Allerton Park

To continue our enjoyment of this delightfully sunny and abundant spring, we invited the Rowley family to join us on a little excursion to Allerton Park in Champaign.  Neither of our families had ever been there so it was fun to discover it together.  We had a little picnic and then hiked through the woods.  The path circles back around to the main house and who should we see lounging on the grass?  Sean and Jessa Mitchell and Sean's lovely new wife, Alecia!  It was such a nice surprise to run into them.  We also tried our hand at flying a kite on the expansive lawn.  Overall, a very fun afternoon!

Tea for 1

When my lovely friend Twila visited us in Spain, she brought the most exquisite green tea blend from Paris and left it with us.  It is loose tea and I always wanted more than just one cup so I decided that I absolutely needed to get a sweet little teapot with a diffuser in the lid.  I jumped on over to Amazon and found the perfect thing.  When it arrived, I remembered that I had a charming set of tiny tea cups from Japan that were still in the box.  They go swimmingly together, don't you agree?  Aaaaaahhhh, it makes me happy

Lake of the Woods

It was so nice to go on a little field trip with our homeschool friends.  A lot of them we haven't seen at all since we returned from our trip.  It was so nice to reconnect and also spend time in nature.  I think the universe is trying to tell me that Illinois is incredibly beautiful and I need to just stop with the restlessness and always wanting to be somewhere else.

Spring!

There is evidence all around that Spring has sprung and it makes me so happy!

But our friends, the McLaughlins, are moving which makes me so sad.  They were supposed to be the more permanent ones who kept us company forever! We were able to have dinner with them one last time and enjoy a little walk around their neighborhood.

Tranquilo

my eyes stay closed, 
blocking out the
warm yellow light,
while birds sing lustily
outside my open window;
jasmine and lemon blossom
breeze in with the sea air,
swirling around my feet
as they touch the
morning cold tile;
the whine of the gate,
the screech of the
neighbor's shutters,
the toll of the church bells,
announce the new day.

Another day of escape,
another day of
tranquility.

Pascua

We made it home just in time to participate in some of the Semana Santa (Holy Week) celebrations.  There were parades every night that whole week and we could often hear trumpets playing long after midnight.  On Good Friday we walked two blocks to the center of our little town to watch the parade that night.

They were selling churros on the street with melted chocolate for dipping -- so so yummy!  Gah!

 I do have some video of the parade if you ever want to see, but actually the audio is the essential thing.  There were dozens of bands from each little church in the area playing this haunting, slow trumpet music.  Actually, there were several playing bagpipes as well!  I've never heard music quite like it.  Then each parish had people dressed in robes and hoods, solemnly following the bands.  They were swinging incense, holding scepters, carrying crosses, and a lot of them were barefoot.  I admired their piety, but we couldn't help thinking it was all terribly creepy.  It is impossible to separate those hoods from the horror and violence that happens in our own country.

 Each church had their own colors and their own special statue that they bring out for Easter.

Earlier we had seen this at a gift shop in Cartagena -- the only sign in English -- it says, "For Holy Week, not KKK"

On Easter Sunday we were so so tempted to stay in San Pedro because they were having another parade and releasing hundreds of white doves.  Doves!!!!  Doesn't that sound neat?  But we were good and went to our own church.

planes, trains, and automobiles

So now to finish our harrowing tale... We stopped at a lovely boulangerie on our way to the train station:

Seriously, the croissants were amazing!  And we also grabbed some chicken salad and pastries for our long journey (spoiler alert: they were also tres magnifique!)  There was a huge crowd at the train station and a bit of a wait, but eventually we were settled in for the day.  And what a day!  The French countryside is unlike any other place in the world.  We spent the entire afternoon pointing out craggy peaks, fairy tale-like villages, lonely farmhouses, majestic castles, picturesque bridges, and winding streams.  We were ready right then and there to buy some land, attend the local church, and make some new friends, haha!  And then Spain!  Girona is gorgeous!  We hadn't really looked at living there because they speak Catalan and it isn't quite as warm, but it sure is pretty.  Then to the Barcelona airport.  It took a while to get our rental car and then Matthew didn't have his drivers license so they told us that he couldn't drive... oh, about one million times!  Even as we were walking way, the man yelled out, "Oh!  One more thing!  Only Mary should be driving that car!"  We didn't have a GPS, but I thought we could just follow the signs south.  Hahahahahha, oh my.  So naive.  Yes, we found a road south, but it wasn't the main one by any stretch of the imagination and we crawled through a mountain pass on a windy two lane road.  After a few hours we found the freeway, traversed the gustiest peaks -- there were warning signs every few feet so it must always be like that.  Eventually I pulled over because our little car was having such a hard time and we could barely walk across the parking lot.  We ate some tortilla espanol for late dinner and finally pulled onto our sleepy street around 3:00 AM on Thursday morning...  Only three days and I don't even want to say how much money later.  It was so nice to peek in on the sleeping children and I was never so happy as that night (morning) to climb into our hard and lumpy bed.  Around 7:00 AM Archie crept in, "Mom, is that really you???"