This Halloween, we were soggy and wet - it poured all night last night, all through today, and all the way into trick-or-treating time.  There was one event that they had available to the littlest ones, and Anja just made the age cut-off to be able to attend and showed up in her adorable chef costume.  The one that I bought about 18 months ago and then lost.  Fortunately, I found it about 2 months ago and this time, it fit her perfectly and was so cute on her.

But do I have any pictures of her in it?  No.  I do not.  Instead, I have pictures of her from our night helping at a haunted house.  She was so good in it, too, right up until when she passed out on the couch in the loony bin and slept through the rest of the screaming and chain-saw-massacring and the rattling and the banging and the more screaming.  Maybe it was a self-defense thing to sleep through it all.

Late one night, I took it upon myself to color in one of Anja’s (many) drawings in Photoshop.  Don’t worry - she loves it and has given me the OK that it is acceptable.

It reads:

I am Grayson.  I lie a lot.  Oops, got to lie.  Good luck, I am going to lie about I did not eat cookies, OK.  OK.  OK.  Thanks.  Don’t tell your friends, OK.

This one was brought to me today.  It is, as you can tell, her feelings.

I guess I won’t be buying any more white cheese.

Losers sweepers!

And that is all.

I was very excited for our trip this weekend - after nearly 3 years here, we still had not made it over to Portugal. This weekend being a long weekend - Columbus day, celebrating the Portuguese guy who sailed from Spain to re-re-discover America that had already been re-discovered by an Icelander.  (How do you like that?!)

Now before I go into my plans for Portugal, you should know that I’m generally not much of a planner - I like to make loose plans and just do whatever, but knowing we were on limited time and had a few things we wanted to do, our itinerary was as follows:

Leave around 1:00pm Friday afternoon for the Algarve coast and get to Portimão around 4pm and hang out doing whatever for the rest of the afternoon. Saturday morning, the plan was to leave in the morning for shopping for pottery in Porches, and then off to Lagos (la-GOOSH!) for a boating excursion that would take us to the beautiful grottos along the Algarve coast.  Then we’d head up to Lisbon in the early evening, staying in our hotel in the city overnight.  On Sunday, we’d venture up to Sintra in the morning and spend the late afternoon and evening exploring Lisbon, and then on Monday we’d hit the road early, stopping in Evora to admire a chapel of bones and some Roman ruins.

In reality, though, this is our how our trip went:

Got off work late, finally out of the house about 4pm.  Got to Portimão late Friday night, got lost finding our hotel, missed dinner.  We were so tired by the time we got in, plus it being late and dark and hard to navigate under such circumstances, we just hit the sack as soon as we got in.  Well, not as soon as we got in - first was dealing with the fact that I’d made the wrong reservations for our hotel in Lisbon, something I’d rather not discuss right now.  At any rate…

Saturday, woke up delightfully early and hit Porches for our pottery shopping.  We walked around town a bit, admiring the quaintness, the fun doors and decayed walls, and eventually made our way to a pottery shop.

I loved this shop, where the owner was painting in the back and selling his wares in the front.  He graciously allowed me to take pictures, and I walked out with a beautiful vase and a great, polka-dotted coffee mug.

Next we headed to Lagos where we were going to take our boat tour out to the grottoes.  Of course “the seas were angry,” and our very anticipated boat trip turned into sitting in a restaurant on the pier trying to figure out what to do next.  It was still early, so we didn’t eat but rather decided on a detour to Sagres; more specifically, to Cape St. Vincent, which was once believed to be the end of the world.  A great place to visit on Columbus Day weekend, the scenery was impressive and my mood improved from my earlier grumpiness about missing the boat trip I’d been looking forward to for weeks.

We explored an old fort and a castle in the area and admired the beautiful coastline before making our way back to Sagres for lunch - except that we missed lunch and everything was closed.  Still no Portuguese food, and by now I was really starting to want some Chicken Piri Piri that I kept seeing signs for.

We made our way up to Lisbon Saturday evening and attempted to un-cluster-f*#*) the very expensive cluster-f*#*)$@ I got myself into. The expensive part didn’t change much, but we were fortunate to be able to stay at the same hotel as our friends instead of all the way across town in a who-knows-what kind of neighborhood.  We set out for some Portuguese food but found only a seafood restaurant where I had bass, presented to me head and all.  It was…not what I expected in Portuguese food.  I’d been told how fabulous the food in Portugal was, especially coming from Spain where there isn’t a whole lot of flavor involved in cooking where we live.  The bass was simple, what I’d expect from any restaurant anywhere when it comes to a whole fish being made for my dinner.  The kids were unimpressed, as were our friends who got “vegetable” soup that looked like grass in a bowl of semi-creamy broth, but hey, at least the wine was good.

Sunday morning, another bright and early start to our day.  I was going to get my Piri Piri today, I was sure of it!  We decided to go up first thing to Sintra by train, which was, along with our plan to visit the grottoes along the Algarve coast, the other big to-do item on our list.  I have to say: Sintra did not disappoint.  At all.  In fact, I fell in love with it.  I wish I could move there and live in one of the old, beautiful homes nestled in the hills. Particularly, this one - the one turning colors:

Hiking and bussing our way up to one of the palaces, I was constantly in awe of this incredible town.

We stopped for lunch at a restaurant where I hoped to order my long awaited Piri-Piri, but instead had some unimpressive bacalhau.  While the food was not so great, the location was more eye candy:

This building, like many others, was decorated with ceramic tile.

A further bus ride up a very narrow, twisting road led us to the Palácio Nacional da Pena, where there is no way to describe how majestic and surreal this palace - this castle - really was.

After a very long time spent admiring both the outside and the inside (sorry, no pictures allowed!), we made our way down through the surrounding gardens.

By the time we were done, it was already 5pm.  We decided to forfeit the expensive already-paid-for tour of another palace (are you sensing yet how expensive this trip got for us?) and instead head back to Lisbon so we could get that nice, elusive Portuguese dinner.

But alas, it was not meant to be.  Due to some issues beyond our control, we ended up eating dinner at. a. mall.  Not quite how I expected our last dinner to be, but hey, at least now our kids could find something they liked.  With several restaurants to choose from, the kids had no problem finding what they wanted: pasta.  Boy, do our kids have adventurous taste buds.  (Note to self: next trip, Italy.) For me, piri piri?  No - no piri piri.  None to be found.  Instead, it was Israeli food cooked in Portugal by a Nepalese immigrant.  *sigh*.  At least there was still one more chance, Monday’s lunch.

Isak wolfed down his food - after all, he didn’t eat lunch because he wasn’t very pleased with the food he ordered in Sintra - but Anja just picked at hers, eating only a couple of bites.  After attempting dinner negotiations for quite some time, I finally conceded that she wasn’t going to take one more bite, as she was now complaining of a tummy ache.  I thought it was her way of avoiding eating something she regretted ordering, but an hour later when her bed was covered with puke, I realized her body was telling her that this food just wasn’t right.

After a very late trip to the pharmacy to talk to the Portuguese pharmacist that didn’t speak a lick of English followed by waking with her at midnight, 1:30am, 3am, and 5am while her body fiercely rejected every ounce of food, stomach acid and bile, and finding out that our friends’ son was going through the same thing 3 floors below us, we changed our plans to avoid Evora, preferring the fast route down the freeway and back into Spain where they could puke in the familiarity of home instead.

Despite the many changes of plans (and the lack of piri piri), we had a great time, took many pictures, and are already planning on going back another weekend soon, next time armed with Immodium AD and a restaurant guide that will guarantee me my elusive chicken piri piri.

Last night I became thankful for the never-used bidet right next to the toilet that can be found in hotels in this part of Europe.  It came in very handy when Anja spent the night in the abathroom utilizing both at once while she dealt with our family’s first incident of food poisoining.

So it’s day 12 of the South Beach Diet.  I have been doing incredibly well; I haven’t really cheated except for going out for dinner last night.  We went to a murder mystery dinner and the choices were chicken with pasta or brisket with mashed potatoes.  I opted for the chicken (far healthier than brisket) and only ate about 3 forkfuls of pasta, leaving the large majority of it on my plate.  I also ate most of my piece of cheesecake which was a definite no-no but I was able to get back on track right away.

I’ve been careful to explain to the kids why I’m eating the way I am - for example, I love bread too much, so instead of eating one healthy piece of bread I’ll eat the whole dang thing of it, which is not at all healthy.  And I’ll have to top it with a bunch of butter because I just love butter on my bread, so you do the math, it’s just not a good thing for me.  So no bread for now until I get things under control a bit better.

But somehow, they’ve heard that I’m “on a diet”, even though the couple of times I’ve heard them say it I’ve corrected them and explained that I’m just trying to eat healthier because my eating habits got kind of out of control for a while there.  They seemed to accept that just fine.

So today we have been out of the house all day and at about 2:45, B realized we hadn’t eaten lunch yet.  We headed over to the local pizza place on base where they were going to have a big pizza and I was going to eat from the salad bar.  However, 2:45 is Spanish lunchtime so it was packed.  Frustrated, we decided to go to Subway instead (I’d have a wrap).  We got there and again, there was a long line.  So we walked down to the Commissary and they bought pre-made sandwiches and chips and I bought a box of cherry tomatoes and a small plate of meat and cheese cubes.

As we settled down to eat - finally! - the base commanding officer walked by.  He is generally a pretty friendly and likeable guy and I’ve worked directly with him a few times so he knows who I am by name, so when he walked past he said, “Hi, LN1!  How’s it going?”  And my daughter responded directly to him by piping up with “My mamma’s on a diet!”

He chuckled as he walked past, and the rest of us maintained relatively straight faces until he was out of sight, at which point we all erupted in laughter.  My daughter is the Queen of Good Timing.

Anja came home with an assignment to create a paper doll that she felt resembled her. With the unusual opportunity to raid my scrapbooking supplies, she picked, designed and oversaw the assembly of her paper doll. All the ideas, papers, etc., were hers except the design of the necklace. She wanted diamond earrings but the doll didn’t have ears so I made her a necklace with one fiber of gold embroidery floss and a tiny silver bead. She has wavy (corrugated) hair, a glittery pink crown and a feria-style dress. And nail polish. And blush on her cheeks.  And pink high heels.  The only thing I vetoed was HER BABY.