This week has been loco. I spent 5-ish days in San Diego for some meetings and to meet baby Paxton, and Tyler had to move on his own with the Presley and Bodhi to a new tiny apartment for while I was gone. We all missed each other a lot. I got "home" just in time to move again, this time by car (a big one!) from Spain to France. A 5 hour drive from Valencia landed us just over the border in beautiful Canet en Roussillon, stunning beach in the south of France. Presley said "Hola" to everyone and I was uncharacteristic silent during dinner, pretty much stunned by my inability to speak more than two words of the language. Tyler dusted off his two decades old school French to order us a spectacular dinner, including the most amazing crepes. We must return to Canet next time we are in the area. Tres manufique! The morning after Canet-en-Roussillon, we drove north towards Provence and stopped at the chateau Mas Merlet and ate at the restaurant Le M, complete with gorgeous landscape, amazing food, horses, and probably our Christmas card photo taken by the proprietor. Highly recommend. Presley was wiped out so slept in the car while we stopped for our first French wine tasting experience. Bodhi met a nice big dog. Overall, it was a good day. More tomorrow on arriving at our next destination later that evening. It was a doozy.

I don't cry much. In fact, a part of me struggles to cry at even the saddest moments of my life. But I cried tonight while piggy-backing Presley through the bustling streets of Valencia, Spain on our last night here. It was fittingly raining most of the day, symbolic of my feelings on leaving. Its been hard at times, but more so, some of the most precious moments of my life. I was able to realize a dream I've had most of my adult life - to truly live in a foreign country. The food wasn't my favorite, and it was BALLS hot most of the time, but we loved it all. The people, the beaches, the ridiculously affordable good wine....and the memories will last forever. My daughter, who always teases me because she longs to see me cry...maybe to connect with me because she is so in touch with her own emotions???...She said, "Mom, we are going to have new adventures from here." So wise. And we will. But a bittersweet goodbye none the less. Pics below of my 3.5 mile lap of our city during P's siesta, and her favorite grumpy face at dinner after. Hasta Luego Valencia. Rezo para que volvamos algun dia. <3

I've watched countless sunsets over the ocean, and quite a few sunrises while on the other side of the planet. But over the last few evenings, we've been witnessing the moon rising over the water at the exact time as the sun is setting. Its the most magical thing. On the night of the full moon, we planned a beach picnic and it was as epic as we hoped. The light was so bright it looks like a sunrise. Presley got bored pretty easily so she got the iPad as we snapped pictures for an hour.

Yesterday after school, we headed to Bunol (famous for the Tomatina Festival where thousands of people throw tomatoes at each other for an hour once per year). Given my lack of desire to have a perfectly good piece of food at my face, we went two weeks after the festival to go to a cheeky little water hole called Cueva Turche a few miles from the town. The beautiful rock formations are 70 million years old! The fresh water was refreshingly cold, which says a lot because even the ocean has been like bath water since we arrived in Spain. We splashed around in the water for a few hours, Tyler made us nervous by jumping off a rock and I even convinced Presley to join me in the cave for a photo. A bunch of big dudes beat us there and crowded our photo, but all in all, a great trip.

We said goodbye this week to our first apartment in Spain. We will remember it always! The elevator was ridiculously hot and really slow and had a tv screen on it that always gave us the wrong weather report. But the apartment was a lovely home for 5 weeks and we found out that we absolutely need to buy a panini press. We've moved to a nice apartment on a lovely beach called Patacona with an amazing pool. The Spanish really know how to beach. There are little beach bars every couple of hundred yards that have food, drinks and music all day and well in to the night. People bring pop up tables along the boardwalk and have dinner with wine while kids run around on play structures that are also all over the beach. We also went for a long drive this week down to Alicante and went to Grandella Cove with picture perfect water. We did some stand up (and falling down) paddle boarding. Presley is getting really comfortable in the ocean which was on Tyler's bucket list. Another lovely meal on the side of the road on the way at a place perfectly named Oasis. Bodhi watched in agony as a big hairy German Shepard ate a giant rib bone at the table next to us.

It’s that time of year where I would normally snap a picture of Presley in front of our green door to celebrate a new school year starting. Instead, today we dropped her off for her first day at Spanish language school. There were only tears of joy (from us) after drop off after 5 straight weeks of family travel. She stayed for 3 glorious hours and came home knowing the colors of the rainbow (en español, arcoíris). Her motivation to learn was slightly higher after meeting a cute Spanish girl at the beach this week. She has 10 days ahead of her of intensive language study before we leave for the next leg of our adventure.

Oh man. Well it took me a couple of days to get this one created because it was a rough travel day. Kiddo's passport expires in January and there were exactly zero appointments in the States to get it renewed in time for this trip, so we scheduled a two day trip to Madrid to get it renewed. We were feeling really good about ourselves because we managed to convince the consulate to expedite us without an appointment by being there 30 minutes before opening. (Luckily (unluckily), I had a bit of experience on this one from when my passport was stolen in Barcelona 15 years ago). After submittal went through, we went back to our little hotel room and packed up a day early to head "home". While Tyler was fetching the car, Presley was chasing Bodhi through the hotel room and tripped and fell face first on to the corner of the Murphy bed, and when I managed to finally see her face, I gasped. She cut her forehead, slashed her eyelid and her eye itself had blood in it. One failed attempt at a local urgent care that didn't see kids, and we landed at the hospital, where, once again, my poor Spanish language skills were put to the test. Thankfully, I finally managed to send them our supplemental travel health insurance and they treated her. They put some numbing gel on for an hour and then assessed for stitches, ultimately deciding she only needed glue. I'm thanking all her Nana and Grandma angels for the near miss. The eye blood was only a superficial scratch at the tear duct. Just a slightly different angle and it would have been a whole different story.

We had one of our strangest days of the trip so far when we attempted to visit some pre-historic caves in the tiny charming town of Bocairent. We drove for about an hour and then stopped at a cool old building along the side of a road to grab a bite to eat before exploring. Walking in, we quickly realized we found something special. Super funky decor and a wonderful aroma of food greeted us immediately, along with a fifty-something Spaniard who was very grumpy that we did not have a reservation. He yelled loudly across the room and a lovely woman greeted us with a smile. There was zero cell service so my translation app was not functional, but she explained in Catalan that all we needed to know was that there was food and wine there. We agreed and followed her down some stairs into a dim room that was even stranger than the top floor. There were roughly 30 tables in the room...really more like a cave...and only one other couple there. After sitting for about 10 minutes, the two people began to drop stuff at our table. Water, wine to start, and then a casserole dish with delicious creamy cauliflower. Another 15 minutes passed as we tried to get someone's attention to ask for a menu. We never received it, but instead received another casserole dish of pasta salad, then another with some other pasta with broccoli and cheese. It was clear by this point that it was a set menu, so we panicked, realizing they have no idea that we don't eat meat! Soon enough, I was able to communicate that we ate pescado but not carne and grumpy man was not impressed. The nice lady came by a few minutes later confirming we also didn't eat ham. At least an hour and a half passed with at least 4 or 5 courses in casserole dishes. Everything was delicious. People began to pour in, filling every single table. Presley was antsy so we took turns walking around, both wondering how long this unplanned meal was going to take. Spoiler alert - we didn't leave for 4 hours! The place turned out to be an old textile factory with a river that had been diverted for use in the mill. The man lived there in a tiny room in the back and the lovely woman was his sister. The property was beautiful...streams and little bridges all around with dragonflies and birds, and some of the biggest fig trees we've ever seen. We met a young Dutch boy who spoke English and explained that we had walked in to a 15 course meal! Plates of vegetarian paella and fried fish and a bunch of other little things kept coming until finally, we were offered dessert and coffee. Once the meal was coming to an end, the man softened and promised to show us something outside with the keys. After paying (the entire meal was $35 each for me and Tyler and free for Presley, INCLUDING THE WINE), he walked us outside and opened a tiny door. We expected it to be a tour of the underbelly of the old factory, but what was inside, couldn't have been further than our expectations. It was a giant bounce house! Presley ended up jumping for another hour as we chatted with the Dutch kid's parents. Mom turned out to be from Columbia (which is the first stop on the second half or our trip!), and her Dad and brother run a hotel there. We finally hit the road towards Bocairent, parked on a tiny street, and walked in the blistering heat up and down the cobblestones until arriving at the entrance to the park with the Moorish caves and guess what? They were sold out for the day. We hiked back down, petting stray cats along the way, and Presley slept the whole way home. We exchanged info with the Dutch/Columbian couple and promised to reach out to her family for help in Columbia. All's well that ends well! Name of the restaurant if you are ever in Valencia - Moli del Pas.

We are finishing out week 3 here in Valencia Spain, and starting to get in to the groove. Our home office is located at our dining table, Tyler and I face to face with me taking up most of the space with my two laptops and multiple gadgets that are taking a bit of the edge off from our very non-ergonomic setup. Our days are far from routine at this point, but they look something like this: 9:30/10:00 a.m., the unlucky one of us gets up with Presley and tries (with varying success), to keep her quietly entertained while the other one sleeps until 10:30 or 11. 11/12, have breakfast and walk Bodhi as we take turns checking in on afternoon emails from the homeland. 1-4, go to the beach, pool or in to town to see what we can see. Its been really hot (in the 90s - mid 30s celsius which I am beginning to correlate my days to) so anything outside of pool/beach usually results in us desperately searching for a restaurant or shop with air conditioning while fighting over my battery operated fan. 5pm - Presley iPad time which, if we are lucky, leads to a few hour siesta 5pm is 8 am back at home, so Tyler and I usually sit down to work for a few hours. 8/9 pm, cook or go out to dinner Between 10 and 11, put Presley to bed (I know, right?!) Work until 1 or 1:30 a.m. (Double I know, right?) Our first lease is up on September 3rd so we've been spending any spare time we have searching for the next place to hang our uniquely American looking hats. (We've embarrassingly realized we are the only ones wearing baseball hats outside). Since its been so hot, we've been aiming to land somewhere close to the beach. Unfortunately though, we've learned that the beach rentals are either weekly/monthly in the summer, but then September - May, the owners prefer a longer lease. So we've booked a week or so at the beach for when we check out from here, and then, we will see where the wind blows us. Current thought is we will pack up when it gets a little cooler and start spending 2 weeks each in the other countries in Europe on our short list. Stay tuned! Here are some pictures from in and around our place.

We finished out our second week in Spain with a weekend trip to Barcelona. Our friends from San Diego (who used to live there) were visiting, so it was a perfect opportunity to explore the City. We visited some of the highlights of the City - Parc Guell and Sagrada Familia, both famous sites by the amazing Antoni Gaudí. The Dailey family stayed right in the heart of the City across from the Casa Batllo which is a stunner! Presley had a ball being amongst a tribe of kids and walked miles each day thanks to them!

We explored Valencia today on bicycles, spending most of our time in Ciutat Vella, the old city. We started the morning (12:30 honestly) at one of the millions of adorable coffee shops, and ended with me getting us a bit lost converting our intended 6 mile ride to an 8 mile ride. We marveled at the beauty of the Valencia Cathedral, and lit a candle for Tyler's Mom Nancy, who passed away this week from the long goodbye, aka Alzheimers Disease. Ice cream was our usual bribe to convince Presley to walk even for 5 minutes in the intense heat.

Today we rented a car and drove south from Valencia, through Parc Natural de l'Albufera and stopped at several beaches, ending at Cullera. More beautiful beaches with warm water and lots of ice cream (helado fresas por favor!).