good night sweden (with dreams from the basque country)

tomorrow morning we start our trek back to california after our 6 week "adventure" abroad. we've been lucky to have weekend excursions during our stay in karlstad and even a week with my parents bookended with trips to uppsala and gothenburg. and the last week in basque country has truly been the sweet ending to our sweet-en stay... literally paid for by the weeks michael's spent living overseas with hotel points and airline miles (and somewhere in there we get double miles for freeway time done along the 241 and 91). and i've started a few posts trying to mark the moments but either abandoned them due to blogger-block (no different than whan i was seven and keeping a hello kitty diary and if i missed entries exhausted myself trying to "catch up" and by then it all seemed silly and outdated) exacerbated by too many tram rides in too many days or simply by inconsistent hotel internet connections. . .

look for delayed posts when we return from san sebastian and helsinki and i've put the slideshow up to the right from biarritz. we found ourselves (not suprisingly) taking less pictures but being more thankful for our time together. the basque country was simply amazing--the people warm and beautiful, the water clear and serene, and the paella and sangria marvellous. as we took our two busses along the bay of biscay heading south towards spain it seemed that we could have gotten off at any stop and spent another week on the beach or sitting in a local cafe. we weren't sure what to expect from a "resort town" but the cobblestoned french streets, the patisseries and the boulangeries, the crenellated buildings, the wrought iron gates and the magical cliffs were right out of a french fairy tale in the heart of a basque surf town. i found myself jumping in the sea and dancing around in my bathing suit (something suprisingly i hadn't done in years despite how often we go to the beach) just as happily as i eyed my boys building sand fortresses out of sand pebbles while i read didion on a stolen hotel towel. . . ah, i hadn't meant to write anything at all, what with all that blog block but i suppose with no pretention or motivation here's a bit of what i couldn't say all week and why after a failed internet connection i gave up on turning on the laptop altogether. . .

i'll end this with two of my favorite owen-isms from the week and our one family snapshot taken while travelling.

oh, and this picture of owen trying on a beret holding a bull in the tourist shop--by the time we left he had mastered "bonjour! je m'appelle owen" (which he recited no less than 37 times in the taxi ride from the airport to the hotel and i'm convinced his recissitation of this to the front desk is what got us an amazing corner room) as well as delighted the french madames with his sincere see-voo-plays and mair-cee-bow-coos.

in helsinki next to a rather dour couple owen looks at me and rather loudly asks: "mom, why don't ALL adults have little boys like me?". i giggled.

in biarritz owen stopped at a rather sexy mint green vespa and shouts: "oooh! an ice cream motorcycle!"