Barcelona

Barcelona is a glorious city filled with beautiful and unique architecture, wonderful markets and amazing churches. I'd love to go back!

I'll catch up, I promise!

I have a good excuse. We were gone for 3 weeks. On vacation, internet use cost 55 cents a minute. No blog updates at that price. It was Christmas Christmas everywhere when we got home. Running all day, old age collapse at night.
After today, I'll be at home with time on my hands. I'll briefly blog about our fabulous trip abroad and then I'll do Christmas.
Thanks for being patient :-)

Day 1 & 2 in Barcelona

After a good nights sleep Al and I headed out for a walking tour of the city. We started at the Music Center and then visited the Cathedral of Barcelona. Both are examples of colorful Catalan architecture. Then we walked down to the port and saw some very fancy and very large yachts. Where do these people make the kind of money that can afford these gigantic boats? By this time we were getting hungry so we walked down to the sand. As we were gazing at the blue Med Sea, I noticed an older man looking out to sea wearing a tiny thong. As I continued to look, the man turned toward me. Again I was surprised that this man would wear such a tiny tiny swimsuit. Suddenly I realized that he wasn´t wearing a thong or anything else. My American sensibilities told me to avert my eyes but my curiosity kept drawing me back. Al agreed that the guy was naked and that he was proud of it. After a quick picture we continued toward our lunch destination. As we sat down at this funky little cafe on the sand, I looked back at the boardwalk and noticed an older man riding his bike along the path. And guess what? He was also buck naked! OW OW OW! After our lunch, Al and I went exploring along the boardwalk and came upon another group of totally naked people frolicking in the sand. Interestingly enough, when in France the beautiful young women bare their tanned and perky breasts. Here in Spain, fat old men bare it all. Toto, I don´t think we´re in Kansas anymore. And who says travel abroad isn´t educational. From here we stumbled across a fully clothed monument to Christopher Columbus pointing to America. Small world eh? Later that eveing we ate at a cute restaurant, took another long walk and then crashed at the hotel. This morning we walked to La Sagrada Familia, a cathedral that Antoni Gaudi started building in 1890. It is still under construction and will be finished in 20 years...maybe. I won´t try to describe it because it defies description. Suffice it to say it is amazing and huge and amazing! We spent 2 hours enjoying an audio guided tour of the place and then headed way down the road to the Picasso Museum. Wow! That guy is a crazy good painter. He started when he was 15 and painted like the old masters...portrait style, then progressed to the wild stuff we are now familiar with. It was really interesting. We are in an interenet cafe, sipping on yummy red wine, listening to good jazz and trying to figure out how to download our pictures. Hopefully we´ll add them on at the end. If not, we´ll update tomorrow on the ship.

Twas the Night Before Halloween

Thursday night we had our usual gang of diners, minus Corban and Lauren, over for crab cake sandwiches, french fries, lemon/pineapple jello salad and fresh vegees. I had seen a fun idea in one of the many magazines I read so I decided to try and make a Halloween centerpiece. You start with a bunch of moon pies for the owl's head/face. I melted chocolate almond bark for the "glue", seperated 2 Oreo cookies and used the white sides for the eyes. Add a little chocolate glue to the back of a black M&M and you have eyeballs. And one piece of candy corn makes the perfect owl nose. Stick a dowel in the side of the moon pie, tie a halloween ribbon around the dowel, stick the dowel in a black and orange container, cover with black and white shredded paper and you've got a pretty cool centerpiece. I did some plain pies coated with colored candy just to add interest. As an extra bonus, it's completely edible!

The next night was Halloween and Al and I manned the fort while AJ, Maryanne & Porter had dinner at JJ & Jana's. This year we decided to count the number of kids that came trick or treating and between 6:40 and 9:00 when I turned off the porch light, we had 147 little pricesses, vampires, hobos and Harry Potters. What fun!

IT'S A BOY!!

Last night we had a "reveal" party and this is the minute the kids found out

that they're having a boy. Details about the party later.

I have to hurry to my Bible study this morning but I wanted to post the great news about Jana and JJ. Yesterday the ultrasound showed without a doubt that they are having a baby boy. If he was born today his name would be Finn Tokala Avison. But by March, who knows. Thanks to all of you who have prayed for this little guy. Keep it up!

Double Datin' with the Folks

On Thursday night, Dad and Jeanne treated Al and I to an evening of Musical Theater. A group of Broadway performers visited Salem and sang 25-30 selections from famous Broadway musicals. The 5 singers hit on everything from Oklahoma, to Hair, to Cabaret, to Phantom of the Opera, to Rent and a whole lot more. It was 2 hours of great music mixed in with a lot of "behind the scenes" Broadway. It was fun to realize that Al and I had seen almost all of the plays that were featured in the program. As usual the Elsinore theater was beautiful and a nice woman in front of us agreed to take our picture. Obviously Jeanne didn't get the memo that black was the uniform of the day. It's a pretty good picture tho, don't ya think?

Before the theater, we met for dinner at a little French restaurant here in town. I had never been to La Capitale on State Street but I will be going there again. The atmosphere was lovely and the food delish. I had a yummy baked eggplant dish, Al had a thick rich onion soup and epicurian dare devil Dad had a hamburger that he split with Jeanne. The salads were fresh and came with toast points smothered in goat cheese...O baby! Al and I also found a new wine that we love. It's a pinot gris/guwertziminer that is dry and light and so so good. Anyway. the whole evening was delightful and we didn't even have to go to Portland.

Susie Homemaker Times 2

I don't sew very well but I can do curtains

Porter is lovin' eating avacados and sweet potaoes mixed with breast milk. Mmmmm!

Last weekend Al, AJ & JJ drove to Chico CA. for the National YoYo Championships. While they were away, Maryanne and I practiced our domestic goddess skills. We both got caught up on all our ironing, Maryanne made and then froze a whole bunch of organic baby food (sweet potatoes and avacado) for Porter and I made the curtains for his room at the new house. You'll notice there are no pictures of either MA or me and that's because we never got out of our jammies. Neither of us was fit for photographic posterity AND we wanted nothing out there on the web that could be used for blackmail purposes down the road. Sometimes it's fun to just be home and do homey things. Thank goodness no one came to the door!

The Awesome Kroc Center

South Salem makes a fast break towards the goal.

Last Friday night Al and I had the pleasure of watching our multi talented neice Lauren, play water polo for South Salem High School. Al was in 7th heaven watching the teams "duke it out" and remebering his glory days as an All American WP player in high school and college. The Kroc Center compition pool is state of the art and a real gift to our schools. Everyone of our public pools have closed due to lack of funds so the Kroc Center came about at just the right time. Besides the pools, there are wonderful community rooms, a day care center, a pretty nice work out area, a fantastic gym, an amazing kitchen, a beautiful chapel/theater and tons of classes and events that the public can be involved in. I don't love McDonald's food, butI'm sure impressed by what McDonald's money has done for Salem.

The frighteningly high rock wall.

The very fast and very tall water slide in the "play" pool.

Expert Advice

All the baby experts say that your baby will give you clues when they are ready to eat solid foods. I think Porter is ready, don't you?

We did clean the high chair and the table with Clorox Wipes

I'm Back In Business

I finally decided on a new camera! I waffled back and forth, looking at a bigger fancier model, but in the end decided on the sweet little Canon Powershot. The other camera may have been better for our vacation in November but I knew that I would get tired of lugging around a bigger and heavier body. Anyway, I'm happy with my little Powershot. Now I have to get back in the habit of taking pictures and blogging.