The Mayer Family

Well…I needed a creative title, and I guess that is a good one to catch a person’s eye since snow is almost impossible and far from our thoughts this time of year. Except that at the moment, Kevin is reading to Evan from one of the Little House on the Prairie books about a huge snowstorm. So I was trying to remember what snow was like and what it felt like to be cold. I’m sure we’ll find out again soon as winter usually comes much too quickly.

Evan & Ellie have been enjoying almost daily playtimes with their friends Miguel & Elisa. Here are some shots from today:

Evan & Miguel

Elisa

Sitting and enjoying the sounds of water at a fountain here in Granada this past Sunday. That’s Evan & I silhouetted and we happen to be enjoying ice-cream as well.

-Wendy

Posted by mayer at 04:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

So what have we been doing this week?
Here are some highlights:
-Last night, our neighbor Margarita came and invited the kids and me to go bowling with her and her kids. So Evan and I went with her and Miguel and Elisa (her children). Evan had a blast, and we had a nice time talking and it was good Spanish practice!

Bowling

Elisa and Miguel and Evan in the background

-We met twice this week with some different neighbors for language practice. Our next door neighbor, Christina, wants to practice/learn more English, so we spent one hour talking Spanish and the other English. We hope to continue, as it was great practice for us, and of course fun to talk English and finally be the one who doesn’t say everything wrong, and to actually feel a little educated!
-A fun highlight for Kevin was meeting a Spaniard who is currently working on his Doctorate, and his Thesis is, believe it or not, on The Lord of the Rings! They’ve had a couple of great discussions about J.R.R. Tolkien (the author) and of Tolkien’s good friend, C.S. Lewis. This is quite unusual for a Spaniard to be so passionate about this story. There are some great tie-ins between the writings of Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and the teachings of Jesus, so Kevin is looking forward to future conversations.
-We were excited to receive Evan’s materials for school in the mail from Sonlight. It will be a new experience to have school at home this year, but we are looking forward to it, and the materials look great. Evan wanted to start the day we received them, and didn’t understand why we needed to wait!
-We started a new “tradition” last week of starting off each morning with a worship song, and then praying for one of our friends together as a family. Evan and Ellie are enjoying this, and even Ellie participates in the repeat-after-me prayers.

Some of the more normal and not-so-exciting things we’ve been doing include our Rosetta Stone language learning computer program every day. We’ve also been preparing for our trip next week. We leave next Friday for Germany to attend a Holy-Spirit in Missions Conference for several days. We are going a little early for a few days of vacation beside the Rhine river in Germany.

Evan and Miguel playing today on the ramp that leads to the garage beneath the building we live in

-Wendy

Posted by mayer at 03:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Life is happening here. Nothing overly interesting right now, and nothing much to report on, but I guess that is what most of life is. It’s fun to write about the interesting and fun things that happen, but sometimes life just goes on…

Right now our lives are a bit more unstructured than we are used to, and so we are trying to adjust to the changes and at the same time create some structure and a bit of a daily rhythm. While we love being together as a family more often, and a lot of you may think you would enjoy that a lot since life seems to be so busy, it also comes with challenges. Those challenges include figuring out who does which household duties, who disciplines the kids when we both saw what happened and neither of us really “want” to, figuring out how to do our necessary work and language study on the computer when it is in the center of our living area, and is always in demand by everyone. A lot of things that were structured and had their places in Ohio are now floating in the air. So we’ll keep “living” and asking for God’s wisdom and patience.

On a lighter note, here is a video of one of Ellie’s favorite things to say right now. Watch and find out!

-Wendy

Posted by mayer at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

…for Evan & Ellie! Lately we’ve been taking E&E to our shared terraza, and as long as there is no laundry hanging out, spraying them down with water to cool off. They absolutely LOVE it! On Saturday as we walked by a bank with a temperature display we noticed that it was 108 degrees, and it certainly felt like it! People are saying that we should have another 2 weeks or more of the intense heat before it starts letting up.

Last night we had a BBQ on that same multi-purpose terraza with our neighbors, Cesar and Cristina. It was our first food off a charcoal grill since coming to Spain, and we loved it! We grilled steak, marinated chicken breast, and sausage. We also enjoyed talking and practicing our Spanish, half the time trying to figure out what the other person was saying and half the time laughing at our mistakes.

Yesterday morning we visited a Baptist church here in Granada, and enjoyed worshiping with other believers! We left for church ½ hour before it started, thinking that would be plenty of time. However, after waiting and waiting at the bus stop, and meeting a sweet old lady who talked nonstop and doted on the kids for about 20 minutes, the bus never came, so we started walking. We only arrived ½ late, but still got in on most of the service.
-Wendy

Posted by mayer at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)