Theory on "Adventure"

As I have been blogging for a little less than a year I am looking back at all the great adventures we have had. I wished I had a similar written record of all the other fun stuff we have done in years previouse. I am a good scrapbooker and I always do a yearly photo album, but its not quite the same.

I think I knew when we were moving here we were going to be doing amazing things hense the title "adventures of the Strodes" however I have come to realize how simple things can be as great of an adventure. Lunch at school has been an adventure to the kids everyday for the last year. An average day at home can be an adventure (a couple of days ago the firemen showed up and hacked my Bar B q to bits because my nieghbor had a bon fire that caught our shared chimney on fire.)

Cute little things the kids say, or make at school brights our days enough that we are excited for the next day and that is adventure. I have heard it many times since I have been posting our outings "I am so jelouse" to that I say..."look around, look at the adventure in your life- its there in the very fibers"

We have lived over seas before and came back state side with a re-newed desire to see more of our country, it fizzeled out in the efforts to buy and maintain a house and we were dissapointed in our selves. I look at that time as a great adventure into something that was new and different for us.

Here is to the next year and ALL the adventures it brings, big and small!

Cheers- The Strode Family

Getting crafty

So the kids are out of school for the summer and all those things that I said ..."We will do that som other time, when we have more time"

Well it seems as though the time has come. The big girls are going through our piles of clothes for the charity box and re-fashioning them into other things. So the sewing room is full of spare sleves and shreads of old pants.

Paige is making rock candy (thats the two plastic containers on my counter that Im not allowed to jostle or move for 2 weeks) and Seth has carved an apple into a face and is drying it in my oven who who knows how long (until it looks like a shrunken head).

Paige also did a little sewing project, and Seth is Painting Pokemon all over a spare piece of fabric he is calling a blanket.

AHHHH Summer!!!!!!!!!!!

Work or play?

A field exercise (for those of you not familiar with military terms) is typicly going out to a remote location and playing war. Sleeping in tents and roughing it.

Typicly the guys come home dirty and smelly and worn out.

This was no typical field exercise. They went to the little Spanish Isalnd of Menorca and hung out for a few days, then the exercise began but unlike real war situations ended at quiting time each day and the guys explored the island. Even got to enjoy the San Juan festival Menorcan style (Yes the one Logan wanted to go to)

Dan came back refreshed wih lots of great pictures, stories and suveniers.

(The large shoe displayed here is a replica of the typical shoes they make here from leather and tires. He brought all us girls some!)

Fathers Day (a week late)

(Dan made me take the pictures down- not the morning Beauty! I thought he looked great!)

In Spain Fathers Day is in March, we of course missed that all together...who celebrates fathers day in March??? (apparently Spaniards)

Then last week dan was in Menorca for a field exercise so we waited till he was home to have our Fathers day Celebration. The kids got up early and made him breakfast in bed.

(Yogurt Parfait, sliced fruits,juice and cresent's)

He enjoyed the breakfast most of the morning because there was ALOT of it!

He also got some gifts for his brick oven pizza cooking, that he loves so much! Long gloves to keep his foe arms from burning and a great big Pizza rocker for cutting alll his pizzas. He also got a brass bristle brush for cleaning up the ash so the pizzas doesnt taste like burnt wood!

We are gonna have some yummy pizza soon, I am sure.

It was a nice day and he even got a nap!

Happy Fathers day Dan, you deserve it!!!!!!!!!!

8th Grade Grad

We have another High school student on our hands!

We took Tori out for her choice of resteraunt

(TECHI- TEMPINAKI) and enjoyed a great meal and then we gave her a beautiful necklace made of Opals (her birth stone)

It was a wonderful evening and we are so proud of her, she does great in school and is realy looking forward to High school. She is going to do great!

We won!

Remember -
We entered a contest...Aunt kasey helped us by sending us syrup!
We WON!
We won $250 and a year supply of Mrs. Butter Worths!

Last Day of School

It is a tradition (as we were counting this morning) of 7 years that we Strodes have ice cream for breakfast on the last day of school. We need to get the summer kicked off right and we cant wait another minute to start on vacation! We enjoy it every year!

- Hey dont judge, I make sure theres bananas!

POLL

Yes this is an Oppinion Poll- Not that your oppinion will sway me, but more of a statistic report!
So my 15 year old daughter asked to skip the last day of school (no big deal...finals are over anyway) to go to a beach party called "San Juan" (Sure sounds like fun) Then she mentions she will go around 11:30 pm (WHAT? who goes to the beach at nearly mid-night)
Let me tell you what I found on the internet.

San Juan is a festival in Spain where every High school aged kids and some young adults gather (thousands of them) on the beach for bon fires and drunken crazyness. It says its the one day of the year that the police turn thier head and allow the fires and crazyness (the legal drinking age here is 16) There is some ritual of jumping waves (heard this from a friend) and then jumping over bon fires (saw this on the internet) while making a wish. It actualy said on the internet "This is not for families"

Would you let your 15 year old daughter go?

Gran Canaria (Grand Canary Island)

So the girl friends left and the family came in on friday. the type of fun changes, not so relaxed, but just as fun and as many laughs!

We had the traditonal Patat dish which is very yummy and surpisingly so. This is still part of Spain even though its an Island off the coast of Africa.

We went Parasailing and to a wild life zoo, we played on the beach and went to the hard rock cafe. It was a ton of fun and lots of sun and now we are back home to school and work!

Girls get away

Port Mogan & on the boat to Port Mogan

Ozlem sitting and chatting with a pigeon (which by the way have eye lids)-Las Palmas

@ Amedores Beach

Well the house we rented wasnt a TOTAL dive, but it wasnt far from it, and 10 min walk to the beach was not so much 10 minutes especialy on the walk back up since everthing on the Island is build upwards on high

mountains and clifs, but we had a lot of fun. Cockroaches and all!

We took the bus most places and spent a lot of time chatting on the beach, or in the house (which had a nice patio and view)or at cute cafe's. It was a lot of fun!

Thanks Girls (Shana,Kathleen, Sarah, Kirsten,and Ozlem)

Pizza party

So the house came with this brick oven and we have been perfecting our pizza making skills. We got it best when we invited over Harv Singh (Who used to work at a pizza parlor) and he had the dough down perfectly. Maybe I should say he had it up because he was tossing it like a pro!

We had tons of toppings and everybody was loving it. Dan was burning up and it was hot anyway but he had such a good time he was talking about how fun it was for days.

There were so many kids in the pool, it was all foggy when they got out.

I got to sit for a bit and enjoy one our friends new twins!

The worlds largest cootie catcher

Grandma taught Seth how to make a cootie catcher. The he showed his friend and they began an trying very tiny ones and very large ones. Seth claims this to be the worlds largest and I belive him, he used all our scratch paper and all our tape making it!

8th grade graduation fiesta

well there is still a few weeks left of school (Finals) but we celebrated cinco de mayo and a few nato teens graduating from 8th grade in May.

Tacos and music and other teen friends! Good fun!

Paiges Baptism

Well, its official,our little family is growing up!

Our littelest one was baptised and is now a fullfledge member of : The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday saints. We couldnt be more proud of her! We had a great day getting her ready and dressed, lots of pictures.

I spoke on Baptism, Dan of course performed the ordinances and then Logan spoke on The Holy Ghost.

After then ceremony we went to a favorite resteraunt with some favorite people. It was a great day! We are very blessed!