Silves and Carvoeiro Lighthouse

Okay so I was trying to make these blogs really detailed so that you could see some of the amazing history and landscapes from Portugal. But what I'm realizing is that it's February and I'm still working on the day after Christmas. So I guess you'll be getting more of a synopsis from now on. Sorry.
This is a statue outside the fort at the town of Silves. Apparently the Moors held most of southern Portugal for a long time and this town was their capital. The fort walls were pretty amazing but not much inside to really get the picture of what it would have been like then.

Kind of fun to see a castle look just the way you used to draw them in school.

The boys were off golfing so this was a girls and babies trip.

Apparently one of the kings who lived here married a princess from the north. She missed the snow so much that he planted miles of almond trees around the castle. They bloom in the beginning of spring and are supposed to have these huge white blossoms that made it look like snow.

We walked all along the outer-inside wall of the castle. In the US you'd never get away with this kind of safety violation and it really freaked out Taylor's mom who is afraid of heights. It didn't help that Ethan has only 2 speeds- asleep and all-out run.

Every town has it's own castle and cathedral it seems. Tragically this one was closed so we didn't get to see inside.

That afternoon Taylor stayed with the kids for naps and early dinner while I went off with his family to explore some of the coast which is made up of this crazy limestone with huge holes in it.

There was a fence around an enormous hole we could see from the top so we climbed down to where we could see partially in from the cliffs. Pretty amazing- just wish I could actually get inside.

Mack, Sam, me, Sonia, Barb (with the Carvoeiro Lighthouse and one of the huge holes in the background.

Here's the hole without us blocking it.

Taylor's dad was determined to get down to this beach but couldn't find a way to climb down. He's that little black speck on the far side.

Sunset over Carvoeiro.

Merry Christmas- Thurs. Dec 25th

In writing these blogs I'm kind of organizing our pictures and stories for myself so pardon all the dates as titles, all the days seem to be blurred together now and this seems to appeal to my organizational side.
So Christmas morning at last. Of course we had no real tree and no scent of pine, so we made due with what the house came with. I have no idea what kind of a tree this is, but Mack taped on a few scraps of wrapping paper and it actually looks okay in a Charlie Brown sort of way.

Isaac (still with no concept of ripping paper off of the gifts) was happy just to carry them around. Taylor's dad has the job every year of sitting by the tree and passing out presents. Ethan helped this year by being the delivery boy.

Mack, Sam, Arty, Taylor, Sonia (Taylor's mom)

So these aren't even Isaac's presents- they're Ethan's, but you can tell who fell in love with them. They even have little buttons that make real dinosaur sounds or make them kick their legs or arms. I just love the one on the left. If this picture had sound effects, it would say "rrarr".

Barb, Ethan, and Sonia putting together Ethan's dinosaur puzzle. Anyone see a theme?

And for breakfast Christmas morning, Mack whipped us up some amazing crepes. I must admit one of my short-falls as a mother. I give in to Ethan on his food requests too much. He refuses to eat anything but pancakes for breakfast- EVERY DAY. Isaac doesn't mind so we've been going with this for the past 6 months or so. When we got to Portugal we couldn't find pancake mix anywhere in the store so we settled for Crepe mix (how European to have crepe mix but not pancake mix). Bizarrely enough, Ethan was fooled and very happy to have "pancakes" every morning.

How can you beat this view?

Isaac trying to get at the pool and Grandpa playing defense. The picture on the right cracks me up. When we got to Portugal, Taylor's brother Arty was there but his brother Mack didn't come for a few days. Ethan hadn't seen Arty for a full year but had seen Mack several times even over the past few months. So for the first day Ethan called Arty "Mack" or sometimes even "the other Mack". But by the end of the trip I think Arty had won out. He carried Ethan around, played with him, fed him, and generally spoiled him. Mack may have to watch out now, he might be "the other Arty". Anyways, Ethan started following Arty around and Christmas morning I walked onto the back deck to see this: 2 boys, no shirts. Apparently Arty was trying to get a little sun (working 100 hour weeks indoors and living in London will make you a bit white) and when Ethan asked what he was doing, Ethan decided that he needed to do the same. So they unzipped his feety pajamas half way and gave him a book to read and voila, hilarious picture.

Arty may have gained a lot of ground in "favorite uncle/aunt" status, but I think Barb still owns that title. She's been in Utah almost every summer we've been there and she's at school in West Virginia so she has come and visited a lot more often. Here she is "golfing" with Ethan and Isaac.

And baseball of course.

And though the temperatures were only in the 60's the boys went swimming. Ethan only lasted 20 minutes (since he literally has 0% body fat) but Taylor and his brothers and dad played Marco Polo for an hour.

Mack and Sam gave Ethan and Isaac a kit for making a gingerbread train.

Yeah, we're working on Ethan's "say cheese" smile. He was pretty excited to be decorating gingerbread men and trains. It was a cute bonding activity for all of them and actually turned out really cute.

A few rounds of ping-pong finishedup the night. Poor Tay, it looks like Arty won.

Happy Birthday Isaac- Wed Dec 24th

Taylor and his dad decided to go golfing Wednesday morning which gave the boys and I a nice chance to just relax around the house. There was a huge backyard ringed by palm trees that Ethan was overjoyed with. Baseball, soccer, golf. Who cares! Any game with a ball is great- let's face it, anything is great that's not on an airplane! Isaac spent most of the time trying to walk up and down the yard which had a slight slope. It was quite entertaining to watch him try to balance with his chest puffed out like a peacock. Poor thing tipped over so many times. Maybe that's evil of me to admit but it really was funny to watch his determination.

It was also Isaac's birthday of course so I had to bake him a cake. At Ethan's first birthday he wouldn't eat cake or frosting or anything with sugar- even fruit- so I ended up baking him a cornbread muffin cupcake and frosting it with squeezy cheese just so I could get some messy-faced pictures. Isaac has no such aversion to sugar. Should I be thankful for this? Anyways, I am. Bad mother again for the second time in one blog post. So I was excited to get to bake Isaac his first little cake. And then we were in Portugal for the blessed day and this is all I could find in the store:
Yes, that would be directions for baking a cake in PORTUGUESE! Which tragically I do not speak or read. So after much agonizing and a few guesses, we ended up with something that looked like a cake but smelled and tasted... a little different. Isaac did eat some of it but was less than impressed, hence no messy-face pictures. Seems I'm forced to have at least one more child in my pursuit of authentic first birthday messy-face pictures.
Happy face- just no messy face.It did look good though.

The day was rounded out by Taylor's mom Sonia, brother Mack, and Mack's girlfriend Sam arriving to make us a party of 10. Sonia brought Hannukah presents so everyone got toothbrushes. Woohoo! Ethan was actually in love with his because it had Thomas the train engine on it AND it played Thomas train songs for 2 minutes in an attempt to get you to brush for that long. Ethan was happy to listen without brushing, somehow more of a distraction than an encouragement.

And since Ethan is finally old enough to sort-of understand who Santa is, we left cookies and milk out for him.

Carvoeiro and Lagos- Tues, Dec. 23

Taylor's dad rented a house in Carvoeiro, Portugal this year for Christmas. It was part Christmas and part family reunion. We haven't seen his brother Arty since last Christmas when they came here for Isaac's birth and since his brother is working in London and has an insane schedule (seriously works 100 hour weeks) and couldn't get away for long, the decision was made to meet him in Portugal. Carvoeiro is in the southern part so the weather was mostly in the 60's. No complaints here! For our first outing, we explored the little town of Carvoeiro and the coastline it sits on. We literally just picked a street, walked up to the top, and had this amazing view. We started to climb down for a closer view and discovered stairs carved into the cliffs.

It was beautiful climbing down looking out at the water and in at the little tide pools and then all the sudden a pirate ship appeared and sailed past us. Totally bizarre but Ethan loved it.
You can see Isaac is still suffering from jet-lag. Luckily one of our friends who served her mission in Portugal, advised us that all sidewalks and even most streets are cobblestone and thus would not be pleasant with a stroller so we found this nifty stroller/backpack carrier/highchair in one deal and it truly saved us. It was so easy just to fold up the stroller handle, whip out the straps, and throw it up on Taylor's back and off we went climbing down stairs and through cliffs.

Barb being a little more daring than the rest of us, Jeff (Taylor's dad), and Ethan (who spent the time finding rocks and shells to throw in the ocean instead of admiring the amazing scenery). What can we say, he's a 3 year old boy.

The whole gang (minus the late arrivals) L to R Ethan, Taylor (Isaac on back), Barb, Arty, Jeff

After we climbed up from the cliffs, we walked farther down and discovered this amazing little playground right on the water. That's my idea of a relaxing playgroup- swings, slide, merry-go-gound, fenced in, ocean breeze, sun beating down on me, ahhh!

After Carvoeiro we drove over to explore a little town called Lagos. (Ethan and Arty both suffering from jet-lag). The city was entirely made up of these tiny "walking" streets which were loads of fun to drive through with our 10 passenger van. As Taylor would say- they lose a lot of their charm when you're the one driving. Very entertaining to be a passenger though.

Everything is beautiful cobblestone as you can see and then most of the buildings are also stone with tiles all over them. I'll include close-ups on some later post but truly impressive. We had dinner there and were grateful to find that everyone spoke English (it's kind of the Florida of England, everyone comes in the summer to go to the beaches there).

And after dinner we walked out to find all the streets filled with these light decorations. Every street had different designs and it was very charming to walk under them. Just needed a little Nat King Cole in the background and maybe some colder temperatures or snow to complete the atmosphere.