2nd grade!!

Family Pictures 2012

All pictures taken by R. Van Orman - thanks Richard!!

Summer, Summer, Summer

Ally's best little friends from school - Taylor, Keira, Ally and Lize-Marie

Grandma Vi's 80th Birthday Weekend

The second weekend of July we went to Redcliff to celebrate Grandma Vi's 80th birthday!

We rode horses with Nana.

We watched Redcliff's Centenial Birthday parade.

We cheered loudly when we saw Grandpa Ralph's amazing float! 

We ate birthday cake (2 actually)!

It was so fun to hang out with all of our family :)

Spain: Day 14-16

June 23rd, 2012

Our trip is almost over!  Today we drove to Cordova.  Driving took almost all day but we did get a chance to tour The Grand Mosque and see a Flamenco show.

The Grand Mosque was originally a pagan temple, then a Visigothic Christian church, before the Umayyad Moors converted the building into a mosque and then built a new mosque on the site. After the Spanish Reconquista, it became a Roman Catholic church, with a plateresque cathedral later inserted into the centre of the large Moorish building.

 

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The Calleja de las Flores is one of the most popular tourist streets of Córdoba. 

 

All the water came in glass bottles. I thought with one was especially pretty.  Twice we were given a complimentary "taster glass" of wine.  I think some of the servers were mildly surprised that we didn't want to drink.

 It was SO hot I think we all wanted to jump into this pretty little moat.  July and August are regularly 40+ C.

The plaque on this guy said you needed to rub his shoes for good luck.  We all did this as we wanted our plane the next day to not crash.

Flamenco is a genre of Spanish music, song and dance in southern Spain, that includes singing, guitar playing, dance and palmas (handclaps). It was pretty dark so the Flamenco pictures didn't turn out very well.  The guitar player was amazing while the singer sounded like was angry and yelling :)  The show was very entertaining.



Two beautiful pictures that Warren took of the Grand Mosque at night.

The entrance to the Roman Bridge

The Roman Bridge

The next day we found the church in Cordova and even had help from a Gypsy woman who found us a parking spot :)  After church we drove to Madrid and returned the car.  We spent the night in a very modern looking hotel and caught our flight home the next morning.  It was a great trip and, at lunch, we were all brainstorming where our next trip would be!

THE END :)



Spain: Day 13

June 22nd, 2012

After being so busy, we decided to have a beach day.  The beach day only lasted until about 4pm. 

So, we headed to Malaga.  We saw the Roman Theatre of Maalga.  Malaga's Roman theatre lies at the foot of the Alcazaba fortress in the western part of the city. It was discovered in 1951, after having remained buried underground for many centuries. Dating back to the first century, it was built during the Empire of Augustus.

Karen and I walking down a pretty road

Warren at the Picaso Museum

Catholic Cathedral of some sort :)