Barcelona is unlike any place we have been before. It is a beautiful small seaside city. It was very easy to learn the city, mike and I quickly learned our way around and got most places on foot. Beautiful carving in stone decorate many of the buildings. Mike Landed in 26th place for top Sales representatives in 2012 and was awarded with this trip. It was an incredible trip not only because of the location but how well they treated us. The put us up in a super expensive hotel, showered us with expensive gifts daily. Hosted extravagant dinners and parties every night. They just fed us and fed us and fed us beautiful multi-course meals with entertainment. The Highlight of our trip was a Gaudi tour. Words can't really describe his amazing work so we will let the pictures do the talking:
I went on a tour of the gothic quarters while Mike was in a business meeting and then after I took him back there to show him some things. Here are some things that we saw:
The two columns are the remains of the city wall. The rounded top on the right is from the Romans and the flat top is from the 13th-14th century.
We also went on a tour an hour and a half outside of Barcelona, about 1/2 hour from the French border to a small town called Girona that had lots of well preserved buildings from the medieval times and earlier.
And a few more photos of things we saw walking around the city by ourselves:
This is our third bird since we have been married. We almost got a different kind of pet (a bearded dragon) but again went back to birds. This is my seventh pet bird starting from when I was about 10 years old. I have so many good memories with my birds as a little girl. They were wonderful, affectionate and playful companions, we went everywhere together. Jada and Kayla are animal lovers too and I want them to have wonderful experiences with a pet too. Bird live a long time too so this bird is likely to see them into young adulthood. This bird lives up to 20 years, some larger parrots live up to 90 years!!
My favourite kind of bird that I ever owned was a cockatiel, I have never gone any bigger because bigger beaks intimidate me!!! I hand tamed all my birds myself (parakeets, cockatiels and a lovebird) and have some painful memories!!! Taming also takes a lot of patience. Taming any kind of bird is not something to attempt with very young children. We learned that with the first cockatiel we bought, and had to turn around and sell him shortly after.
We looked on Kijiji again and found one that was advertised as being really good with kids and fully tamed. Bonus! The kids just love him and he is very patient and tolerant with them. We named him Gandalf The White because of his very tall, long stature and wide stance and his white color. He can Imitate kissing sounds, laughing and does a Wolfe call. We are working on teaching him the Andy Griffith tune and Kalhonaho. We have just started dancing lessons with him and look forward to teaching him many other fun tricks.
He has already bonded with our family. When we are gone a lot he acts really melancholy. Sometimes when we all leave the room and he can't see us he starts calling. One day when we came home from church we found him sitting by our family picture.
Here are some really cute short video's that we have of our three girls with their new pet bird:
2013/03/26
Kayla turned 2 on Saturday! She wanted an ice cream birthday party so that is what we did. We just had a small party with family. The girls and I made a piñata with paper mache but after drying 24 hour, it was still not even close to dry so we had the brilliant idea of drying it in the oven and......the balloon popped. Luckily my visiting teachers came over that day and one of them had lots of experience with making piñatas for her kids and she told me that a great in a pinch piñata was a cereal box taped closed. So the girls helped me fill a cereal box with candy and then we taped it closed covered it in tissue paper and the girls covered it in, I think, three packs of stickers. Then we put some craft ice cream cones on it, made a rope handle and it was done in under an hour!
We did the piñata in the morning before mike had to go to work. It was a really fun family activity.
After mike got home from work Kayla blew out her candles and opened her presents. We forgot to get birthday candles, hence the tea lights, haha.
I found these papers lying on the floor the other day with kayla's drawings all over it. How many capital B's can you find. I counted 6! I was totally surprised. We have been focusing on a letter of the alphabet each week, learning to write it and recognized words that start with that letter and anything eles fun and interesting that has to do with that letter. We cook food starting with that letter and learn about animals, bugs, things and places that start with that letter and jada keeps a list of all the words she learns about. This week the girls choose the letter B and I found this really cool tutorial on youtube that taught them how to write upper and lower case Bb and then showed them how to turn the letter B into a butterfly and a flower. Kayla was there with her paper and pencil too but I didn't expect her to have the dexterity in her hands yet for forming letters but I was wrong. I have been finding B's upper and lower case all over her drawings. I think it is so neat how she can do that.
Her speaking has been rapidly improving lately too! She is such a beautiful , bright, and sweet little girl and brings a lot of joy to our home. Happy Birthday Kayla!
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