H will be on a soccer tournament for eight days... he'll be leaving tomorrow night on a bus, along with the members of the Catalan team. This tournament is called Europeada. It's a European soccer championship for national minorities. He's with the "Katalans from Spain". I've seen them play, and I don't think they'll get too far, unless, of course, the other teams are even more amateur... That tournament will leave me to handle the Gremlins alone for eight days... shouldn't be too bad. My parents and sister will be off too, on a trip to Italy...

Here's a map of the regions/languages involved in the championship. Click to enlarge, if you're interested in our European ethnic/linguistic chaos...


UPDATE:
They will be playing today (sunday) at 5pm. I do hope they win, ok??? Gosh I felt so mean when I reread this post through Buff and James' eyes :-(

Here's the link http://www.europeada2008.net/

My poor neglected blog

I took these pictures last month, on Saint George, which is a big holiday here. According to the legend, a knight (Saint George) saved a princess and an entire town from a fierce dragon. Where the dragon's blood fell, roses flourished so each year women get roses from their husbands/boyfriends/fathers, and women are supposed to buy a book for the men... Roses come in almost all colors. Our roses were classical red.


It's a very special day so even if you're working, most people can have a break from their job and stroll down our rambla...




There are groups of amateurs like these people representing the legend and playing music on the street... The woman in the picture above is actually the princess, and the guy in green next to her, the dragon.



This is what we call the "tarlà". According to another legend, he was some sort of acrobat who entertained the neighbours of Argenteria street during a quarantine for an epidemic. Now we have this acrobat toy hanging on Argenteria on special occasions. It rotates from time to time...



And this is Alicia, holding the rose her father gave her...
So what do you say, James, Buffalo, Jessica ... would you come over for a visit? ;-)

Have a nice day

On the whole, I'm happy being a mom and I love my kids almost everyday ....
But it's hard to be around them when they're having a bad day, which happened today. Especially with the three year old. I think she was alternatively crying/whining at least 70% of the time. Which is a lot. For my nerves. I ended up wanting to scream and cry myself. To give you an idea, they looked like this today (this pics were actually taken half a year ago)...





At the supermarket, C threw a tantrum. One of those that make other customers look discreetly towards you and your kids, but wishing you and your brats just disappeared. The woman at the counter had the audacity to say "have a nice day". I'm sure she, along with the other customers in line, burst out laughing when I was out of sight!



And at the end of the day, I looked exactly like the "portrait of mom" Cristina drew just a few days ago. YES, THIS IS EXACTLY HOW I FELT AND LOOKED TODAY!!!! My hair, my mouth, I'm surprised my three year old could be so precise!!!



PD: Just for the record, the previous days were pretty good. Maybe I'm whining too??

Spring...

I worked from home today and took a break to go buy groceries...
I passed by this tree on the way to the supermarket. My mother says it's called "the love tree" I really have no idea what it is, really. But I think it's so pretty.


Just in front of the supermarket there's a small store with fresh fruit and vegetables... expensive too. This bunch of things cost 13 euros. By the way, have you ever tried raw fresh peas? They're good!
I must have passed at least three couples cuddling... Spring... or maybe it's just because tomorrow is Saint George, the most romantic day here?

It's been now 5 months since my husband had a seizure, I can't believe it! We feel so relieved, and think it's probably due to the addition of Zonegran to his regular pills....

The best of times doing nothing...

That's what we did this sunday, nothing. And it was great. It was a lazy morning, with Hubby organizing his music, me just... well reading and working in the house (not that much, really)... and the girls just playing and dressing up. They set up a "school for fairies", and A was Cinderella (not a fairy but she was in the school anyway) and C was Tinkerbell. As you can see, she was a groovy kind of Tinkerbell, because she didn't bother to take of her pyjama before dressing up, and decided that sunglasses gave her the perfect touch. Along with what she thought was lipstick. She found it in a drawer but was, in fact, concealer. She applied it to her lips, anyway... Then we went out for lunch at a tapas bar, strolled through the old part of town and went back home. A found my secret game... Playstation. Yes, I admit, at 38, I still like to play Tomb Raider. It's an old playstation, that I rescued some days ago from a forgotten box, and tried the game again. EHEM... A tried it but it was too hard for her. C decided to imitate Lara Croft and tried to climb on the shelves Lara's style... she's great at mimicking people...
Anyway, just a post so that this blog doesn't die completely...

Being a toddler is hard work

I took this pic of Cristina at a friend's house...
Doesn't it look like she's stressed??

Art class

We (I) signed up the whole family for an art class. It's every saturday morning, for three hours, and only during April. The first one was great. Our first job was to paint an animal on our hand. I did an octopus, and I was quite proud of my job. I felt like a kid again, even hoping that our teacher would praise my octopus, but no such luck, she seemed to save all her praises for the kids ;-)
A did something close to a butterfly... and C just put layer after layer of paint on her hand. She just loved seeing new colors appear everytime she put a new color on her hand... All the pictures came out blurred, so no pic of A's hand. As for my husband, I think he was trained too successfully by his mom, and he just wouldn't get his hands "dirty"... HA HA HA
Afterwards we played (there were four families), returned to class, did a small boat out of walnuts and a dolphin using a banana, which we ate too. We had a great day...

Have you heard?

Alicia, our 5 year old, lost her first baby tooth today. It must be on CNN, because she's been talking about this tooth endlessly for the last two days... As she reported, she lost her tooth at lunchtime in school, and her teacher taped it on a small pink card so she could show us. And we heard all the details several times, as I'm sure everyone in school did. She's so excited I doubt she'll sleep well, because she knows the tooth mouse (it's not a tooth fairy in this part of the world), will visit at night and leave a present...

Playing with puddles

Rainy day

It rained all day, so we were mainly indoors again, but this time at my in-laws. In the afternoon we made "brunyols", which is our typical pastry for Easter. We did it in the old house, because my MIL can't stand all the mess we seem to make :-)

Paint chaos

We stayed mostly home today... painting, modeling with playdoh and clay, playing with memory cards (I lost to A even though I tried so very hard, I must really be getting old), and watching a movie: The Nightmare before Christmas. I love the lyrics in this movie...
Does it sound like fun? Everything except picking up after them even though they did help... and cleaning paint all over the kitchen floor

This is the entrance of an old town, not far from where we live...

Have you ever tried....

sea urchin roe?
We had some at my parents'
It's considered a delicacy...

The way I see it...

Elections held in Spain last Sunday, with socialist victory, have proved once more that there are two Spains: a traditional, conservative one (in the moral sense, I'm not talking about economics) which will side with the church and still, in many cases, doesn't see Franco as a such bad part of our past (that would be PP), and a more progressive one that would definately condemn Franco's regime... The gay-lesbian marriage thing is just one of the laws Zapatero has brought (Socialists have also passed a law to harden the punishments for domestic violence and protect abused women more effectively, and have improved conditions for the working young people to access housing, given the huge rise in prices.
However, I don't think many people vote for that as much as they vote out of fear, fear of the others... to understand that, we'd have to take a look at our recent past ... Many of our problems still stem from the civil war (1936-1939) which brought a long dictatorship with Franco supported always by the catholic church. Among other things, Franco was determined to erradicate any trace of identity except Spanish, thus Catalan was forbidden (my mom would be spanked if she was caught speaking her own language at school!). In general terms, Catalans and most peripheral Spain fought to maintain a republic and avoid Franco rising to power, while another part of Spain was siding with the dictator, and they won.
We still have these two sides in Spain. Many people vote out of fear. Socialists have played that card: "Vote for us, or they will come!", and PP has played that card too: "Vote for us, or Catalans will rule and Spain will break!" PP has once again used the language/cultural issue, and Catalans have played a big role in Zapatero winning, not so much because they love him, but because we see the alternative as far worse.
The debates on TV didn't help PP either, their leader (Rajoy) actually brought up Irak on the debate, when that was a major factor for their losing elections in the past! That was clearly unwise (in my opinion). So Catalans fear PP and have been decisive in the socialist victory, and the same has happened in the basque country. They have voted more for socialists, and the killing of a former councilman triggered the anger in many people who rebelled against ETA's "recommendation" that they should abstain from voting, and have hugely supported socialists....

So to answer your question, James, the socialists victory is ok with me... but only ok...

Trying to explain this in English is a bit of a challenge...!

ETA had to appear in this campaign and murder again. This time it was a politician not even active, he had been a town councilman some years go but that's the point, those who are have escort, so this man didn't. He was an easy target. I don't understand these idiots... what do they want??

To continue with my pics, A started swimming today without a back float, so this is an important photograph!...

American dream?

H and I were watching the news yesterday and a piece about elections in the US caught our attention. It was about Obama, and a team of reporters had actually interviewed Obama's mother in Kenya. The woman was dressed in traditional African clothing and spoke about proudly about his son. H said "This truly is the American dream...!" We have elections in Spain soon aswell (next sunday) and I think we still need to learn a lot about the US, even though it's not a perfect country either. It would be unthinkable in Spain to have someone running for president with relatives say in Morocco or any other African country. Our society is still quite prejudiced, and not just about people from other countries, in fact nobody could picture a Catalan running for president of Spain, and that would have nothing to do with race or ethnicity. Likewise, there was some controversy when Catalans elected president for our comunity because the winner is not a perfect Catalan. Mr Montilla was not born here, he has Andalusian descent and a Spanish last name. He won though. I wonder if I'll ever see a Catalan as president of the country. We really do have a long way to go...

To continue with my photographic journal (I blame Jessica for that) here's a pic inside my workplace...

Escudella i carn d'olla

Our lunch today was the most typical dish in Catalan cuisine: escudella. It's a winter stew with lots of vegetables, meat and soup that is usually served in two parts, first the soup with pasta (tiny type of pasta) or rice, and then the meat with vegetables seasoned with just olive oil and a bit of salt. I use my mom's recipe, and I prepared two big meatballs with minced meat, egg, garlic, parsley and minced bread, made a soup with carrots, leek, celery, turnip, cabbage and pieces of lamb, veal, chicken and pork. When the meat was soft enough I took it out of the pot and prepared the two separate dishes. It's laborious... and I actually began making it the day before... here are some pics...

This is the minced meat, bread and egg I used...


I used frozen garlic and parsley cubes (that's not in my mom's recipe, she'd say this is not healthy, but this way your hands don't stink of garlic)


This is what we call "pilota" which is made of minced meat. It's actually like big meatballs...


We always cook and season with olive oil


On another note... it's been more than three months since H had his last seizure... I almost don't dare say it...

Just some pics of the day

With C in the elevator...

A snack...

Watching tv...

The view from our terrace

Birthday

We celebrated my dad's 80th birthday...