Happy Holidays

Best wishes for a very Merry Christmas and a splendid New Year!

from~ The Biddulph Family

December's Activities

December is always a busy month and this year was no exception. We managed to get the Christmas decorations up AND make a sizable dent in the cleanup of our household shipment, so we're feeling pretty proud of ourselves. Our last Christmas season was more hectic than usual (with the evacuation), so we especially enjoyed being able to stay close to home this year. We went downtown to see the Christmas lights in Madrid, made a gingerbread house, and the boys participated in Christmas plays at school and church (James was a shepherd and Simon was a lamb).

James successfully avoided sitting on Santa's lap even though we attended 2 parties where he was in attendance. (Such a weird tradition...) There is no point in perpetuating the Santa myth at our house, because our boys find him creepy. Oh well... That just means we don't have to tell our kids any fibs, which is probably the best scenario anyway. It also simpifies differentiating between the real and fake meanings of Christmas. If you ask James, he'd probably tell you that Christmas is a birthday party for Jesus and Papa supplies the presents.  So...still a bit fuzzy on the details, but fortunately, we've got more time to work on it.

We're expecting...Take 3!

In even better news, we have decided it is time to announce that we are expecting baby #3. We figured Alisa (sister-in-law) would be glad to know that there will be another roundish, pregnant lady to hang out with at the Peterson Family Reunion in a few months… a waddling buddy while the rest of the family is briskly frolicking on the beach. What do you say?

Emily is only a couple of weeks behind Alisa at 15 weeks along (due date- May 26th) and (gratefully) started feeling better at the beginning of November. She is now fully functional again and only ornery when hungry (as is usually the case with Petersons). So, yay, hooray for more babies! Now, it seems a bit early to be announcing the gender of our baby, but actually we know already. They have a new-fangled test here in Spain that can detect gender-specific proteins in the maternal blood at as early as 8 weeks gestation. According to our OB, it is completely accurate. If he and the test are right, then we are having…. another baby BOY.

Judging from our families' track records, no one should be surprised, since babies with a Y chromosome are exceedingly plentiful amongst both Biddulphs and Petersons. The chances are supposed to be 50/50, but we're pretty sure our families didn't get that memo.

Even though we aren't surprised, we are all very excited and Emily is preparing herself to be totally outnumbered.

Happy 4th Birthday James!

James turned 4 years old on November 8th. On his real birthday, we celebrated with cupcakes and a family party. We decided to wait until this weekend to host the birthday bash, because we wanted our guests to have furniture to sit on.



James asked for a robot/space/rocket theme and we did our best to accommodate. Jay fashioned a kid-pleasing rocket ship cake, complete with sparkler candles. When lit, the candles flamed more than they sparkled, but the rocket definitely looked like it was about to take off. One of James’ friends kept covering his ears awaiting the noise of blast off. Anyway, James proclaimed the party a success and the rest of us had fun too.

Thanksgiving 2011. Lots to be thankful for...

Thanksgiving was nice. We combined forces with another family in our ward (the Youngs) and invited the sister missionaries. Because of our lack of transportation, we decided it would be easier to have everyone come to us. After our stuff arrived late and stinky, we started to get worried about hosting. Our house is large enough that we were able to sequester all of the smelliest stuff in the loft, basement, or garage. We spent two days shuffling items around, then scrubbed down the main floor, and hoped for the best. Things turned out surprisingly well. The food and the company were great and the leftovers will probably feed us for a week.

This Thanksgiving season, we are especially grateful to be living under the same roof and to be together as a family.

Also, we are thankful for the newfound freedom provided by our most recent delivery. We finally received our new car (a Volvo SUV) November 28th. Unlike our other deliveries this month, it arrived pristine and beautiful. After 3 months without a vehicle, we are so, so glad to have wheels again.

James says our new car is “fancy” and he is right, it may be too fancy to take with us to our next post. In the meantime, we will just enjoy it. Ordering a Volvo was the fastest and easiest fix for our transportation woes and we are grateful to have it. Our commute to church and Emily’s commute to the boys’ school are now 15 minutes instead of 1 hour and 20 minutes. Hooray! We have also decided that rear parking assist is the best invention ever (especially for folks living in Europe where the parking situation is atrocious).

An Occupational Hazard

The other two crates from Abidjan were delivered the Monday following the Marine Ball. We discovered that the African moving company employees used some “interesting” (aka ridiculously bad) packing technique in several cases, but (considering the circumstances of the move) Emily was surprised to find nearly everything intact. Well, almost…our luck held until the last crate.

Unfortunately, in the third crate, we found a significant amount of water damage in several boxes which was probably sustained during storage prior to shipment from Abidjan. Some items were still wet, some were moldy, and everything from that crate stank to high-heaven… musty, musty, musty! Fortunately, many of the items are either salvageable or replaceable. There are only a couple of things which we were truly sad about… according to Jay, this is another indicator that we are schlepping around too much junk. He is probably right… and obviously, this situation presents a perfect opportunity to downsize.

Anyway, we have insurance, so everything will be okay in the end. The most annoying thing is that we have to spend the time going through and documenting everything. And then there’s the fact that we have to clean/wash nearly every item since most of the shipment either smells musty or like the nighttime air in Abidjan (smoky, because W. African waste disposal commonly involves burning a lot of trash). Ugh! Em’s mountain of laundry is colossal, but hey, at least we aren’t paying our water bill. Also, live and learn. We didn’t have the option this time around (due to the evacuation), but for our next pack-out, Emily is totally prepared to be obsessive/compulsive about proper packing.

Just a couple of photos to document "the grossness" for posterity... of course it is impossible to adequately describe the vileness of the smell... ugh!

Marine Ball 2011

Our furniture and household effects were delivered near the middle of this month. So now, we have places to put our clothes and our house does not echo nearly as badly as it did. There was some sort of a mix-up and our shipment from Abidjan was delayed for an extra week in Antwerp. Thankfully, once the moving company realized their mistake, they bent over backwards to rush our crates to us.

The boxes with Emily’s formal attire arrived the evening prior to the annual Marine Ball. Since clothing is expensive here, Em was very grateful that she didn’t have to go on a last-minute shoe shopping trip. With the contents of our luggage, some internet shopping, and the few boxes delivered, we were (thankfully) able to scrape together something presentable. The ball was held at a fancy hotel downtown and we were glad that we had an opportunity to go and support the Marines and our good friends/neighbors from Abidjan (Detachment Commander McCart and his wife) who are also posted to Madrid.

Our first visitor- Aunt Heather!

Jay’s sister, Heather, visited for a week at the beginning of November. She came with a friend from law school (Kim) and they did an impressive amount of touring in the short time they were here. We all enjoyed their visit very much. We were able to tag along on a couple of short trips to sites in Madrid (a churro-hunting excursion and a visit to the Prado Art Museum).

Heather enjoying suckling pig, a Segovian specialty

Our favorite outing was a day trip to Segovia, a town about 55 miles away from Madrid. It is a 1 hour drive, but since we lack a vehicle, we all took a high-speed train. This boys thought this was pretty cool. Segovia is a lovely place with beautiful architecture and interesting food. The photos below are of our favorite sites: the Roman aqueduct, the cathedral, and the castle. One of Emily’s favorite parts of the excursion was the drinking chocolate at the panaderia… so yummy! James and Simon liked the castle best and insisted on ordering all of the pastries with sprinkles. We’re not really sure why but, when you’re a kid, apparently sprinkles make everything taste better.

Halloween 2011

Happy Halloween!

This weekend, we enjoyed some Halloween festivities. This particular American holiday is kind of a new thing in Spain, but there were enough activities going on to keep the boys busy and happy. They even sell pumpkins here, which is great. In Abidjan, our only option was to carve a watermelon. As you might be able to guess, James chose the costumes this year. Apparently he cares about protecting his secret identity more than Simon does.

Jay’s sister, Heather, is coming to visit next week with one of her friends. We’re excited to see her and to have an excuse to venture out and do some sightseeing. We’ve done a little, but are saving a lot of it for when we have visitors… otherwise we’ll end up seeing all of the Madrid sights a zillion times before we leave. Aside from the lack of humidity, the weather here has been sunny and awesome. Up until last week, the daily highs were in the 70s and 80s. Weather-wise, it seems like spring and autumn are good times to visit, just FYI.

More news from Madrid

So, apparently, our stuff is enroute from Abidjan. We thought that since Cote d’Ivoire is relatively close geographically, it would get here faster… but no such luck. It will probably arrive around the middle of November. Our new car should arrive at the same time. Yee haw! As thankful as Emily is for Madrid’s public transportation system, she will be glad not to have to use it as frequently. Schlepping kids around on the Metro can be complicated at times.

Church is good. It takes us an hour and 20 minutes (one-way) to travel there by public transportation. Fortunately the commute will be much faster and easier when we have a car. About 80% of our ward members are Latino. (We have picked out a handful of Spaniards by their fabulous accents.) Everyone is nice. Almost no one speaks English. Emily’s Spanish is still quite limited…and she knows very little gospel vocabulary, which means we have a hard time following the talks/lessons. (The fact that we are often wrangling kids doesn’t help much either.) The language is still a bit intimidating but it gets a little easier every week. This Sunday was Stake Conference, held at the stake center next to the Madrid Temple.





Jay takes Spanish classes at the Embassy and is learning quickly. Unfortunately, since classes are only offered during the day, Em can’t take advantage of that option, so she will probably sound like a cavewoman for a while longer. At least she can get her point across most of the time, but it is a lesson in humility to be sure.

The boys have adjusted nicely. James likes his new friends and is especially elated that Jay gets to come home after work every night. Simon has a naturally friendly disposition, so he is getting along swimmingly. Within days of our arrival, Emily noticed that nearly all Spanish children are away from home from about 9am - 5pm. Our neighborhood is eerily quiet during the day because every child older than three years is in school. Any children that we do see during the day are being toted by women in uniform. So as far as we can tell, parents here (at least those who are middle to upper-middle class) don’t really care for their own kids…except in the evenings and on holidays and weekends. This even appears to be true for families where only one parent works. Em gets strange looks and even inquiries from time to time.

Due to the schedule and the costs involved, we aren’t interested in sending James and Simon to a local nursery school. However, since Emily does want them to have some socialization and an opportunity to get out of the house, she looked until she found something fun and manageable. The boys go to a little English playschool 2 mornings a week and they really seem to enjoy it. The teachers are bilingual and most of their classmates are Spanish-speaking, so it doesn’t seem strange to James anymore that people talk differently. He keeps asking Em to “make his movies Spanish” (to use the Spanish soundtrack) so that’s probably a good sign. We might put James in a part-time bilingual preschool next year, but we’ll see. We just want to ease him into it since he’s had enough upheaval in his life over the past year. It just occured to Emily the other day that in the past 12 months, our boys have lived in 3 countries on 3 different continents. Pretty crazy… have to give them some credit. They are pretty resilient little guys.

The big, cool playground at Casa de Campo...our new favorite park.

Permanent quarters

We are doing fine here in Spain. It has taken us a while to get settled. After about 3 weeks in our temporary quarters (in the city), we finally moved into our permanent quarters on September 21st. We live a short distance outside Madrid in an area called Somosaguas Centro which is actually a part of Pozuelo de Alarcon (a near-lying suburb of Madrid). A large park (Casa de Campo) lies between our neighborhood and downtown Madrid. To get to work, it is an hour commute by foot/metro and a 25 minute drive (not during rush hour).

Jay’s job here is much different than it was in Abidjan because his responsibilities are fewer. He is bored already, but he handles it pretty well. The office politics of European posts leave something to be desired, but even so, we’ve met plenty of very nice people and are certain that we will enjoy our time here.

For the past several days, we have been very busy getting our place spiffed up. We are living in a duplex again, but the house is very large…four levels. A loft, guest room, 3 bedrooms, an eat-in kitchen (yay!), dining and large living room, and the basement has a HUGE play area for the kids plus separate storage and laundry rooms. There are four full baths and one half bath. So, like I said…BIG. We definitely have room for visitors (hint, hint). The yard is smallish, but certainly sufficient and there is a gardener who handles the routine stuff (mowing and hedge trimming). No complaints there…

The construction is a bit dated and (as with any older place) there are some quirky issues to be resolved, but (all in all) we think it is gonna be fine once we finish scrubbing it down. Thankfully, there have not been too many allergy issues with the place, but apparently there are few renters who share our enthusiasm for cleanliness. It’s like no one has really cleaned the place in about 10 years. We have to be pretty picky about that stuff because of Jay’s allergies… and also because our kids insist on licking random objects and eating things off the floor. What is that about? Oh well, they’re building their immunity, right?

Arrival in Spain

La Plaza Mayor

On September 1st, we headed to Madrid. Except for a minor delay in Atlanta, the flights were mostly uneventful. Emily was relieved to discover that (after so many months) James and Simon haven’t lost their trans-Atlantic travelability.

Things are getting on track here in España. It is definitely nice to have all of us together and living as a family under one roof. It has taken a bit of getting used to for all of us. During the 8 month separation, we all became accustomed to our particular circumstances, and whenever Jay visited, it always felt like we were on vacation. So, now we’re in the process of re-learning how to live as a family in real life conditions. It hasn’t been too rough though, because we’re so relieved to be together.

We arrived in Madrid just before Labor Day weekend, so we had some time to settle in and recover from jetlag. Jay has been to work for a few days and Emily has been at home with the boys. So far, so good. We are in a temporary residence in downtown Madrid at present which allows us the opportunity to get acquainted with the city. We’ve done a little exploring and have been happy with what we’ve seen of the city so far. How could anyone complain about a place that has an entire museum devoted to cured pork?

It's not really a museum...more like a giant meat market.
Pig = yummy!

Madrid has a nice mix of old and new architecture and a surprising number of parks and green spaces (especially nice for the boys). Thankfully, the public transportation system is great here, so even when we do move to our permanent residence (in 2 weeks or so), we will still have relatively easy access to the sites.

Our permanent residence is a bit further out where houses are larger and have backyards. The family living next door, (Armitage), is acting as our social sponsors. They are very nice and have 2 children just older than ours, and (so far) the kids play really well together. Yay! You gotta love built-in playmates. We hear good things about our home and our neighborhood and are hopeful that our move-in will go smoothly.

It seems like we probably won’t receive our stuff for a while. Our air shipment probably won’t be here for 2-3 weeks and our water/ground shipment will take even longer. We should be fine though. Getting settled and acquainted with Madrid should keep Jay and I busy enough. Since they have an APO here, Em planned ahead and shipped some toys, which should occupy the boys sufficiently until the rest arrive.

We have discovered that Spaniards are a lot like other Europeans in that they are aloof/reserved at first, but nice once you get an opportunity to talk a little bit. Everyone we have interacted with so far has been very helpful and kind. The boys tend to attract a lot of admirers where ever we go…partially because they are muy rubio, but also because it seems that Spaniards really love children.

The Spanish-speaking is going alright. Emily can communicate well enough to get by, but she is often annoyed that (1) she knows her “cavewoman Spanish” is probably auditory torture for all her listeners, and (2) the Spanish insist on using different words for everything, so she has found it necessary to re-learn a lot of vocabulary (aseos instead of baños, zumos instead of jugos). Fortunately, the Embassy provides free Spanish classes, so we’ll definitely get on-board with those as soon as possible.

More news next month. (Hopefully we’ll be in our permanent quarters by then.)

Abrazos,
La Familia Biddulph

The Royal Palace of Madrid and courtyard

James in front of the palace...about 12 seconds before his balloon flew into a tree and the wailing commenced.

Cathedral of Almudena

Preparing to move to Spain

James and his cousin Matthew at Hogle Zoo (Zoorassic Park exhibit)

Emily and kids spent the first half of August preparing for the move: visiting friends, shopping, packing boxes, and trying to keep the boys from getting bored. Jay had to handle many of the same duties in Abidjan. Due to a glitch in the State Department bylaws, we ended up having to personally ship a lot of the stuff we've accumulated over the past several months. Em sent enough boxes to Madrid during her last week in Utah that most of the Pleasant Grove Post Office employees could recognize her by sight…

James looking nervously over his shoulder, perhaps for another bigger meat-eater?

On the 15th, Em and the boys traveled to Michigan to visit the Mike Peterson clan and to meet Jay. He arrived on August 26th, and (if James has his way) Jay will never be parted from us again. In fact, James was hesitant to let his papa go anywhere without him. Simon focused mainly on wrestling Jay’s I-Pod away so he could play Angry Birds (which he is disturbingly adept at, by the way).

Anders...all ready for a walk around the neighborhood.

We'd probably look a lot cooler if this jeep weren't pink.

Altogether, we spent a couple of weeks in MI and (as usual) had a nice, relaxing time. The boys loved spending time with their cousins.

"Air Squishy"

Since it has been a few years, we decided to visit the local Renaissance Festival (or as Em likes to call it “The Weirdly-Dressed People Festival” …a unique cross-section of humanity to be sure). In addition to the crazy costumes, we watched funny jugglers, jousting knights, and men in skirts tossing rocks and trees (stone put and caber toss- it was Scottish Highlands Day). We also ate bigantic (Ander’s word for gigantic) turkey legs and pickles.