Fotos de la Casa

Hola! Here are (finally) some pictures of the house so you all can see where we live (just realized I can only post a couple at a time so I'll have to do this in multiple postings, sorry!) I still don't know how to get text with each picture or organize things very well so I'll just list things out from top to bottom:

1. Entrance and front terrace

2. Kitchen

3. Dining room

4. Living room out to back terrace

5. Back terrace with gate leading down to communal pool shared by 10 houses

6. Communal pool

7. Our room and terrace (2nd floor)

8. Caroline's room (2nd floor)

9. Boys' room (2nd floor)

10. Guest room and terrace (3rd floor)

11. Other guest room (3rd floor)

12. Homeschool/office area of other guest room (3rd floor)

13. View from 3rd floor

AND, underneath all of this is an extra room where we're storing things and a garage! We feel very fortunate to have found this house and especially for the owners. They've been great!

That's it for now, hope you all are doing well!
Tonya

We're back!!

Hola!

We are now connected again thanks to the wireless and kindness of a new neighbor we met. We have no idea what has happened with the phone company but we must have been put on the bottom of the pile again. At least we are connected now and they can get here when they get here. My laptop had been detecting a wireless connection that needed a security key, and I just happened to meet those neighbors out on the terrace the other day. I went to ask them today if there was any way we could use their connection while we are waiting, and they were so kind and helpful about it. They are actually from Uruguay. We have neighbors on our street from England, Spain, Scotland, and now Uruguay!

There is so much to catch you up on! The first piece of HUGE news is that Luke lost 2 front teeth while we were unconnected! He was pleased to find that the Spanish tooth fairy leaves a euro for each lost tooth, although we've been told that it's a small mouse here instead of a tooth fairy. Too funny.

ANYWAY, we've been doing great. I have so many pictures to post and things to tell you, I'll have to do it in phases to catch up. First, here is a picture of the kids eating ice cream with Aunt Jess when she was still here. Later that week we connected with a couple other Moms of 5-year-old boys who invited us to a park, and Luke was so THRILLED to make some friends! Here they are staring down at a dead bird, I guess that's what 5-year-old boys do! It was pretty cute. They were perched there for a good 20 minutes discussing the dead bird.

That Sunday we were invited to the Barcelona zoo with my statistician friend at the University of Barcelona (Josep) and his wife and 2-year-old son Joan. Another friend of their's with a 2.5- year-old daughter also came and this is a picture of all the kids looking at a turtle. We had a very fun day with them!

Today we also went into Barcelona, first to church and then we explored the Port Olympic area a bit. We had a really nice lunch outside, walked around some parks and the water front, and then of course had to get ice cream before heading home. It was a very nice day. The kids have just been great and I've been so thankful. Here are some pictures from today as well. I'll post some of the house within the next couple of days because I have a lot of them.

Brian is due home on Wednesday so we're looking forward to seeing him again too!

Hope you all are well and talk to you again soon!
Love,
Tonya

My monthy travels...

Hi all,



Me again. I just made up this map of where I've been the last 2 weeks so the kids can follow it. Hard to see in the little blog window, but if you are interested you can click on the window and it'll open into a bigger one, I think...

Still not connected...

Hi all,

No phone/internet yet. The installer came on Fri or Sat but unfortunately went to the wrong house. So, it looks like we have been put back at the bottom of the list for installation.

It has made communication for us much harder(and more expensive) but we are certainly managing just fine.

Tonya and the kids have been meeting more of the neighbors and have been frequenting Ikea and some local markets to make the house our home.

They definitely have been busy!


I am currently in Sydney, AU and am headed to Shanghai today. I will be in central Europe this weekend, so if Tonya's up for it, they might fly up and spend the weekend with me.

We are getting excited about having visitors. Three separate groups have already bought tickets!

Some have been asking about tickets and weather, so here's another couple of links to such.
I use a site called kayak to check prices for all my travel arrangements. My parents just booked round trip tickets on kayak for March from JFK to Barcelona, non stop for $490.
http://www.kayak.com/

http://www.weather.com/outlook/travel/businesstraveler/wxclimatology/monthly/graph/SPXX0015?from=36hr_bottomnav_business

http://weather.weatherbug.com/Spain/Sitges-weather.html?zcode=z5602

We are still hoping to have a phone and internet by the end of the week, but are at the mercy of the phone company, so ya never know...

Love to all,
Brian

Life in Espana

Hola,

I thought I'd post an update since Tonya still is without an internet connection and I am away on a trip.

Tonya and the kids are doing great in our new place. Getting to know the neighbors and the area better each day.
We have great landlords! They are a Spanish couple with children our age and grandchildren our kids age. This was their home for the last 20 some years and they've moved a little closer to Barcelona and downsized as well. They are very concerned(attentive) about our wellfare and we feel really blessed to have found this situation! Thanks to all of you who've been praying for us, your/our prayers have certainly been answered!

We hope to have phone and internet before the end of the week... As soon as we do, she will post an update with some pics of the house.

BTW, Tonya's cell # is (34)671968105 if anyone wants to give her a ring I'm sure she'd love to hear from you. Or you can call the our home # in landisville, as I've just set it up to forward to her cell.

Adios,
Brian

Short Break in Coverage

Hola!

Sorry, I don't have pictures of the house to post yet, and when we move today we will not have phone/internet service over there for a couple days. I wanted to make sure we let you all know that. Luke had the camera when we went through the house, and I found that the only pictures we have are of the toilets, sinks, each bed in the entire house, and the stairs. :) I will get some good ones this weekend and hopefully post early next week.

But, we did go for a walk this morning all along the coast with Jess & Tarheel, and I have some good pictures of that. We're enjoying our last day downtown before we move up to the hill. I also wanted to tell you a little more about how we ended up with this house. We first viewed it Wednesday night at 7:30pm. We loved it, but had two more apartments already booked to view on Thursday at noon, so we set up an appointment with the Wed night realtor on Thursday at 1pm after viewing the additional places. The Wed night realtor said we could possibly meet with the owners of the house on Saturday morning and move in this weekend, but Brian would have already left on his trip. SO on Thursday morning, both of our cell phones rang at EXACTLY the same time. On my phone it was the realtor with the additional apartments saying that they both had fallen through and weren't available. On Brian's phone it was the Wed night realtor with the house saying that we could meet with the owners that day, sign the contract, and move in right away before Brian left on his trip!!! We were so excited. We love the house and it will have plenty of room for company! So come on over! The 4th floor is kind of a guest suite with two bedrooms, a bathroom and a nice terrace.

Thanks so much for all of your thoughts and prayers, we couldn't be happier about how it all came together.

Love to you all and talk to you again soon!

Obtuvimos una casa!

Ok, so it's 11pm and Jess and the kids are fast asleep, Tonya is out walking Tarheel and I just sat down to update the blog when I hear this funky clapping sound and singing...

So, I go to the balcony and there are about 50 people on the street walking through town with instruments, playing and singing!

Here's a short video clip of the festivities.

Back to the post title. We found a house! No pics yet, will post tomorrow. After looking at 20+ places, we finally found the right one. The longer term rental market in this area is not robust especially for a family of 5 with a dog. Most realtors have houses for sale rather than for rent, so we looked at the vast majority of the places available that met our criteria and this was the last one on the list. It was kind of an afterthought type of thing and we really weren't expecting it to be the one.

It's got everything that we were looking for, except for views of the ocean. And it's got plenty of space for company!

I'll let Tonya post tomorrow and tell you more with pics and all.

Adios y hasta manana!

Tarheel in Spain!!

Tarheel and Brian's sister Jess arrived safely this morning after a good flight! She said there was a bit of howling when she checked her in, but after that she calmed down nicely. She was VERY happy to see all of us, and Tarheel was too. :) She's just laying on the floor now hanging out.

We really liked the house we saw last evening, and we're off to see two more places this morning. Then we'll make a decision. We'll post again soon!

Have a great day!

No Casa Yet

Well the house we were supposed to see on Monday which we were excited about was already rented. We have appointments tonight and tomorrow to see another bunch of places. We're finding it's difficult to find something big enough in a good location that's a reasonable price. The value of real estate here has been shooting up and the dollar has been shooting down. Makes for a difficult situation. But we're hopeful that the right place will turn up. The other challenge is that businesses don't often open until 10 or 11am, and then they're closed between 2-5pm for siesta! So we have been trying to fit in as many realtors and houses as we can.

On Sunday we visited a great church in Barcelona, and chose one site to see. We rode a cable car up to the top of a hill overlooking the sea where there was an old castle and beautiful gardens. We have a book of the top 25 places to see in Barcelona, so we're going to do one each Sunday when Brian is home. We also made some great connections at the church, and through our relocation specialist here in Sitges.

Attached are some pictures from Sunday. Hopefully we'll have a positive house update for you soon! Especially because Jess & Tarheel are arriving on Thursday and Brian is leaving on Saturday!

Hope everyone is doing well. Take care!

House and more beach pics

Hi all,

We drove up to an area to get a feel for it before seeing another house there on Monday. We found the house and took a couple of pics of it. We think we've narrowed it down to two houses and hope to make the final decision on Monday.

This is the view from the street in front of the house!

We had some more fun on the beach today too!

And here's a video of the kids!

Hasta manana!

Casa Update

Hi everyone,

Thanks to those of you who have been thinking about us and asking about a house! We've looked at a number of houses and apartments, close to town and out of town, big and small. We thought we had decided on one but now have an appointment to view another one on Monday morning that might have a better location. Today we also considered another town closer to the airport, and when we met with a realtor there it turned out she (who is from Holland) has an uncle and cousins in Lancaster!! How crazy is that??!! So anyway, we're making progress and will hopefully have something finalized somewhere next week. :)

Here are some pictures from the beach today, it was a beautiful day!

Take care and have a great weekend!

Estamos aqui!

It was a crazy day... started by finishing up the packing and tying up loose ends, ended lugging 10 heavy bags and 3 tired kids up to a second floor apartment.

The kids were great! What wonderful travelers. The flight was only about 2/3 full so we were able to grab 7 seats for the 5 of us and spread out a little.

Tonya and Jack took naps while Luke, Caroline and I took a walk down to the beach and got some gelato. I think they were too excited to sleep.
We headed down to the waterfront again for some pizza this evening and both of them were asleep at the table before the first piece got down the hatch.

Pray for us tomorrow. We are headed out to look at a couple of houses.

If any of you are interested or need to, you can still reach us by calling our home #(it rings here) or via skype.

Stay tuned...