we had a tasting of 4 wines.

The boys had their own tasting of Muscat grape juice while they played cards.

The tastings were followed by a 5 course lunch with wine pairings.

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They made mine vegetarian.

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And Leo got a 3 course meal made just for him.

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We weren’t sure how the kids would do, but they did great in what turned out to be nearly a 6 hour excursion.

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We spent this weekend in Córdoba; an interesting city with a rich Moorish history.

One of our favorite places was La Mezquita-Catedral (the Mosque-Cathedral). This is literally a cathedral built in the center of a mosque. The whole family was in awe and admiration. Leo said, “this is one of the coolest places I’ve seen in my life!”

The architecture is unlike anything we’ve seen before,

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I wasn’t sure how long the kids’ attention span for an old mosque-cathedral would be, but they were just as interested as the adults. So much so that we made 2 more trips. One to see the “secret” items:

The star hidden in the outside wall where you can make a wish.

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And another to visit the bell tower

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The other thing that Córdoba is famous for are their flowering patios. Unfortunately, we were not here for the May Patio competition when everyone opens up their patios, but we could still see several. It made me start thinking about my yard at home (which I haven’t thought about since we got here) and I have a few ideas I might need to implement.

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Three other must-dos were the Alcazar de los Reyes Cristianos (Castle of the Christian Kings):

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El Puente Romano (the Roman bridge):

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And, because Mom was along, the Centro de Flamenco Fosforito en la Plaza Del Potro (a place where Don Quijote stayed in the book).

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We rented a little apartment while we were here.

It had an elevator garage for our rental car, which really creeped Todd out.

We really enjoyed Córdoba.

There aren’t a lot of words needed to describe the amazing limestone formations that we visited.

Wow. Just wow.

Before choosing a long-term apartment, we wanted a chance to get to know our new city, so we rented a place for a month as we got settled. Soon after arriving we found a wonderful, long-term condo, but it will not be available until November 1st. We thought we would just stay put in apartment #1 until then, but there was a 2 week window when it wasn’t available. So that brings us to apartment #2.

There actually weren’t a lot of places available, but we found a place, still on the beach, just 450 meters from apartment #1.

This place has pros and cons.

One of the advantages is that we now have 3 bedrooms. The boys are excited to have their own rooms.

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This apartment also has a much larger kitchen, with many more dishes and pans and a larger refrigerator.

Most exciting is the oven. Apartment #1 only had a stove top. We decided to make the most of the oven.

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Buried in the cupboards I found a crockpot, so we had to put that to work as well.

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Now we have a freezer full of goodies to take with us when we return to apartment #1 next week. Hopefully, that will hold us over until we move into our final home (which has a large and well stocked kitchen).

There also is no elevator. No more folding the bikes up and squeezing into the elevator, waiting for it to get to us, suffering through the smells of someone’s fishy garbage or arguing over who pushes the buttons. We just have to walk up one flight of stairs.

Our landlord lets us leave the bicycles in the hallway, just inside the door, which is much more convenient.

We also have 2 laundry rooms (instead of just a washing machine in the bathroom). One room has the washing machine and the dishwasher (it is weird having to go into a different room to load the dishes). The other has the dryer. Yes, the dryer! We still hang all of our clothes outside, but if those soccer socks aren’t dry for practice, we can pop them in the dryer.

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The water heater is also much larger. So we can actually all get a shower after returning from the beach without having to turn off the water in between applying shampoo, conditioner and soap, and the last person running out of hot water.

The walk to the beach is probably a third of the distance as it was from apartment #1 and we only need to cross one one-lane road (instead of three road crossings from apartment #1).

Our commute to the grocery store is much improved as well. Previously we had to walk or bike along one of the bigger roads in town, Avenida Andalucia, which wasn’t too pleasant. Now we get to go down the cutest little alleyways.

Since it is not next door to Leo’s school, he can’t come home on his own. That really isn’t such a downside since it is fun to ride bikes to/from school with him.

Being on the second floor, as compared with being on the 10th floor, we do not have as much privacy. We kind of feel like we are living in a fishbowl.

This lack of privacy extends to our neighbors as well. Last night, one of neighbors was having a very loud argument. As we peeked our heads out to see what all of the yelling was about, we noticed that there was a head sticking out of every house in the alley as well.

On the positive side, this afternoon while Leo was hanging out on one of our patios that overlooks the alley, a friend from school walked by and they had a little chat. Turns out a lot of friends live just down the alley.

A big downside is we only have one bathroom. Why is it that everyone needs to go at the same time?

We also miss our view. While we do have a view of the beach here, it is obstructed.

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Probably the biggest issue we have had is the age of all the furnishings. The beds all creak and aren’t too comfortable, neither are the chairs or the couch.

The first hour we were here we had to wipe down every surface above six feet (they were covered with dust that was giving us all headaches). We also took down most of the curtains and put them into garbage bags. After that we all could breathe easier.

Surprisingly, we are all very excited to return to our little 2 bedroom apartment that we refer to as home. We pass by it daily as we go to school or downtown.