Saturday School!

I think this is the first time that I went to bed without blogging first so I'll have to catch you up on yesterday.... Max and Calvin had school on Saturday morning. It is the usual thing here to have school on Saturday mornings but no school on Wednesday's at their age. Not quite sure of the reason for that but they were not too thrilled to be going to school while their siblings were staying home. They had a great morning though with Max getting some help with his French from the student teacher who normally works with Calvin's class. Max loved that one on one attention and the fact that he was getting help from "Calvin's teacher!" Quincy and Taba and I had a nice lazy morning of reading, showering and just being lazy. We picked the boys up from school and arrived home to find that Josh had finally made it back from England! Hurray! After lunch, Josh took all the boys out to pick blackberries. We had been seeing people do this all week along the sides of various roads and Max was very eager to do this ourselves so the boys went out and had a good time. Tabitha and I, in the meantime, went shopping for school clothes. She really wanted to do this without the help of all 3 of her brothers so this was our opportunity to be alone. We had a great time and purchased several outfits and 2 pairs of shoes. We discovered that Taba's size 9 feet are the very top end of the women's shoe sizes here!!! We ended up picking her shoes based on what styles were available in her size vs. what her first choice might be!! Yikes!!! I'm not sure what we will do as her feet keep growing! She just turned 11 - I'm sure she's not done growing yet! We ended our shopping trip with a stop for a small bag of truffles from a beautiful little chocolate shop. We came home to meet the boys and discovered that all of the kids' cousins now have webcams so we were able to talk to and see everyone! What an amazing use of technology!! We then all headed out to our favorite electronics shop to buy a microwave. We have received word that our sea shipped items (all of our furniture and the rest of our possessions that are not in storage back in the states) will be arriving to our house on Tuesday!! Hurray!!!!! Finally we will be able to live in our house and get out of this 3 room apartment! So, we figured that we needed a microwave and a hairdryer to make our house liveable. We had a productive shopping trip followed by a long meandering walk through the city to enjoy some of our favorite sights. Josh and I then brought the kids home, set them up with a pizza, a movie and a cell phone and then headed out for our first night alone in months!!! We ate in a fantastic little Spanish restaurant tucked into a winding cobblestone alley. We had huge bowls of paella with fresh seafood, a pitcher of sangria and ice cream sundaes and coffee for dessert! Perfect!! So nice to finally talk to my husband again without 4 sets of ears listening in.
If you see a theme in our pictures today... it is because grandma brought 50 pounds of books for Tabitha and myself when she came to visit on Friday. Taba has been reading nonstop ever since and has already finished 5 of them - Quincy has read 4. In the other picture, you can see the kids talking to their cousins on the webcam.