Vacation North

We took a week to go North and visit friends who have recently moved to two cities North of Lisbon. This first stop was with the Gerecks in Coimbra. We saw Roman ruins, a great castle, a huge beach, played at the park, got to catch up and enjoy their new house and city! It was a blast!

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My fabulous Birthday!

Finally I am getting the pics of my fabulous birthday posted! I wanted to spend the day at the beach, of course, so we decided to see if we could find a new beach we hadn't been to yet. The beaches that we planned to spend the day at were so crowded that we would have had to park and walk for about 20 minutes to get there. Not exactly the relaxing hide away I had imagined. So we changed plans and jumped on the ferry, always fun, to go to Troia. It is a little peninsula with a great beach and crystal clear water. The main beach sits in a little lagoon so there aren't many waves and the girls loved being able to really swim. The best part was when 2 beautiful dolphins showed up and played in the water right around us. Tirza thought it was very nice of them to show up just for my birthday!:)

After the beach we headed back to Lisbon, cleaned up and went out for a night on the town. We had dinner at a great little Italian place and then went to the main square for a lights, music and fireworks show. Again, sweet Tirza was impressed and the amount of effort people put into my birthday... fireworks! Above and beyond!!!

We walked around then finished the day with dessert at Hard Rock Cafe, yum!

It was a GREAT day of celebrating!!!

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Noite dos Museus

During the first part of August there were a ton of free cultural events around the city. This one was a night when several museums stayed open until midnight (and were free). We headed down to Belem, one of our favorite parts of the city and enjoyed three free museums, a great dinner and the city all light up at night! It was actually a couple weeks ago but there are some great pics of the girls (again taken by Lindsey) that just have to be posted!

Still to come... my birthday and our vacation up North!!!!

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Pig Party

Last Saturday we went to the annual Pig Party on the beach. This was our third year to get to go and it has been a BLAST all three times. This year did not dissappoint... the pig roast, YUM! A georgous beach with huge waves to play in! Lots of friends to relax and spend the day with and then the evening ends with Arroz de Marisco (Seafood), can't even tell you how good that is!

You will notice that the quality of photography has greatly increased... it's because my camera isn't responsible for any of these shots... Lindsey went with us and so we just borrowed all her pics from the day. Thanks Lindsey!!!

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11 years

On July 24th Mark and I celebrated our 11 year wedding anniversary! Our friend, Lindsey, kept the girls so that we could go enjoy the afternoon and evening together. We went downtown and up to the castle that sit on a hill above the city. It has beautiful views of the city but I don't really like to go up with the girls because there isn't much in the way of safety. So we enjoyed the castle and the views, found neat necklaces made from old coins, had ice cream and spent some timing cooling off in any shade we could find, it was so HOT!

After that we walked back down in the downtown area and then went to eat at really cute little cafe called amo.te (I love you.) It is on the side of a theater in the middle of town. We enjoyed a quiet table, people watching, great food and the a/c!

It was a wonderful day, being with Mark and celebrating 11 years of being married!

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Madrid Vacation

Vacation pictures from our time in Madrid, Spain!

After our company meeting we stayed in Madrid for a few days with some friends that live in Italy. We had a blast!!! It was so nice to just relax, laugh, do some site seeing and to enjoy some fun foods that we don't get all the time. It was SOOO hot while we were there but we did enjoy running the AC at the hotel without having to worry about how much it would cost us:)

We saw several plazas, the palace (which is still used today by the Spanish royalty, how cool is that!?), ate tapas and went to the zoo. I think the day we went to the zoo was the hottest of all the days. We met some other friends, that also live in Portugal, there and we all attempted to enjoy the animals despite the heat. It was fun to be with all our friends... and if you have facebook be sure to check out the shots one of them got of Mark fishing Tirza's hat out of the penguin display... crazy! Funny now, it wasn't then...

A big highlight for me was free refills of Vanilla Coke Zero at TGI Fridays... oh wow!

I could go on and on it was a great trip... enjoy "seeing" a little of it!

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World Cup

If you know us at all you know we love SOCCER and therefore the World Cup is an extremely ENORMOUS event for us! Getting to be in Madrid while Spain was playing in the final- WOW! Being in Spain when Spain won the World Cup- there are no words, PRICELESS!

Cheering Spain on, as the game when on and on... don't ming that little bit of orange in the corner there, they really live in Holland so they were allowed.

WHOOHOO! Spain WON! Time to CELEBRATE!

Out on the streets joining in the festivities. And the Spaniards did not disappoint, they brought the celebrations like I have never seen... we enjoyed celebrating with them and then when the traffic stopped, the sprinklers got broken and the clothes started coming off we decided to it was time to head back to the hotel:) What a night!

There was really no way to capture the fun in a picture so I will post a few videos too!

Well done Spain, good game! And thanks for winning while we were there but next time... Portugal is gonna take you down!!!