Here are my mums that got a little to much fertilizer. I won't have to fertilize again next year.

Sorry the first four photos are out of order. They are suppose to be after the temple pictures.

From there we went and met up with Angeles' brother and his family for a personal tour of the congress building. Since Javier is third in line in the Education Ministry in Spain he had a friend (the guy in this picture who is a member of the House of Representatives) arrange and give us the tour. We sat in the President of Spain's seat as well as in the chair where the King sits every four years or sometimes less when he visits congress. They even had a professional photographer come in and take our photo since we could not take our own photos.
This is down town Madrid in the heart of the city.
We ate lunch in this restaurante where the rich and famous have eaten. Sophia Loren's signed photo was just one of them. Below are two kinds of paella. The one on the right was the best, but not as good as Angeles' paella. I am not saying that because she is my wife and reads this.

The last full day in Spain was a whirlwind. I don't know how we got everything in. To start out we went to the temple and we did baptisms. The kids did 20 confirmations a piece and 40 baptisms. The names were from Holland, Peru, Chile, Mexico, Sweden, Portugal, Brazil, Spain, The USA, Canada, and it seems a few others. The hardest to pronounce for me were those names from Holland. I hope they forgive me for butchering their names. Kevin loved the Madrid subway so much he said he could ride it all day long.

The Metro was not too crowded everytime we got on. They say that the best time to visit Madrid is in July and August when everybody from Madrid has left on vacation. Here is the President of Spain, Zapatero. And to keep her promise in the second photo Angeles is shaking his hand.

Here is the Minister of Education, but more important to some, The minister of Sports as well. She was at the Eurocup Final and also at Wimbeldon for Rafa Nadal's win against Federer.

After that we ended the day with a dinner at a great seafood restaurante. You knew it was good by how filled it was and they just kept coming even after 11:00 at night.

The kids are toasting the great time we had.

This is the last installment until we get home because tomorrow we are leaving for Madrid. We are going to the temple on Tuesday morning and then hopefully we are going to get pictures with the President of Spain. We are going to a congress session and then there is a party after celebrating the first 100 days since these leaders were put in after the elections. Javier, Angeles' brother, is taking us to that and since he is just under the Secretary of Eduction our chances are great. I am sure we will at least meet Madame Secretary.

These are the night pictures of the cathedral in Leon.


There were a ton of weddings yesterday and this is part of their photo shoot. Check out how they dress for these weddings. I am glad we won't have to pay for a wedding dress like these that the brides were wearing. I would have to get a second mortgage on the house.

The second floor of this building is where Angeles was born. It was a clinic close to their first home in Leon.
This is our great friend, Martin. He owns this bar where the kids would go every chance they got to eat tapas and have a drink (soda) before going home for dinner. Remember that dinner is around 2:00 in the afternoon.
These are the tapas. This is potatoes al olioli.This tapa is fried squid. Charles even tried the squid once.

CHURROS CON CHOCOLATE!!!!

The missionaries were our guests and as you see we had a great time.
Here they are making the churros. Too bad that we don't have a machine like this at home. We would have a churro party at least once a month.


These are not the churros that you have had at our home, these are really called porras. As you can see they are bigger because they use yeast in these.



Here is another one of the street performers trying for donations. I have to admit that he is the best. That is why he is the one that makes the most money.

This was the hospital for those with tuberculosis in Bonar where Angeles' dad did his residency for 2 1/2 years.
This is the building where he lived while in Bonar. It was directly in front of the hospital and it had natural hot springs where they would bathe. His room was the one on the left with the window half opened.

This is one of the salads that we ate: eel, anchovies, smoked salmon, smoked trout and smoked something else. Below was my dessert which is a cheese cake more like flan.

This is a road up in the mountains that was a side trip for us yesterday.

This is the Statue of Guzman El Bueno that is at the entrance of Leon.
Then below is the old palace of the Guzman that is near the center of the city.

They have replanted the flowers at the fountain where everyone partied after Spain won the Eurocup three weeks ago.
Finally this is one of the schools that Angeles went to when she was growing up. Some of the nuns still come by to visit us when we are in Leon.

This past Saturday through Monday we spent part of our time with Angeles' three best friends from High School. They are great people who anyone would like. They questioned Bryce about his going on a mission and they were amazed, but also very very supportive. They want him to come to Spain on his mission and they wished him luck and told him he had to let them know where he was going and then keep in contact while he was out.
Here are all four of them with their spouse. The best looking one is on the right.

We went to Gijon today to the beach. Here is part of the downtown.

This is not Abby Road, but we are working on perfection to imitate it.

The beach was just jammed packed with people since it was the first day in quite a while that they had great weather. When I say it was great weather I mean about 78 outside.

Here is part of our lunch for those that ate seafood.
These are the mountains going from Leon to Asturias.

Here is Leon and below is another Gaudi building. It is called Botines.