Photos of Barcelona

We had a chance to go sight seeing this weekend.

We went to the Sagrada Familia, a church that was designed by Gaudi. It began construction in 1882, and is still under construction. This is an amazing building.

to the Olympic Stadium (the Olympics were held here in 1992),

and to the nearby botanical gardens,

and to the Museum of Art of Catalunya. This gigantic building houses all the Catalunyan art you could ever want to see. Catalunya is the state or province that Barcelona is in. People here almost consider it their country, and are very proud of that heritage and, apparently, their art.

From the front of the museum, you get a pretty good look at Barcelona and a great shot of what has become Alexa´s signature jacket.

Apartment

For those who are interested, here are some pictures of the apartment we share with Scott and Kirby.

Here are the stairs we get to walk up to get to the apartment - no elevator. There are 81. I guess it's good for us - forced exercise.



Small living room


Kitchen. No oven. Can't bake. We only eat rice, noodles, or potatoes. Feel free to send us your favorite stove-top recipes.

Bathroom. Yes, a bidet. Alexa likes to play in it.

The toilet is seperate. It's hard to fit in there, epecially for Scott. He's 6'4".

The apartment isn't very big, but we're getting along ok. It's fun to try to get all 4 of us on the couch to watch a movie.

Fun Park

We found this huge park by our apartment. It's called Parque Ciutadella.


We went and had a picnic yesterday since Brad hasn't gotten any homework assigned yet. (I love Spanish Law School!)


We really were having fun ... I promise.

They have this awesome playground that we've taken Alexa to a couple of times. They have a shed with lots of toys in it that anyone can play with. Mostly she just plays by herself, but she did make a friend ...



ok, maybe she was just stealing his toy.


Then, Daddy gave her a chocolate cookie.

We're having lots of fun.

Our New Apartment

We found an apartment on Thursday (1/8) and got all moved in on Friday. We're happy to be out of that hostel. It was small, loud, and very cramped. I would recommend staying in a hostel if you come here, but not if you have a 1-yr-old. Here we have some pictures of barcelona.

This is our hostel room. It's about 7 or 8 feet wide, and probably 10 feet long. That's me on the top bunk, where i regularly got less than 4 hours of sleep per night.

View from our hostel room. Is that a barcelona sunrise I see? Or the flash from the camera reflected on the window? You be the judge.

This is a street near our apartment that has an ancient wall running down the side of it. One of our tourist books states that this wall was left by the Romans.

If you look really closely, at the very top of this you can see the small balcony of our apartment.

This was alexa's reaction when we told her we were moving out of the hostel. I don't care who you are, that's happiness, right there.

Cassi took this picture, and I don't remember what it's of. Stay tuned for more pictures of old buildings like this that we see in our travels.

Starting Our New Adventure

We finally made it to our hostel in Barcelona after about 29 hours of traveling on Thursday/Friday. Traveling overseas with a one-year-old isn´t the easiest thing to do, but Alexa did great considering she had to be on our laps the whole time.

Yesterday we ventured out to see the school where Brad will be studying. We spent some time looking for an apartment, but didn´t have much luck. We went to the beach for a while, but it was so cold that we couldn´t stay too long.

Today, we tried to find the church, but the directions were wrong on the website, so we walked around for an hour or so trying to find anyone who knew where it was. We ended up not going.

So, hopefully things will start falling into place. The hostel is kind of cool, but Alexa hasn´t been sleeping well at all. And I´m ready to stop living out of suitcases.

To be continued...

Happy Birthday/Weddings!

We had a big day yesterday. For Alexa's 1st birthday, we spent about 5 hours at the Salt Lake temple.

In the morning, Kyle (Brad's brother) and Sachi got married. It was a very nice ceremony, and they seemed very happy.

In the afternoon, Brandon (Cassi's brother) and Lauren got married. It was also a very nice ceremony, because it was the same as the first (same sealer). They looked happy too.

It was sooooo cold though! I thought I would die while we took pictures. I think Alexa cried nonstop through the second round of pictures.

We were happy to be at our brothers' weddings. They both found great girls.

Since we didn't get to celebrate Alexa's birthday yesterday, we had a little party in Idaho on Wednesday with Aunt Moff and the Mumford cousins.

Alexa got her very first cupcake. This is how it went:

She was the happiest girl ever! She ate the whole cupcake. She even wanted to eat the wrapper and got mad when I took it away.

Home For the Holidays

We packed everything up in the apartment, put it in storage, and headed home for the holidays. We headed out on Tuesday and got to Pleasant Grove, UT that night so we could be there on Wednesday when my sister Stephanie went through the temple. Congratulations Steph!! It was a nice day. All the siblings got to be there, except for Aaron, but he's having too much fun in Camaroon.


We've been in Garland for the past couple days and it's been freezing cold! We finally took Alexa outside to play in the snow (she's never experienced it before). Grandpa and Grandma Anderson helped get her all bundled up.


And no, we didn't have boots, so we used plastic bags with socks over them. It worked nicely.

We took a couple of laps around the backyard on the sled. I think Alexa liked the ride. She's fine with snow as long as she doesn't have to touch it (so, I guess she's not really fine with it).

With snow on the ground, it actually feels like Christmas is coming this year!