The kids dressed for Fallas

THE BOAT

Okay, so I haven´t written in a very long time. I´m sure everyone has given up doesn´t even check the blog anymore. I´VE BEEN BUSY!!!!
My camera broke so I don´t have that motivation of posting cute pictures and I´ve been having a really really hard time at work lately which results in the need for beer therapy leaving little time for blogging.
I am helping my friend Sarah build a little sail boat which is taking up some time too. I can´t tell you how hard it is to keep a total of four kids (oldest being David) and two husbands happy while building a boat.

Can´t sleep

I have been so sleep deprived for the past two years that I don´t remember what it is like when you can´t sleep at night. Tonight I was fast asleep by 10:30 but David woke up at 11 complaining that his foot hurt and since then I can´t get back to sleep. I have been having this problem for the past month. I have too much going on at work and I just can´t turn off my mind!!!
I haven´t posted in a while because I haven´t been around much on the weekends and last week I was in Madrid. We have been spending time with my in-laws these past two weekends due to my father in-law's poor health. He is 90 and actually doing great for someone of that age but had a mini stroke about three weeks ago and since then isn´t quite himself and is a bit confused. He is driving my mother in law crazy. So, we and the kids distract him a bit and he forgets about obsessing over his failing health.
David and Elena are punishing me due to my increased traveling. Elena more than David but David is starting to follow her cue. Evidently Elena is a perfectly normal toddler until mommy walks in the door. As soon as she sees me she becomes this helpless whining little blob who pathetically drags herself on the floor following me until I pick her up. And I ask myself, Is this my fault??? Did I create this monster? I actually think I am harder on her than I ever have been with David. Maybe that is why she is so demanding of my attention...Whatever has caused this behavior, the truth is that she only does this with me. So it must be something that I am doing wrong. Or do kids just want to punish their mommies for kicks????
She is lucky that she is cute because otherwise I would sell her to the gypsies.

Back Home

I had to go to Barcelona on Tuesday and was there until Friday for the Bread and Butter fair. It is a trade show focused on urban fashion and Levis had an accessories stand where I was responsible for the watches. Actually it was the licensee that should have been responsible for the stand but being in Spain somehow my company, being the distributor for Spain, got roped into it. It was fun though because I got the opportunity to speak English as most the people that attend the fair are from Europe and not Spain.
Poor Jose Pedro had to stay at home and man the ship. He did a great job...I called him once at 7:45 PM and both kids were asleep. He claims that his watch was running an hour fast and he didn´t realize it but I suspect that maybe he drugged the kids....hahaha.
He had a flat tire two times in one day and the second time he had both kids with him while he was at the dealership getting it fixed. Elena was playing inside a car and somehow got locked in. The keys were inside the car and they spent an hour trying to get her to push the unlock button which she wouldn´t do. David in the meantime was very concerned because nobody was letting his little sister out of the car. Eventually they had to break into the car to get her out. ..I´m glad I wasn´t there....
Another funny incident is that on Friday's David always has a homework assignment. Last Friday I was in Madrid so I wasn´t there to pick him up and JP insisted that that week there was no homework. Well, come to find out not only did David have homework but it was also his turn to have what they call the "travelling book"
This book is something that each kid in the class only gets once in the entire school year. Each kid has to decorate a page according to what they are learning at the time. So...Jose Pedro not only lost David's homework but he also lost this book which had all of the other children´s work in it as well! Luckily he found it at a place where he had taken the kids to play after school on Friday. Jose Pedro then had to do to assignment which was about the color orange. He took pictures of it which I have posted. It ended up being very original...nothing that I would have every thought up. To me it was a little messy but very creative ( a lot like Jose Pedro :)).

So that´s enough for now because I have a ton of laundry and cleaning up to do. Hopefully this week I will be able to post more than one entry.

Busy week

I can´t believe it is Sunday already! I remember when I was a kid time seemed to pass so slowley and now as an adult weeks seem more like days, months more like weeks and years more like months!
I was in Madrid on Thursday and Friday. Two days jam packed with meetings and public relations. The trade show was quite depressing as more than half of the companies that were there last year decided not to come or have gone out of business. I think the only people who actually attended were salesmen looking for work. It is going to be a really tough year!
Poor Jose Pedro had the kids to deal with. He is always the one who picks them up from school and daycare but he isn´t used to the stress of getting ready in the mornings and the challenge of arriving to work on time. On top of it all my father in law had a mini stroke on Tuesday night and was in the hospital until Saturday. Thankfully it didn´t do any serious damage. He has lost his peripherial vision and is a bit unstable. The doctor's have also found that he has an anourism in his brain which is very unsettling. Due to the fact that he is 90 they won´t opperate because surgery could do more harm rather than good.
So I got home a little after 10 PM on Friday and Saturday we got up early and went with our group of friends to hike up a mini mountain for a "Romeria"- a romeria is a religous pilgrimage. In this case it was to a hermitage of a town nearby called Bechi. It would have been a really nice outing except for the fact that the entire population of 5000 people joined us on our walk. It is an organized event that happens every year celebrating Saint Anthony they hand out free sandwiches on the way up and once you get to the top you go to mass in the hermitage....I would prefer to make my own sandwich and skip the mass. Actually we didn´t go to mass, we let the kids play around on a moon bounce that they had set up rather than completing our pilgrimage. It was fun but very tiring...when they hand out the sandwiches there was a bit of a traffic jam. I had a stroller and a sling for carrying Elena on my back and alternated her from being in the stroller or on my back or David in the stroller or on my back. It worked out pretty well but both of them are heavy so I was pretty tired at the end. We started around 9:30 or 10 AM and didn´t get back to the cars until 3.

Finally Friday

I actually can´t complain because I have only worked three days this week...but they were three days packed with exhausting meetings...Next week will be worse because I have to go to Madrid on Thursday and Friday for the jewelry trade show so I guess this week has been a good warm up.
For those of you who don´t know what I do, I am a sales manager for a company that manufactures and distributes name brand jewelry and watches. Check out our website if you are interested, www.le-cado.com. I actually consider myself lucky to have a job because Spain is definately suffering along with the rest of the world and the unemployment rate is soaring...

The kids have had a hard time adjusting to school and daycare. David cried this week when we dropped him off at school.. Actually, I dropped him off on Wednesday and Friday and he didn´t cry but he was hesitant and complained...but Jose Pedro dropped him off on Thursday and he pulled out the tears....David is a Daddy's boy though and was probably just being dramatic to see what Daddy would do.

Elena went to daycare very happily but she has been very tired and grouchy once she gets home. I don´t think she is getting the quality naps that she gets at home. Both her and David fell asleep at 6PM yesterday and slept through the night (without dinner) until 6:30 AM. It is 8 PM right now and I am about to put them to bed. Hopefully they will sleep in a little tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow we are going to shop the sales. In Spain there are sales only two times a year- after x-mas and in July. It is government controlled (stinking socialism). The idea is to make it an even playing field for all types of businesses (meaning the smallest mom and pop stores to the big international chains) I think it is pretty lousy because when things finally do go on sale the lines and crowds are awful and the stores are always a mess because they don´t have enough personell to keep everything organized.

We plan to get an early start tomorrow so hopefully the kids will behave and things will go smoothly.

Jingle Bell Rock!!!!!! Please take into account that English is not his first language!