Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Spain -- Part V (Dunkin Coffee)

I hope you enjoyed my flashbacks from our time in Spain. We feel so incredibly blessed to have the opportunity to see the world as we have. And I truly feel that I want those I love to "see it" along with me. The world is such a big place. Massive actually.

The remaining days in Spain were spent relaxing and spending time with Angelica's amazing parents. Neither one of them speaks a word of English, but thankfully, Dan and Angelica are both fluent and thus translation was the name of the game. We even got to spend a day at her parents' house in the country. Her father is a real outdoorsman (just like JB) so they got along great, even though they couldn't speak the same language. For dinner, he made us snails that he had collected! (I passed but JB had to get a new plate he had so many shells.)

The day before we flew home, I also had a very neat opportunity to meet one of the faithfuls at Hannah's Prayer. Most of us only know each other online so the opportunity to meet in person is always a special treat. Tina is a missionary in Madrid, and actually only lived a few minutes away from Angelica's parents.

Not only was our time together spiritually uplifting as we shared about having kids close together, living in a foreign country, and our passion of infertility and adoption education, but she also took me to Dunkin Donuts!!! Oh heaven!

Tina is an adoptive mom and then a mom to biological twins. A bit different but definitely facing the same journey we have.

Forget knowing Spanish. Pointing and begging my way to a dozen donuts to bring back to those who weren't there to enjoy this with me!

A taste of home! (Yes, I ate more than one!)

What a wonderful time we had in Spain! Dan & Angelica were fantastic travel partners. We liked to eat the same and moved at the same speed -- even the time we got up in the morning was pretty similar. They are fantastic Christian people, and we were so lucky to get to visit the country with locals. I am so blessed by their friendship.

I am incredibly glad that JB and I decided to take the time away from our boys and travel together -- just the two of us. Many people ask me how we took 6 days away from our kiddos. I must be honest. It wasn't easy. We missed them terribly, and by day 4, I was so anxious to get back and see them, I was practically going crazy. But I also know that my marriage needs my attention as well. I needed time to hang out with my husband, and we knew this will be the last time in many, many months (maybe a year or more?) that we will be able to do this. We were also blessed by having Veronica. She knows the boys so well, they got to stay in their own house, and she had some of my great friends (like Stebbins) there to help. This made it even better.

Needless to say though, we were so excited to get back and hug those little guys. We walked in the door on Thursday evening right at bedtime and were greeted with, "Where's my surprise!?" They really didn't care that we were there, truthfully. They were more excited to see the cars we had bought them at a Spanish toy store the day before we came home. But we were excited to see them and kissed them to our heart's content. (Or until they told us to please stop!)

Stay tuned for a post on how the boys (and Veronica) fared during our absence.

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