Pumpkin & Homemade Creamer!

I know jealousy isn't a good thing.  Ha!  But I'll say it,  I have been jealous of my American friends who have pumpkins, canned or the real thing!!  I had not seen hide nor hair of a pumpkin......until yesterday!!  I had to examine.  Go back and examine some more.  Then have Jerry punch a Spanish word into his trusty IPhone to see if it was really pumpkin.  And it was!!  It isn't the cute little sugar pumpkins and they had hacked them up a bit, but it was pumpkin!!  They were small so I took two.  Of course, Jerry said "You're getting 2?!"  Why yes, of course!  Who knows if or when I'll see this stuff again.  And even if it doesn't taste the same, we're not out that much money!!


I got home and as soon as I had a chance I popped them in the oven!!  Actually, I took the wrap off and dug my finger in it a bit to get a little taste.  Sure enough!  It was sweet and tasted like pumpkin!!  I tried to google it to find out what kind it was, but had no luck.  Oh well!  It works for me!!

Here is my pumpkin puree process!!

 Cut it up!  Scoop at the seeds and stringy stuff.

Place insides facing down on a foiled and greased pan.  Cover with another piece of foil and bake at 350 until it is tender when pierced with a fork.

Place in a food processor until smooth and there you have pumpkin puree!

I was ecstatic when a friend share that she had found a blog with several different coffee creamer recipes.  From cinnamon strudel to chocolate almond to Peppermint Mocha, which I need to try for Jerry as that's his preferred holiday drink.  I was like a little kid on Christmas morning!!  Finally I could have flavored coffee creamer again!  One of those things on my "I Miss About America" list!!  And it's easy too!!
Here is the blog where I found the recipes.  I've searched around a bit for other recipe ideas, but most I have found use sweetened condensed milk.  I'm not a big fan of the flavor of sweetened condensed milk, but I might try it sometime to see if the other ingredients would tone the flavor down a bit.

Here are the 2 creamer recipes I tried.

Cinnamon Strudel Creamer

1 cup whole milk (I used 2%)
1 cup heavy cream
4 tablespoons maple syrup (Any form of syrup is hard to come by here....or expensive, so I used a homemade version using Mapelene flavoring)
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract

Whisk together milk, cream, maple syrup and cinnamon in a medium saucepan over medium heat. When the mixture begins to steam, remove from the heat. Stir in extracts. Strain through a fine mesh sieve, pour into a glass bottle and store in the refrigerator.

AND

Pumpkin Spice

1 cup whole milk (I used 2%)
1 cup heavy cream
3 tablespoons pureed pumpkin
1 teaspoon pumpkin spice
4 tablespoons maple syrup (used my faux syrup)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Whisk together milk, cream, pumpkin, pumpkin spice, and maple syrup in a medium saucepan over medium heat. When mixture begins to steam, remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla extract. Strain through a fine mesh sieve, pour into a glass bottle and store in the refrigerator.
The creamers will last up to 10 days in the fridge.

They were both yummy!!  I noticed that the flavor got better after a day or two.  Also, I was talking on the phone while making the pumpkin spice and it started boiling.  Oops!  It just made it thicker, but the flavor is still good.  Also, I don't have a fine mesh sieve (I am now on the hunt for one) and tried cheese cloth, but it really didn't work that well.  My creamer was running down the outsides of the jar!  Don't want to waste the good stuff!

 I didn't strain the pumpkin, but I think it needed it if you like a smooth coffee texture.

And voila!  There you have homemade flavored coffee creamer!!  Give it a try!  And enjoy!

He's Come A Long Way

Here he is now!

We've come along way, buddy!!

Colegio - Preschool

Before we had left for Altea we went to the town hall to figure out how to get the kids enrolled in school.  We had a colleague, fluent in Spanish of course, come help us.  There were forms to fill out and schools to select.  In Spain, preschool aged kids from ages 3-5 are incorporated into the Elementary Schools.  I actually like that!  We browsed through all the schools in the city.  About half of their schools are considered bilingual (Spanish & English).  This means that not only do they teach English in the schools, there are also other subjects that are taught in English.  Maybe Math or Science.  Our desire was to get the kids into one of these public schools to keep us from having to teach as much English at home.
We could choose up to six schools.  We chose three bilingual schools in the area and the fourth one we chose was in walking distance to our complex.  While we were on our vacation we had our Spanish speaking colleague call to find out which school our kids got into.  We had a feeling it would happen this way and were correct that our kids were able to get into the school next door.  We were a little discouraged, however there isn't much bilingual teaching that goes on at the preschool level.  We originally thought that for next year we could work on getting them into one of the bilingual schools.
Once we got back from Altea we were to go to the school to figure out what we were suppose to do.  We got more packets filled with papers to fill out (all in Spanish, of course).  Again, our colleague help us with filling out the papers.  By this time, it was Friday and school started on Monday (talk about last minute whirlwind vacation trip!!  So glad we did it though!), September 13th.
We received a list of books the kids needed for school.  Wow, what a load (and expense) for preschool books!!   We learned that even though this is not a bilingual school, English is taught and required at every grade level, even preschool.
I was a ball of nerves over that weekend!!  Before we even moved to Spain we knew this was what we wanted for our kids.  What better second language could American kids speak than Spanish!  It will be so useful for them as they get older, go to school and look for jobs.  But at this very moment I was apprehensive.  Here we are throwing our kids into a situation and they were going to have to fend for themselves!  All weekend I just kept praying.  God definitely did meet me in that time and gave me a peace that we were doing the right thing, even though it felt hard.
I had talked with a neighbor friend asking her questions about the school, even though I knew her daughter went to a private school.  She assured me that several families in our complex sent their kids there and it was a good school.  Then Sunday before school was our pool party.  And we got to meet several of those families and their kids.  It sure put my anxiety at ease....a little anyway!  Thank you Lord!!
One mom in particular told me to look for her if we needed any help (she is an English teacher in a highschool).  And it just so happened that we met their family on the way out the door!  It was nice to walk with friends to school!
We didn't even know what class the kids were going into, so we went to the secretary to turn in our paperwork.  She spoke some English, which was a huge comfort to us and was a tremendous help and kept saying over and over "Don't worry, don't worry!  Come see me if you need anything!"  I was so thankful for that, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't cry a little.  Oh that was hard!

I did what I could to keep myself preoccupied during the time they were in school.  The school day here is from 9:30 (oh how I am SO thankful for this late time!!) until 1:30.  On October 1 the schedule will change and go from 9:30 to 1 pm.  Then a 2 hour siesta (don't you know Spaniards love their siesta!) and then return from 3 to 4:30 pm.  We have the option to leave the kids at school during that time.  We would have to pay for their lunches and care, but with us being so close to the school and my kids are not use to Spanish food yet, we decided to wait on that.  We can always change that later, but for now we'll pick them up and feed them at home.

When we picked them up we met Karis' teacher.  She has been studying English, but doesn't speak very much.  She wanted to speak with us and go over some details.  She grabbed the school's English teacher to help.  We instantly knew that these two were going to be great!!  We just fell in love with Karis' teacher, Marta!!  She has been a wonderful and tremendous help to us.
We didn't meet Brennan & Reegan's teacher, but we also learned that she is a substitute and that their teacher is on maternity leave until October.
We have since met the substitute, but I'll write more on that later.

We are slowly learning the ways of Spanish schools.  Everyone has been so helpful and has been patient and kind.  I don't think we could have asked for a better situation.

Our kids could sure use some prayers over this, of course.  They are exhibiting some behaviors that we feel stem from the stress of all they have gone through.  Karis & Brennan are both expressing anger at different times and Reegan has had some accidents and not making it to the bathroom in time.  We appreciate each one of you and thank you for lifting us up!!

Here are a few pictures.  We weren't sure how parents would feel about taking pictures of kids, so we kept it minimal.

Did I tell you that the elementary school is just 2 building over!  Walking with our neighbors.

This is what a half day of school in Spanish can do to ya!  Ha!

Altea, Spain

I was determined after our trip down south, having spent a day (and a couple of hours another day) at the beach that we needed a vacation.

We had not had one since the kids came along.  We are only about 5 hours from the beach and since we had already been down south, we thought we would trying going somewhere near Valencia on the east coast of Spain.  I started researching online for places to stay.  I was really wanting to find something right on the water so we could have sea views, but knowing our budget I knew that might be difficult.  We enjoy finding apartments instead of hotels so that we can still cook our own food and keep from going out as much.  But after our last experience I was not sure I wanted to do that.  

I started out by looking at hotels.  Finding a hotel that suits the size of our family was another issue.  So I went back to looking at apartments.  Wow, was I pleasantly surprised when I found a 4 bedroom apartment with ocean views in Altea (pronounced al-tay-ya).  There was a cancellation so we were given a good price.  I double checked to see if there was a coffee pot (you know, the very important and necessary items, ha!!) and it had one, so I figured we were good to go!

We could not believe it when we walked in and saw the views and amenities.  Not only were there basics for cooking (like spices and sugar) the owner had purchased a few items like milk, cheese slices, ham slices, some bread, and butter.  After our last experience this was a huge improvement!

And what a view!!  Here are the kids on the terrace our first evening. 

Directly below the apartment is a sidewalk, a small street with a promenade and a rock beach.  But being on the third floor, when sitting down all you could see was water!  We left the sliding glass doors open at all times to hear the water rolling over the rocks!  It was glorious!  We didn't realize it was a rock beach before arriving.  We would have preferred a nice sandy beach but that's ok.  We went to some local Chinese stores and found us some cheap water shoes to help with walking on the rocks.

We spent the first 2 days at the rock beach in front of our apartment.  I really wanted to find a sandy beach in the area, so our second evening there we took a drive to the big touristy town just south of Altea called Benidorm.  I had looked there for a place to stay, but upon arriving I was so glad we weren't staying there.  It was busy and fast paced.  Not what we were looking for.  It reminded me of something like Las Vegas.  

The traffic was awful and we never even made it to the beach we were looking for because of it.  Plus we would have to pay for parking.  So, we turned around and headed back to our place.

I got to looking through the tourist brochures at the apartment and decided to check out the town just north of Altea called Calpe.  It looked like they had some sandy beaches, so the next morning we loaded everyone and everything into the car and headed there.  We found a gorgeous sandy beach!  Of course, so did everyone else in the area.  It was packed!!!  We spent a few hours and then decided to leave.  Too much action for us.  We decided we liked the quiet, less crowded rocky beaches and slow paced feel of Altea.

We truly wanted a slow vacation.  Jerry was not interested in doing any touristy things.  All he wanted to do was play at the beach.  Me and the kids were ok with that!!  Each day we would take our time in the mornings, have a nice breakfast.  Then head to the beach to play in the water.  After that we would head home, clean up and would go out to eat.  After eating we would usually walk the promenade and one evening we went to look at the boats in the harbor and watch the little crabs on the rocks.  That was our kind of vacation!

Here are a few pictures of our time!

On our way to Altea.  All across Spain you will find these huge billboard bulls.

First glimpses of the sea!!

View from the apartment

Sunrise!!  I got up early every morning at about 7:30 just to see this!!

There were times I was in the water more than the kids!!

Mr Rock Monster!!

Me and my girl!

 

 Jerry captured this shot and I just love it!

  

On our way back from Calpe we saw this guy in the sky!

The apartment

We were sad that our beach vacation was quickly over, but we had a great time and made some sweet memories!

Community

The nice thing about Spain is the people love to spend the summer months outdoors by the pool.  In our area almost every apartment complex that we have seen has a pool.  Ours included.  We live in a suburb north of Madrid, close to the airport called Alcobendas.  It's actually where the actress, Penelope Cruz is from...who was recently in town.  No sightings here!

The first few weeks after we moved in we didn't get to take advantage of the pool much as we were busy unpacking, getting registered in the city of Alcobendas, taking our little trip down south as well as working on our visas for Spain.  Once those things died down we were able to enjoy the pool.  I knew I wanted to before summer ended.  We went down a couple of times, then Jerry went on a trip to London for 6 days.  We had gotten most of our unpacking and cleaning done and I thought it would be nice for us to spend our days by the pool.  So we did!  

Before this time I could count on one hand how many times our kids had been swimming.  We just never had much access to a pool, but I learned very quickly what little fishies I have!  Karis especially.  She is jumping in, swimming around in the shallow end without a float, and doing somersaults in the water.  For some reason these two are the only pool pictures I have and they are not all that good.  

Pitiful, I know!  I completely slacked this summer on carrying a camera.  

Karis with her cute little goggles & swim cap.  I had to do something to help tame that hair!

Anyway, we had already gotten to know the lifeguard a bit who was from Romania and spoke some English.  I was really excited when a couple approached to introduce themselves.  The husband spoke English and the wife a little.  Their daughter is attending a private bilingual school and also spoke some English.  It was nice to be able to converse with them because right now my Spanish is very limited.

But the wife immediately suggested we get together to help each other with Spanish & English.  I was ecstatic!  They in turn introduced us to some other neighbors.  Each day we seemed to meet someone new.  A 17 year old girl who has studied English all through school, another family with kids our kid's age.  It was so nice to walk through the complex and be able to wave hello.  I was so excited for Jerry to get home and meet all these neighbors.

Then we saw an announcement that they were having a pool closing party.  A colleague had mentioned having one at her complex, so we weren't surprised.  It was going to be on Sunday afternoon.  We had time to get to church, come home for some lunch and head to the pool for one last time of the season (which I was a little sad about, I wasn't quite ready for the summer to end).

There were a few people we had seen before, but got to know several other families.  One family that's traveled to the US, another that the wife is an English school teacher, and yet others that spoke a bit of English.  All of them offering their help any time we needed it.  I am so thankful!!  I needed to find Spanish helpers, I just had no idea it would be offered to me so easily!

I am so looking forward to getting to know these families even more!!

Our Casa

We've just felt truly blessed by our new home!

When the first apartment that we really liked fell through we were really discouraged.  It was exactly the kind of area that we wanted to live in.  Parks close by, wide sidewalks, shops and a school in walking distance, open areas around for bike rides.
We kept searching for something else, but couldn't get that apartment (or rather the area) out of our minds.  When the realty agency contacted us to look at another (this one) we had no idea what we were in for!

Our landlord is incredible!!  The area is incredible!  And we have some incredible neighbors (more on that in another post)!!  We are loving it!  Now if we can just get the language down, I think we'll be set.  Now, for the pictures!  Welcome to our humilde casa (that's humble abode, I gotta start somewhere with this language!  Ha!).

Our entryway

To the right (in the picture above) is the kitchen

At the end of the kitchen is a laundry room

The living/dining room

Our terrace

The view

The kid's bathroom

Brennan's room

The girl's room, we're waiting for their bunk bed to come in.

Jerry's office

The master suite

Master Bath

No picture of our bedroom, it's not quite put together yet!

Thanks for taking the tour!

Third & Fourth Day - To the Beach & Morocco

To the beach we went!!  We were staying in the town of Benalmadena just south of the town of Malaga,  a city that attracts lots of British tourists and those looking to relocate.  It was a beautiful, glorious day in the midst of craziness!!  I had gotten away from home without packing Jerry’s or my beach towels, but we thought we could all just share.  We hit the beach and instantly came upon a kind of cabana area.  It was an umbrella with 2 chairs.  Beach towels could be requested as well as sand toys. The ladies' sign said “Let Maria take care of you!”  We thought we’d look into it expecting the price to be out of our range only to be pleasantly surprised that it was only €4.50 (just under $6) per chair (we rented 2) for the whole day.  That we could do!  I’m so glad we did!  Maria was so nice and sweet to our kids!  The beach was just a short walk in front of us where we played in the surf ALL day!  A great way to spend our 16th wedding anniversary!!  There were several restaurants set back further on the beach.  We enjoyed a nice, decently priced lunch without having to take our stuff with us or go far at all.  The Lord gave us a calm in the midst of our storm.  We couldn’t have asked for a better day!  Except for the sunburn I got on my back, ouch!!  It was worth it though!We got back to our holiday apartment that evening and learned that Jerry’s dad had woken up and was doing better.  Praise God!!  Things were going a bit better!

I was still dreading the trip to Morocco, but at least we had some sweet memories of the day before.  The roads in this area of Spain are small little beach roads and highways or you can pay for the toll road.  To save time we decided to pay for the toll roads towards the town of Tarifa at the southern tip of Spain.  Tarifa is about 31 kilometers (about 19 miles) from Tangier, Morocco.  In reading through Rick Steve’s travel book on Spain I learned that Tarifa is the windsurfing capital of Europe!!  As soon as we stepped out of our vehicle I learned why!  Oh my goodness, the wind!!!  Oooff!!  I have never experienced such wind!!  Not even my days in college in Plainview (west), TX!  Ha!!  I couldn’t see a thing because my hair was in my face the entire time!!
We had tried to buy ferry tickets online but it didn’t seem to work (we learned later that it took our money but gave us no tickets!  Grr!  We’re still working on that!).  Luckily the ferries go frequently enough that we were able to get tickets with no problems.  It was only a 40 minute trip but partway through the trip we learned that we needed to go through passport control on the boat.  And the line was horrendous!  I was really trying to enjoy this trip, riding a boat, going to Africa but that was all lost at this one moment!!  We were wanting to hurry so we could turn around and get on the next boat, but it didn’t work out that way.  Because this was also a ferry that carries cars, all the people who had cars had to get through passport control first so they could get their cars off the boat.  It still didn’t make it any easier and was still so frustrating.  Once we got off the boat we'd hoped to turn around and get right back on, but learned that we had to get another stamp clearing us to get back on the boat and return to Spain.  We ran what seemed like a mile through the maze of docks to get the stamp only to be stopped quickly by the longest line ever possible!!  My heart sunk!  And we missed the boat.  That meant we had another 2 hours until the next boat left.  Not enough time to go look around (which we weren’t really interested in doing anyway), so we sat....and waited.  We went to a little cafe in the ferry port for some drinks and a snack and that was it.  The time passed SLOWLY of course, and finally our ferry came.  We were one of the first ones on.  We wanted to be in a prime location to do passport control and get a good seat.  This ferry was much fuller.  We sat by the passport window only to learn that on the way to Spain you don’t do passport control on  the boat.  Grr again!!  Instead of having a good seat to look out on the water we were sitting in the middle of the boat.  And on the way back we hit some rough waters.  In Alaska, I grew up going deep sea fishing for halibut every summer.  I am use to rough waters, but this was making even me feel sick!!  I had given the kids Dramamine just in case.  Karis can get motion sick in the car, but the boat didn’t seem to phase her or the other 2, go figure (maybe the Dramamine really did work).  We tried to take some strolls around the boat and even walking was a challenge.    We got a good laugh out of it though.  It wasn’t long and people were getting sick.  Not fun!!  And both girls had to go to the bathroom during all this.  Tight stalls, moving up and down.  I was feeling icky.  We finally saw land and the harbor come into view.  I decided we were going below deck to be one of the first ones off.  I practically ran off the boat dragging the kids with me towards passport control!!  I was so happy to be on Spanish soil!   I practically kissed our van when we got to it!  Ha!  We were on our way back to our accommodations and found a Burger King knowing the kids needed a little treat after our day.
Here are just a very few pics on our Tarifa/Tangier trip.  To say we weren't in the mood for taking pictures is an understatement!  Ha!

You can see just a glimpse of the wind in Tarifa.

Tangier, Morocco

Flag of Morocco

 The ferry we rode

Ruins in Tarifa as well as the line of cars to get on the next ferry.

This had been a whirlwind trip.  In some ways I was so ready to get home, but I dreaded getting back in the car the next day.  We decided to get up early and head to the beach for one last dip in the waves!!  We had another wonderful morning at the beach, but I was sad to go.  The beach was our one reprieve during this whole trip and I didn’t want it to end.  Neither did the kids.  I think they were all crying as we left.  I wanted to cry along with them!!  We had a good trip home and were glad to have this trip behind us!  We had a great time at the beach and I can now say that I have been to Africa!!
Here are several pictures of our morning at the beach.  Ah, what fun times!!

 This picture of Brennan just cracks me up...he's struttin' his stuff!