Spring has finally arrived. The weather was actually quite nice this year, even in February when we were working on the hen house, despite the unusually persistent winds. Getting the spring weather to stick here, though, seems to have been unusually tricky. Looking back on pictures of other years, by fallas time, I'm usually out of my long sleeves, and am dressing more for spring. There were days that are warm enough for that, but somehow this year cooler, wetter weather always seemed to keep coming back. That said, summer-like weather seems to have finally arrived and I think that this time it might even stay.
Last Easter, you may recall, we began a tradition of getting together with Mauri's cousins and their kids over the holiday. The tradition here is to bring a "mona" outside to eat somewhere. Last year we chose the beach, and found that Eric hated the sand.
I was excited to go to the beach this year, now that Eric seems to like it much better, but the weather didn't cooperate on the date we chose to get together. I didn't let that stop me from getting there with Eric, though. On the Thursday before Easter, Jueves Santo, I took Eric to the beach. There was only a half day of school, and I didn't figure that it was worth my while to bring Eric to school for such a short period of time. So, I took advantage of the day off for our field trip.
Eric had lots of fun playing with the sand and the toys that I brought him. At first, he didn't want to take his shoes off, but after awhile he got used to it and forgot all about them. He didn't want to take his pants off to go in the water, though, so I didn't let him go in.
Eric with Mauri's cousin's son, Martín
The beach was packed with people, but after a little while it started to rain a few drops. Everybody cleared off the beach, and we had it all to ourselves. Eric had a great time, and it was hard to get him to leave.
We didn't let the bad weather keep up from getting together, though. Instead we decided to go to "Mon de Festa," the place where we had celebrated Sheyla's birthday a few weeks back. The adults, trying to talk over the sound of lots of kids playing in the background, all left with headaches and sore throats from yelling over the noise. The kids, on the other hand, had a blast.
At one point Eric started to cry after being hit in the head by a ball. Of course, he had been throwing just as many himself.
This time, I had been able to avoid the whole taking-shoes-off tantrum because Eric was so excited about being there again that he just wanted to get playing. That was a nice change.
We also had Mauri's cousin, who was visiting from Valencia for the holidays, over to our house. Her husband wanted to make us a paella to thank Mauri for giving them fish and shrimp. Eric and their daughter, Mariola, had fun playing outside with the hens and the trampoline.
Eric keeps thinking about the beach, though. So, on last Thursday, when I picked him up from school, I brought him directly to the beach. It was really warm outside, so I figured it was a perfect evening to have fun playing with the sand.
I didn't expect that Eric would want to play in the water. At first, once again, he didn't want to take his shoes off. Once he saw me take mine off, though, and wet my feet in the water, he wanted to do the very same thing.
I took his shoes off and rolled up his pants, and he happily started to run along the water line. Once he decided to jump in the water, I had to take his pants off because his pants kept unrolling and getting wet. Even then, he ended up soaking his t-shirt.
The real fun for Eric began, though, when a random dog showed up wanting to play with Eric. I, of course, was very hesitant, especially at first. Try stopping Eric from throwing fistfuls of sand towards the dog in the water, though. You can see some of the fun in this vídeo:
Since then, over the weekend, we were mostly working on a new playhouse for Eric. Maite had an old wood house that she wanted to remove, and she wanted to give it to her Godson, Eric, to be used as a playhouse. For now, Mauri would just love to use it to get some of Eric's toys out of his own playhouse, ahem, tool shed.
It was painted white, but Mauri wanted it to be the same natural wood color as the hen house. So, while we began the task together of cleaning off the old paint a couple of weekends ago, I spent the better part of last week finishing it up. This past weekend, Mauri helped me put it back together. The work isn't done, though. This week, I have been painting it. Now it just needs the roofing material and an "Eric's house" sign!
As a break from the work, I convinced Mauri to take us to the beach Sunday evening. We went to a deserted, seaweed filled area so that we could take the dogs. It was Kahlua's first visit to the beach, but once she saw Sheena jump into the water, she quickly followed behind her. They, and Eric, had a lot of fun.
Eric keeps telling me "Mommy, beach!!" So, I decided to go out and buy a little pool for him to be able to play in the water on the days that I don't want to have sand everywhere. That said, I have been contemplating trying to make him a sandbox out of pallets, too. I'll write more about all of the that, and show more pictures, in the next post. Here's one picture, though, to give you an idea of the fun. Did I mention that it's been warm out lately?!?!?
You may have noticed in the beach pictures, that Eric is wearing a homemade Wall-E shirt. No, it's not Cars! I know, I know!!
Lately he has been asking for new movies to watch. His favorites are Wall-E, "Balloons" (aka. Up), and "este guau guau" (aka. Bolt). He seems to especially love Wall-E, though, so I have since made him several Wall-E t-shirts. My freezer paper stenciled t-shirts just seem to keep getting more and more complex!
All of this, though, brings me to one last topic...
I have decided to branch off and make a "making things" blog. I'm calling it that, for now, because I think I will include a lot of different topics like crafting, baking, decorating, building, hen care... You get the idea. My reason is that I have been monitoring traffic on this blog, and I'm starting to get a lot more views from people I don't know. (Or, at least, I'm assuming that from the way the numbers are rising.)
I like sharing the things I make, and the "how to's" of it all, but this blog wasn't really meant for that. It was meant for me to keep my family and friends up to date with all of Eric's fun new activities. So, by creating a new blog, I hope to send interested crafty people that way, and keep family and friends here on this more personal blog.
For those of you that are interested in the crafty side of it all, I will try to remember to send links to the new entries from here. For now, here is the link to the new blog, but there isn't much there yet. I have only just set it up!!
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