madrid

Rocky had meetings scheduled Madrid and we planned to tag along--we booked flights and an apartment. When his beloved Grandma Phylis passed away, he needed to fly back for the funeral during our scheduled trip. I went back and forth following through on Madrid at all but decided to go ahead and do it.

I knew it would be easier to stay home and stick to our simple, summer routine. But I also knew that when we are home I tend to spend most my time cleaning, cooking, doing laundry and nagging my kids to do their chores. Breaking out of our routine would allow for us to enjoy time together in different ways.

Rocky flew to Madrid with us and then flew out the next morning for SLC. We were on our own for the weekend and then he came back for a few days of meetings. I was pretty nervous of being in a new city with four kids but it was far better and easier than I feared.

My kids were helpful and got along great (80% of the time) and the city was easy to navigate. Two of them had been fighting all summer but on this trip they became best friends again and have played well since then.

 We spent a lot of time on the metro. That was Winston's reward for not totally melting down. If he cried too much, we would take a taxi. I was always a tiny bit disappointed when he made it through an outing without a tantrum.

 When all your kids can read, does parenting get ten times easier?

 We went to some museums and the palace but sometimes we just went out for churros, rode the carousel and went home for a siesta.

 The only tourist site near our AirBnB was the Real Madrid Stadium. We toured it and pretended to know anything about soccer. The trophy hall is pretty amazing and the players seats on the field are really comfortable.

 We found a neat bookshop and everyone got to choose out a book. Apparently Winston is a Hemingway fan. It's possible he has slept with his "airplane book" multiple nights.

Rocky came back and fed Oskar as much flan as he could possible eat. 

On the last night we came up big time with a babysitter and Rocky and I went to the Copa de Espana to watch Real Madrid play Barcelona. It was pretty incredible. I've decided soccer is my favorite sport to watch-works out well since I live in Europe and don't have much of a chance of watching any other sport.