Abby's First Gymnastics Meet!!

Abby had her first gymnastics meet last weekend.  It was so fun to see her perform!  And she did a great job!

Here she is before the meet started (the wall behind her was almost an exact match to her leotard color!)

Here are videos of her events.  I didn't get any still photos as I was too busy videoing and Brian was holding Ian.  (Sorry for the video quality, I'm not that great!)  But here you go:

Bars...

Floor...

Vault...

And Beam...

She is sitting next to her coach, Kristen, who is awesome!!! (I'm not sure why the picture is so dark, we were having flash issues...)

We are so proud of her!  She did great!!!

Yea Abby!!!  She has two more meets this year (Feb and April).  It will be fun to see how much she continues to learn.

Ian - first 6 months!

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Pamplona - June 22nd

Well, after all of our exploring the previous day, I was ready for something different.  Also, it had cooled off a lot and rain was predicted.

So...we went to the mall.  Yep, there was a mall in Pamplona and we went.  It is called El Courte Ingles.  It was a pretty big building with I think 8 floors.  We arrived at about lunchtime, so we headed to the restaurant first.  After our previous disappointing experiences with the food, I was happy to see a hamburger on the menu.  So that's what I ordered.  It came back pretty raw.  It looked cooked on the outside, but when I cut it in half, it was very red on the inside and barely warm.  Needless to say, I didn't have much of an appetite after seeing that.  I ended up taking the hamburger off and eating the bun with lettuce, tomato and bacon - so I had a BLT!  Becky was more adventurous than I was.  She scooped out the middle and ate the outside.  (It still makes me shudder to think about it.)

After lunch, we went shopping.  It turns out it was a pretty expensive mall. But I did get some red fans for the girls.

This was also Ian's 4 month birthday - so here is his serious photo:

 and his happy photo:

There was a group dinner planned for that evening and Ian and I got to tag along.  We left the hotel by bus at about 8pm and traveled about 20 minutes to the restaurant.  Once again there was lots of interesting food.  Several appetizers - all kind of weird stuff.  One looked like bacon - but undercooked.  I tried it and could barely swallow without gagging.  Brian was brave and tried most everything.  Everything came out kind of slow and I was getting pretty hungry.  At one point, I left to feed Ian and realized I hadn't missed much when I returned.  Everyone was talking and drinking.  It was interesting to listen to all the people from all over the world.

I was glad to see steak on the menu and after my hamburger experience at lunch, I ordered it well done.  Brian told our server to make it negro or black.  The other options were a couple different kinds of fish.  When our entrees arrived, I was especially glad I ordered steak.  The fish looked very strange.  One of them had some kind of weird bone sticking out of it.  It looked like a chicken leg.  Very weird...  When I looked at my plate, I could see red juices running out of my steak, so I sent it back for more cooking and it came back pretty good.  

We also had dessert, which looked like melted vanilla ice cream.  But it didn't have much flavor.  By then I was about ready to fall asleep sitting at the table.  We didn't end up getting back to the hotel until about 12:30.  Yep, you read that right, over 4 hours for dinner - and it wasn't the best dinner either. 

We headed to bed knowing that we had a fun day coming up.  A tour of a palace and a winery!

Pamplona - June 21st (Part 2) - San Fermin

In the evening, Brian's group had arranged to have a tour/commentary about the running of the bulls.  This takes place in Pamplona every July 7th - 14th.  As I walked around the city earlier in the day, I could see all kinds of preparations.As we set out to walk the route that evening, it started raining, so we headed back to the hotel where our guide told us everything we wanted to know about the festival of San Fermin (when the running of the bulls takes place).

Basically, the running of the bulls is a way to get the bulls from the corrals outside of the city to the arena for the bull fighting later the same day.  Each morning at 8am, several bulls are released into the streets.  The edges of the streets are barricaded so the bulls have a clear path to follow to the arena.  They follow a steer wearing a bell.  It is noisy and crowded, which makes it frightening for the bulls, which is why they run.  The route is about a 1/2 mile long and takes just 3 minutes.

Our guide was an older man who had been involved with encierro (yet another name for running of the bulls) since he was a young boy.  He explained that he first ran when he was 15 or 16 (I can't remember for sure).  It was almost a rite of passage for young men.  He talked about the excitement of running just in front of the bulls.  He ran every year for several years and has also been involved in organizing the event every year.

The rain didn't last long, so we set out to see the route.  The corrals are just outside the city.  If you were to continue down the street below - that's where the corrals are:

This is the same street as above, just a closer shot.  The building up the hill is the museum where I spent the morning.

Again, the same street, but looking down from above (next to the museum).

Along the streets that the bulls would run, barricades were being put up.  The ones we saw were along the sides of streets.  The remaining sections that crossed the streets would be put up later.  Here are some photos.  They are pretty sturdy barricades!

Here is a San Fermin countdown!

















Finally we got to the arena.  It was all closed up, but here is the path the bulls run - straight to the red doors!

It was a pretty informative evening.  I enjoyed hearing more about the history and the events of the Festival of San Fermin.  I just wish I remembered more of it...

Once again, Ian was great.  Everyone in the group was excited to see him and kept commenting on how good he was.

It was a good day.

Pamplona - June 21st (Part 1)

Brian had meetings at the plant all day, so Ian and I were on our own.  I had planned to get up and have breakfast with him at the hotel before he left, but I ended up sleeping in.  It took a bit for Ian to get used to his hotel bed:

So he slept with me for a while.  But it all worked out.  After we had breakfast, we headed out to explore.  In the lobby we saw the wife of one of Brian's co-workers.  We asked her to join us.  I'm glad she did!  So, Becky, Ian and I headed out.  We decided we wanted to go to the museum listed on the map the hotel gave us.  It was the Museum of Navarre.  Pamplona is in the kingdom of Navarre.  The tourist map had this to say about the museum:

This is the most valuable museum in Pamplona, installed in the former Hospital of Our Lady of Mercy, the facade of which still remains.  The museum stands over the lower part of the Cuesta de Santo Domingo.  It contains archaeological and art collections relating to the history of Navarre, outstanding examples being capitals from the cloister of the Romanesque Cathedral of Pamplona and an ornamental chest from the Monastery of Leyre, an exceptional example of the Hispanic-Arab ivory work.  From the Roman era there are notable mosaics such as the Theseus.  As for paintings, the crowning work of the museum is Goya's Marquis of San Adrian.


Here is the outside of the museum.  It is the building at the top of the hill.

From the edge of the street in front of the museum, we could see this palace.  I intended to return and take a tour, but didn't make it.

We saw lots of interesting things here.  I took a few photos (my camera had a low battery and it ran out before we finished at the museum).  Here are some of the things I found most interesting.

I liked the jewelry.  It think this was from the Roman display.  All the signs were in Spanish, so we sometimes didn't know exactly what we were looking at.  Anyway, I thought that these necklaces looked very similar to what we could buy and wear today.

This little pile of balls reminded me of golf balls.  They all had little dents in them like golf balls!  I'm not sure what the block with holes was supposed to be.  Maybe a pencil sharpener?

Here is Ian in the courtyard.  He is thoroughly enjoying his trip to the museum.  He ended up sleeping the entire time we were there.

I loved these windows! 

I think this is another view of the back of the Royal Palace I wanted to come back to.

I liked this stone carving.  It was in a room with a bunch of others.  There were carvings of what looked liked children playing - but were probably warriors or something.  Again, we couldn't read the signs.  This bird reminded me of the pigeon in the Mo Willems books that Abby likes to read.

I think this is the ornamental ivory chest mentioned in the museum description.  I thought it looked like a treasure chest or jewelry chest.  When I showed the picture to Abby and Elizabeth, they wanted to know what was inside.  I couldn't tell them because I don't know.  It was very pretty and has amazing details.

There were several "Madonna" statues in the museum.  Here are some photos of a few:

 There was lots more interesting stuff in the museum, but I couldn't take pictures of it all.  There was also a lot of religious art that was pretty interesting.  There was a small chapel attached to the museum.  Here is a photo of the inside of the chapel and one of the organ up on the balcony.  The ceiling was amazing!

After we had finished touring the museum, we headed back to the hotel.  Ian was waking up and we all needed lunch.  I started charging the camera battery, hoping it wouldn't take long, but it didn't finish before we were ready to go again.

In the afternoon, we wandered around town for a while and had an ice cream at the square.  It was very warm and the ice cream was good.  Then we headed back to the hotel to wait for the work meeting to be done and see what was planned for the evening.

One of the local plant managers (I think that's what he was!) named Javier, had arranged for someone to take the group on a tour of the path of the Running of the Bulls.  But those photos and descriptions will have to wait for the next post.