Andoni recap

Wow, what a whirlwind! Andoni has come and gone and it feels like a blur.

I will try to let the photos and video tell the story of Andoni's adventures while he was here. Andoni tried to waterski. Jeff's aunt is his teacher, she's the best! (I will try to upload this video later, for some reason it won't upload at the moment).

We spent the first weekend Andoni was here at the cabin with Jeff's cousins and Aunt and Uncle. We sat around and talked, played in the water, and went to Duluth, which is a large port city on Lake Superior, the largest lake in North America. We watched fireworks to celebrate the 4th of July over Lake Superior.

Lake Superior (find it on a map)

borders the United States and Canada and if you follow the lake due East, you will run through what is called the Great Lakes (which every school child learns about Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and

Superior) all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. If you keep going east, you will land in Basque country.

In the port city of Duluth, Minnesota.

Andoni at one of the two soccer games he played while here. His team greeted him warmly, shouting, "Andoni's here!"

Because of the work that is being done on the house, Andoni had to spend some time at meetings that he probably wasn't interested in and had to be dragged to look at things for the "reform" that were boring. But, we did our best to fill up the rest of the time with what we hoped were good memories for him. Because this was his second time here, we spent more time at the cabin "relaxing" which might have been torture to Andoni as the cabin has no computer hook up and one must really make up things to do to entertain oneself. We also spent time at the pool across the street and hanging out at home without a big entertainment for the day.This is our family life, and Jeff and I feel strongly that the girls and we need times together away from electronics to learn to make fun out of nothing. If they were

bored at all, it was not for lack of creative things to do. Playing games, working on puzzles, listening to music, these are the things that build memories. I always have said to the girls that they will never sit around as adults and reminisce about chatting online or watching a tv program, instead they will laugh about the time they jumped off the dock at the cabin, tried something new, saw something different, perhaps did something they really thought they would dislike only to discover it wasn't so bad. That is the stuff of good memories and deep relationships.

The above picture is the "beach" on Lake Superior.

So, that is what we tried to make happen with Andoni. He is quiet and it is not easy to know if he is enjoying himself and I wasn't sure most days if he was bored to death or if he did want something to do. He did ask to go shopping a few times and I think he was thrilled to find some good bargains at the stores to bring home to Spain. I also took him to an American warehouse shopping experience, called Costco which is a shocking example of the volume of items that Americans purchase. Costco is

a huge building that sells both cars and strawberries and everything in between. They had gluten free hot dogs there, which Andoni was glad to find.

We also found two ice cream shops that have gluten free ice cream. Freeziac was a place we went to last year and Andoni was glad to visit again, it is one of our favorite family spots. Also, many more restaurants offer gluten free options so it was fun taking Andoni to a couple of places to try some American food.

Andoni and the girls at an arcade having fun.

Essentially, our every evening was filled with soccer games and the weekend we were not at the cabin we had a soccer tournament for Quinn and Gillian in the blazing heat. Jeff took most of the soccer tournament duty and Andoni went along for the games that were after 10 in the morning. He also watched with the Jeff and the girls the Americans Women's soccer team sadly lose in the final game of the Women's World Cup. The last Sunday Andoni was here, even Jeff played in a soccer game with all the other coaches in the soccer club the girls are a part of. So, you could pretty much sum up the 2 1/2 weeks as soccer, soccer and more soccer.

Jeff with his team. They have sure improved quite a lot this last year.