Spain

Remi and Broden had their last day of school on Friday, July 20th. That Sunday we met up with our friends, the Ingersoll's, and flew to Spain! 

The airport was interesting, as always, with 4 kids. Ryan Air makes it even more interesting. We are too cheap to check bags, so we each had a carry on. So we had 4 backpacks and a duffle bag. Alissa and Parker had both woken up with fevers Sunday morning and weren't feeling well. When we finally got on the plane it actually was a very easy plane ride. Alissa and Parker both fell asleep and Remi and Broden were more than happy to play with their friends and play games on Dad's IPAD.

When we got to the air port in Spain we headed to the rental car place. I think it took almost 2 hours to get a rental car, then another 30 minutes for Blake to learn how to drive it. Apparently it was a really touchy clutch. Eventually we left the airport and found some food on the way to our vacation home that was a couple hours north of the airport. 

We got to the vacation home at about 1 in the morning, got kinda settled in and fell asleep. The next 4 days were spent having fun in the sun. We would wake up whenever the kids did, eat breakfast, swim in the pool that came with the house, eat lunch, or pack a lunch and head to a beach for a couple hours, then head home, eat dinner, swim for a few more hours and go to bed. It was a perfect relaxing vacation. The home was set up for kids, which was great since we had 7 of them. The pool was fully fenced with a gate and there was a swing set with lots of kids toys. It was so fun to just lay in the sun and watch the kids play, or swim with them.

I loved the beaches. Some of them had little pebbles, which isn't so good for sand castles, but awesome for clean up. They just brush right off and don't get in food, or eyes, or everywhere else. The sandy beaches were great too. We buried the kids, built sand castles and Blake even went snorkeling at a few of the beaches. I tried once, but the waves were a little big for me and I panicked. I'm out of practice:(

Parker and Blake burying Livi, Drew and Broden 

Broden, Drew, Livi, Avery and Remi after Blake and Parker buried them in the rocks

Broden enjoying the sunshine and waves

Avery and Remi jumping off the rocks at the beach

Remi and Avery waiting for a wave to come through the rocks

Amazing view of the beach

Remi and Avery posing with a beautiful background

Blake and Alissa

Avery and Remi

Alissa showing us her muscles with Blake
Remi and Avery playing in the waves in the background

Drew Avery and Broden

Alissa catching some sun

One beach we went to was kind of a hike to get to. We hiked down this huge hill to a nice sandy beach. There was a restaurant down there we decided to try out. We tried Spain's famous dish Paella. It is a rice dish with different things on top. We got a sea food paella. It was a little more than we were prepared for. Squid, and I don't even know what the rest of the shell fish were. Muscles maybe? and some other varieties. We told the kids if they swallowed one of the shell fish we would pay them some money. So Remi, Avery and Drew each tried them. Their faces were so funny. Not big fans of shellfish. Fun to experience the culture though.

Remi's face and Avery trying it

Remi with tears in her eyes trying to swallow her bite.

Parker playing in his hole

Parker sitting in his hole.

Parker laying in his hole.

The castle at one of the beaches

View of the beach from the castle

Broden and Remi on our hike to the castle

Beautiful view from the castle down to a little cove.

Parker and Alissa performing on a little stage at the castle.

Remi dancing

Alissa dancing while Drew, Avery and Livi pose for a picture

Parker quenching his thirst

I loved these cool trees. They were neon green!

Parker playing with locks on the castle fence.

Parker playing in the waves

Broden with the castle in the backgound

Broden with the beach in the background

She is making our crepe with Chocolate!

Alissa and Blake watching. She had a huge smile when she saw the chocolate

Parker, Broden, Blake, Alissa and Jenny enjoying our crepe.
Remi enjoyed it too, but was the photographer for us!

After enjoying a beach about 30 minutes away we headed home, changed our clothes and went back to the local beach for some fireworks. Nothing like fireworks on the beach at night!

Alissa, Blake, Drew, Remi and Avery eating some candy getting ready for fireworks

fun fireworks

After the fireworks we decided to enjoy the night life with the kiddos a little while. We let them ride the carousel, then we watched one of the spray paint artists. This is one of my favorite things to watch. It amazes me the pictures they make with layers of spray paint. It was after midnight when we left to go home. The kids all fell asleep as soon as we were in the car.

Broden on the bull on the Carousel

Alissa on the carousel

Remi

Parker

Blake, Alissa, Broden and Remi standing on bleachers watching the spray painter.

Enjoying some marshmallows in the sun

Parker helping clean up

Blake with our rental car in front of the vacation home! Fun memories.

Saturday we left the house and weren't scheduled to fly out until that night. So we went to a little park before heading towards the airport. The kids had fun playing on all the toys.

Alissa

Parker

Broden and Drew

Avery and Remi

Blake, Drew, Andy, Alissa, Remi, Avery, Livi, Lauren and Broden getting full at McDonalds before our plane ride home.

It was so nice being in the sun for a week straight! I love Spain, and the beach, and the sun. I don't even feel sad that we didn't go "see" things. This is just the kind of vacation we needed. Pure relaxation and fun!