At Home

So as you've seen, our exchange student's stay has been a great excuse to get out and about sight seeing, but there have also been some changes on the home front.  Most notably, the addition of a new car to the family!  Yes, we now have two vehicles.  For some time now we have been considering the convenience of being a two-car family, but living in such a small town it seemed excessive to my mind.  Plus you have to think of expenses like maintenence and insurance, etc. 

Anyway, we had been holding out; but as winter draws nearer (short days and the posibility of a little rain) having another car for when one of us is at work really began to feel like a necessity.  Angelines especially wanted another car to be able to ferry her mother to and from the house--she has a very bad knee and shouldn't walk so much, but is a help in the afternoons when Emily and Angelines are home alone.  It will also be really nice for me on weekends because this way Em and I can go exploring without inconveniencing Mamá (in the past she'd have to ride her bike home at 3 or 4 in the morning!).   

We are pleased with the purchase: a four-door, five-seat, 2001, Citroen Xara.  It's bigger than we were originally looking for and the price was slightly over what we wanted to pay, but it's in very good condition with only 150.000 km.  Angelines knows several people who have the same car and are constantly singing its praises, so it is also supposedly bomb-proof.  So far, so good. ;)

Aside from the big purchase of our second car, we've been stocking up on and stacking firewood.  Every year we get caught mid-winter with no wood for the fireplace and so have to buy green wood from this year's olive trimming...yuck.  The green wood doesn't burn well, as you know, and also really gunks up the fireplace.  So we've bought three cartloads of wood this year plus what was leftover from last year's mid-season purchase.  We have A LOT of wood.  Being the good little mountain girl that I am, I set to stacking it neatly...no small task when you're talking about uneven, usually round olive branches/trunks as opposed to neatly split pine or fir!  I was so pleased with my work that I decided to take a picture, because I knew that my dad especially would approve.  So here it is:

 

Emily saw the camera and jumped in the pic. ;)  Yes, she's wearing a tutu on her head. 

Now the question is, "Winter, where are you??"  The nights are getting chilly and we've got frost a few times, but day time temps are still quite often reaching the low 80's!  ...And we have yet to have a good rain. :(  But Spanish homes are extremely unequipped for cold and so even when it's warm outside, the house remains cold.  We have been lighting the fireplace nearly every night for a little over a week now.  I'm sure we won't regret having stocked up on firewood.