Getting the house ready

We were so excited about getting this house!... but the downside was that it was SO dirty.  We spent days getting it to a livable level for us, and everybody helped! :)

And so it began....

Carolina loves helping, and I am always so surprised at how good she is at it!

Jonathan is another helper.  He would rather be helping than sitting and playing a video game.  He's one we can always count on!

And when they weren't helping... boys will be boys, right? :)

Once we got the house cleaned, we decided to work on painting and the little tid-bits for the kids rooms, so they would feel like their rooms were theirs.  We have to paint everything back to it's original color when we are done renting the house, and the kids' rooms have these super high vaulted ceilings, so we knew we couldn't paint the walls.  We decided to personalize each room by painting accents.  I wanted to get some of this done before Mom had to leave, because she's the one who has all the expertise with painting! 

The older two boys share a room, and Carolina and Jonathan share a room.  It is always a challenge to figure out how to do a boy/girl room.  Jonathan is SO boy; and while Carolina is pretty tough and can hold her own with the boys, she also has an extremely girlie side.  So, I was trying to figure out how to mesh these two personalities.  We started with making two separate parts of the room that we could make very specific to each of their personalities.  I wanted to put their names on the wall, so we kept the basic outline the same for both, but changed the colors.

We started by taping off Carolina's!

I wanted to do stripes inside, so we started with this, but...

when we took the tape off, it took chunks of the wall off with it. The walls here are not the same as in the States, and it's obviously much harder to work with!  They are not wood and sheet-rock. They are made of concrete and covered with something I don't know. :)  (Wes has to drill a whole into the concrete... we can't just hang nails, either!!  So crazy!)

We had to patch the wall and try again...we ended up painting over the whole thing, but you could still see the stripes through it... It looked pretty unique, so I was fine with it!

Then we started on Jonathan's.  This was hilarious.  We bought paint that was titled "blue jeans."  I liked the color, but what I didn't realize was that it was a texturized paint.  We thought there was something wrong with the paint!  It was so funny, once we figured it out.  You can see it better in the pictures below.

Their two different sides.. one blue, one pink.

See how the paint looks like blue jeans?  We kept putting on more coats, thinking it would even out... until we remember the name of the color.  It does look like jeans, huh?

Mom did such a good job!  I'm so terrible at these things.  I was SO thankful she was here!

Little by little we were getting there!

While we were waiting...

During our 3 weeks while we were waiting to get into our home and for our furniture to arrive, we spent much of that time looking for homes (as you have heard about) and then cleaning the house and getting it ready for our furniture to arrive, opening bank accounts, figuring out phones, internet and utilities, registering at the town hall, etc.  During this busy time, we savored many "firsts" back in Spain...

This is Carolina's ultimate favorite food in Spain... Tortilla de patata! (it's eggs, potatoes, onions and salt)  She was SOOOO happy.  Her FIRST tortilla back in Spain!

This was on our way from Madrid to Valencia in the very beginning of our journey back to Spain.  The boys got their first 'Sandwich Mixto' ... grilled cheese and ham.

People had asked me what was the first thing I was going to eat once I got to Spain... EAT???  Forget eating?!?!  I wanted a cup of "cafe!"  I had missed Spanish coffee soooo much.  This was my FIRST cup of "cafe."

We stayed in a small apartment that we rented during those three weeks so that we could have a little kitchen and at least eat breakfast and lunch there.  We were very limited on pots and cooking utensils, so we still ended up eating out almost every night (except the nights when we were just too tired and did cereal or sandwiches again!), but at least we were able to save money by eating breakfast and lunch "in."

There was a Burger King across the street from our apartment, and it became our regular dinner feast. Haha....  If you know us at all, you know that fast food is NOT something we do very often, so you can imagine that after 3 weeks, we were SOOO ready for real food!

My mom pretty much lived on their salads, and fell in love with these little bottles of oil and vinegar. When you order a salad, they don't ask you what kind of dressing you want.  This is what you get.  There are no other options. Thankfully, BK is better here in Spain than in the States, and their salads and all are VERY fresh!

My mom's first Paella!  As many of you know, 2pm or 3pm is when Spaniards eat their main meal.  So, when we weren't busy looking at houses or cleaning the one we found, we did try to slip out for lunch "out" instead of dinner.  Paella was definitely a favorite!... Paella in Valencia has seafood, rabbit and chicken in it.  Yum.  It is so good!

We didn't go EVERY night to BK, but most restaurants don't open until 8pm or 8:30, since the dinner hour is more like 10pm.  This is the reason we ended up doing BK so much... it was open. :)  We did a couple nights at a normal Spanish restaurant, but they kids always got to bed SOO late when we did this that we didn't do it often.  This is Carolina's 'cafe' after dinner one night (around 9:30pm).  It came with the meal, and she LOVED it!

We found a restaurant downtown that actually serves American breakfasts!  Welcome to a large city! :)  We were so excited.

Nathan with his 'cafe solo'... my dad got my kids hooked on the taste of coffee, and now they all love it... SWEET, of course; but they still love it.  Nathan can't have milk, so his was just a shot of decaf. coffee!... with lots of sugar.  It was a treat!

We had gone to one of the malls, trying to figure out phones and internet, and the kids spent half an hour just playing on these chairs!  What a GREAT idea!  Maybe we need one for the playroom... :)

Those three weeks seemed to slip by so fast; we were so busy with all the details of getting life set up again.  It was nice to have these pics to go back to so that we could be reminded of the fun little moments along the way.  We wanted to share them with you all...

Our home

Praise the Lord, we found a place!  It has been quite an experience, finding this place we will call "home." :)  We actually found this place the Tuesday after we arrived, but we ran into so many obstacles that we didn't actually get INTO the place until a week ago!

This corner unit is ours!  All the way at the end of the walkway is the Mediterranean Sea. 

You heard some of the stories of looking at different houses.  We actually found these townhouses when we first came looking at Valencia about a year ago.  We had been given several areas to look at by our supervisors (I think I told y'all this...) and this area was one of them.  I LOVED the area right from the start because it was so quiet.  We are so different from the average Spaniard.  Most Spaniards like to be right in the center of the city, near everything so that they don't have to drive anywhere... they like everything at their fingertips.

I on the other hand, like to be "out"enough to breathe. :)  La Patacona is right on the outskirts of Valencia... and as I'm sure you have picked up along the way... it is RIGHT on the beach.  This is another thing that is so strange to us Americans.  These townhouses are right on the beach... well, they are as close to the beach as you can get in this area.  But, because it is out a little bit from the city, it's LESS expensive to live here. HA!  Wes and I still shake our heads... we found the closest major grocery store and it has the most impressive views!  It's parking lot is LITERALLY beachfront property.  In our minds, it's such a waste!  Such valuable property... used as a parking lot!  But, of course, from their standpoint, it's not part of the city center; so it's not as valuable.

Anyway, we found these townhouses a year ago; but at the time, there were none available.  We loved the area, but the only 4 bedroom places in this area were these townhouses.  Apparently, according to the realtor we spoke with a year ago, they don't come available too often.  We knew this before we even went Stateside, so I was praying that if the Lord didn't want us in Patacona, that there wouldn't be a single town home available... b/c I knew my heart would be drawn here if there was one available... that is how much I liked this area!

Well, when we got here, there was one open, and one ABOUT to come available.  We looked at the first one (it was really a mess and Wes hated the ugly green color all the way through the house), and then we emphasized to the realtor that we were in a big hurry.  The second one wasn't going to be available to see for another week, but we were really hoping to make a decision before a week was up.  We figured we'd move forward and just see what the Lord opened up.

As we looked all over the city, we kept coming back to Patacona to look around.  As we walked through one of the streets, we found one townhouse (an end-unit) that was "for rent by owner."  So, we immediately called and asked to see the place.  This guy wasn't too eager to rent, to be honest.  I think he was really wanting to sell it.  Anyway, we talked him into showing it to us... then we had to talk him into lowering his price a little bit, b/c we had a budget set by our company.  He agreed to the price and then we set the contract in motion.

He had a number of things in the contract that we couldn't do... the biggest thing being that he wanted us to pay the yearly taxes on the house.  He wasn't willing to budge on that one.  In the meantime, the other townhouse came open and we decided to walk through it.  We definitely liked the end-unit better, but there were definite pluses to the second one, as well.  Since the first guy wasn't willing to change the contract, we went forward with the second townhouse.  They dragged their feet in answering every little thing we asked about.  At the time, it was frustrating to us; but if they hadn't, we would've signed the very first day we started the process with them.  We worked out all the details, but they were still dragging their feet and said they wanted their daughter, who was a lawyer, to look at the final contract.  We were going on several days and still hadn't heard anything when the FIRST guy changed his mind and decided to agree to our terms.  It was so crazy!  I had really given up on that first place... it was definitely my first choice, but I really had thought that the Lord was closing the door.

This is looking left out of the gate of our house.  LOVE being able to see the sea from our balconies and any time I walk out the front gate!

The things we really liked about this townhouse was:
(not in any significant order)
1) It was a 4 bedroom and definitely big enough for our needs (4th room to be used as an office for Wes.)
2) It had a garage so we could store our bikes
3) The garage was big enough to fit our van
4) It has a fireplace!
5) There were cafes and restaurants within walking distance
6) There were two little "tiendas" within walking distance that have food and fruit and veggies, so that when Wes is out of town, I could walk and get food.
7) It was an end unit, so we only had neighbors on one side... and lots more windows and light!
8) Since it was an end unit, the patios were a lot bigger, giving us better space for when we host our outreaches in our home.
9) The school was within walking distance
10) Outside our gate was a pedestrian walkway, so the kids could go out there and kick the soccer ball around.
11) It had two little "storage rooms" in the basement that would work nicely for a little play room for Carolina and a Wii room for the boys. :)
12) There was a bus stop VERY close to the house, so we could easily take the bus into the city.
13) And... of course... it's so close to the BEACH!

So, needless to say... we signed the contract for the end-unit the very next day and started everything in motion!