He's a little nightmare, but we love him

By mid morning, during the summer months, Blue and Geri are chomping at the bit to get inside for a siesta, Miliko is too, but he just wants to get in to cause havoc. Yesterday was one of those days. He looked quite settled and relaxed, when the three of them barged through the door of the apartment, otherwise I would have chased him back out. An hour or so later, I went to check on them. Blue and Geri were sleeping soundly, no surprise there, but silly me had not locked the door to our bedroom and bathroom. I shuddered to think of the destruction I might find!

Now bear in mind Miliko is the smallest of our dogs, has one leg visibly shorter than the other three and he can open open his mouth 18mms at the last measurement. Ok try and visualise the destruction........

Our bed that was clear apart from a sheet if we need it, yes don't forget it's August in Spain. We have huge plastic holdalls, aproximately a metre square that we keep bedding in. He had dragged one from the bedroom to the bathroom, and pulled out a towel, a mattress protector, and a thick furry throw. He had taken a bag that contained twelve toilet rolls up on to the bed to have a play with, plus, a new pair of trainers of mine and a glittery flip flop (he has already eaten the sequins off of the other one), one trainer of Alans and one slipper. A small shopping bag from a cupboard, oh and a TEN KILO bag of Geri's food which was a least half full, was also on the bed too. It was like a child surrounded by his toys but with lunch there to nibble on.

Little bugger!

Meeting with friends in El Torcal

It was almost a year since we, the member's of the Spanish alpaca group AEDA, that stands for Asociación España de Alpacas, had managed to get together, for one reason or another. At last we managed to set a date at meet up at our friends David and Di's house in one of the most stunning regions of Andalucia, the El Torcal National Park. Just a short time after we arrived Di informed us they had a baby donkey born two weeks previously. That was it, the vino was put on hold and we all immediatly trotted, excuse the pun, to see him, and what a little beauty!

Mum and baby donk, how lovely!

It was a beautiful day and surprisingly enough we managed to get through our meeting in pretty good time, thanks to Mr. Cobb keeping his eye on the clock! Allowing us to have a good old catch up with good friends, something we miss dearly. I do wish we could get together more often.

Fabulous view from the terrace

Mike with David and Di's beautiful cria

Nigel gets a "hello" kiss

What a stunning journey home

The official naming of kittens

Our kittens are a few months old now, and we could not decide on names for them. They were going to be called Wayne (Rooney), Frank (Lampard) and A.N.Other, probably Steve (Gerrard) however we decided to see how the English football team performed. We would now like to introduce the kittens and with names we decided on, you will of course notice they are not English names, at all, but of course Spanish!

Andres (Iniesta)

Fernando (Torres)

And Sergio (Ramos)

With his mum, Barb

Just a cute one of them all hiding together!

Spain, world cup winners!!!

Alan and I are both patriotic I would say, I especially love my home town of Brighton, and long for my visits there. The sight of the sea, brings a smile to my face! However we chose two and a half years ago to move here, to Spain, and although I miss my family and friends immensly, I do not regret that decision.

Sadly I did n't think we will ever experience the thrill of living in a country, that would win the world cup, and are very grateful to have a, sort of, second chance, whilst living here in Spain. We watched the semi final with our lovely new friends Kev and Sue, and their family in the park. We had a lovely evening together. The atmostphere in the park was wonderful. I should decribe the park really, it is a small park compared to those we have in Brighton, small grassy areas where dads and children are often are seen kicking a football to each other. It has a little "walkway" where the elderly walk along throughout the evening, meeting up with friends, a typical fountain in the middle, but also three bars in the park too. The bar we like to go to, also sells food, has a large tv screen and also shading and fans. A must when it can still be 40 degrees at 10pm. Our Spanish friends met us at half time, after David finished work too. When the final whistle went, the noise from the local teenagers in their cars was so exciting. They obviously all dashed to their cars, and drove around, taking all of about ten minutes to circle the town, waving flags excitedly out of the windows. How on earth would they be during the final?

Well final night arrived, and Kev and Sue sadly went back to the UK before the final, although they assured us they would be thinking of us. David said he would like us to go to the casino with his family to watch the game. The casino is actually a members club, not what we would think of as a casino. We met up with his family at his house, and waited whilst their little boys finished face painting their faces and got their scarfs etc, and the tension was almost unbearable. I was worried that with the "English's" luck at football, we could not possibly bring them any luck, and the minutes ticked by, I was dreading the thought of penalties. When the goal was scored for Spain aproximately two minutes before the end of extra time, it was pretty blooming close to feeling it was England. We had followed Spain, and of course knew a little about Real Madrid, and Barcelona footbal teams, from which many of the players play for regularly. Well I know a little, and Alan knows loads!

The final whistle was blown, there was much back slapping, shaking hands, hugging and kissing, and then pretty much the place emptied. As we left we saw why. Practically every bar was empty, the tiny streets of Montoro, this typically old fashioned town, had never seen such excitement, and the street were full. A journey to our friends which would have taken ten minutes to walk (but you don't when you have two small children and it's over 40 degrees) took us about forty five minutes to drive. Cars in front of us were being rocked, and stopped from moving forward until you played a tune on your horn to enable you to pass. Teenages were crammed into cars, many sitting on the roof waving flags and blowing their vuvuzelas. Often driving through tiny passages, with old ladies sitting oustside, enjoying the very slightly fresher air that the evening brought. As we passed the park we had watched the match in just a few days before, the park was heaving, with many people cooling down from their excitement, in the park fountain. I was very happy and excited, and I wanted to be in that fountain!

When Alan and I got home we were in time to watch the highlights on our English channel, it was great to understand the commentary and relive the excitement of the match and the fantastic presentation, and fun and frolics after. What a night!

David and Jesus get ready for a night they will never forget

Alan standing out a mile, in blue!

The big moment

Sadly our camera was playing up, and I could not take any photos outside, when it was dark!

Update on Miliko at the vet

As per usual I am about three weeks behind with my blog writing, nothing new there. However I though I must keep you all up to date with our little darling, that wrecks the place, and drives us and the other dogs to distraction..... yes Miliko. We took him along to the vet in Cordoba as arranged, for a check up, after one month, having being given the news that there really was nothing we could do for the little fella, regarding his soft tissue that had formed around his jaw, that had been dislocated, and preventing him from opening his mouth very wide. Well personally, I was over the moon, to hear it had stayed at exactly the same size. He can open his mouth 18mms. He can still eat his dinner, and tries very hard to play with toys, drag washing off the clothes line, eat candles, and I'm afraid even manage to eat baby birds. Sadly nature has it's way of keeping the bird population down, and Miliko is one of those ways. I was so worried that he had deteriorated and therefore would have an idea of how long the lil fella would have, but thank God, this is not the case just yet. We are going back to the vet in six months time, God willing. He will be one year old in August, bless him!

Miliko being a pain to Blue, whilst she is trying to watch her favourite tv program Bondi Vet!

Wonderful trip back to Brighton

I know we all think we have the most wonderful children in the world, but I'm sorry, I do! Thanks to my wonderful daughter and family, I hopped onto an easy jet flight in Malaga for another little trip back to, what was a gloriously sunny Brighton. As usual it was not long enough to see many friends, although I did manage to catch up with a couple of besties. This time including my good friend Karen, that I worked with, in one of the schools, who was adamant that she treat me to lunch, lunch was great, but the company even better. It was wonderful to catch up Karen, thank you! Poor Frankie is carless at the moment but we managed to get about on buses without too much difficulty, even though she is out in Peacehaven. Thanks to buses, and Mark and Callie driving around, I managed to see as much of the kids and beautiful babies as possible. The babies are both such charactors now. Kaci was standing up beside the furniture, and crawling, really laughing and squealing, as well as saying, dada, mumumum, and pa! This was her favourite thing to shout at me whilst I tried so hard to encourage her to say nana! I would just get "PA" in return. Maise is now having these great little conversations, but she sounds like she is having a good old moan, inbetween the most beautiful smiles. I am so proud of my Frankie and Mark, and their little families, and I just cannot believe how wonderful it is to be a nanny. It is so very difficult to be away from them for long periods, it helps when I have a definite date for a return trip. Which I am extremely happy to say I have just booked....... yippppeeee! Ok, proud nanny wants to show you all the photos below!

Maisie

Kaci

My two gorgeous girls!

Alpaca weaning

The time had come, well if I am honest, probably a couple of months ago, that Galaxy needed weaning. Cassandra his mum was a little on the thin side so we knew it would be in her best interest, but we were worried as young alpacas get very upset and hum loudly whilst looking for their mum, and the mum gets very stressed and agitated too, thinking their youngster has gone missing. Santa who is younger than Galaxy can be weaned soon, although he was not ready to be weaned at the same time as Galaxy, we also knew that he would miss his little friend!

Galaxy had been into the paddock playing with Rafa, Marcus and Eduardo, the boys, a few times. It had started off very friendly, with the boys practically skipping, high off of the ground, but of course then a need to prove dominance begins, and when things would get a little rough we would put the hose on them, just to calm things. So we were unsure how things would be. Also Rafa was being a little bit bullied in the boys paddock so we had an idea that maybe we would seperate Rafa and Galaxy together, to enable them to do a little bit of team building before putting the boys back together again.

So the big day arrived, we had to plan it with great precision, unfortunately it was a day that we had guests arriving, but never the less it was the day Alan wanted to do it. We managed somehow to get Rafa and Galaxy past Marcus and Eduardo and through to their new paddock. All was well for about five minutes when all hell let lose! Eduardo and Marcus suddenly realised they did not want to lose Rafa from their gang, and somehow squeezed through a tiny gap in a fence, that was less that a foot wide, they were runing around excitedly. Meanwhile Rafa jumped over his new fence to see his mates, that we thought he would like to be away from. Ok project all halted until another day!

Let's try again! Having blocked holes in fences and tied up fencing to lessen opportunities of escaping alpacas we had another go. Maybe it was beause we were calmer but all seemed to go to plan. The grey boys, Marcus and Edardo were in a small area so they could not run around. Galaxy did run up to them and had a good sniff and said "hi!" He then followed to where Rafa had gone to their new paddock, yet again! All was calm and all was well. No alpacas could escape! After a couple of hours, Alan and I thought we would pop ino town as Galaxy seemed fine, and although Cassandra was humming pretty loudly we knew she just had to get through the next couple of days, and she would be perfectly happy again.

Alan went ahead and opened the gate and started the car, as I followed behind, Rafa tried once again to jump over the fence. Poor little lad his front legs and feet were over, with his back feet off the ground. I knew Alan would not hear me shouting for him over the car engine so I had to wait for him to drive slowly down from our car parking area, as of course by then he was wondering where I was. As he looked for me he thought I was standing, cuddling Rafa, until he realised that I was trying to take some of his weight as he balanced over a fence. Bless him! We undid some fencing, and managed to get Rafa back on four feet, with no harm done, apart from his dignity, and alpaca street credability. Since then Marcus and Eduardo have settled down nicely, Rafa and Galaxy are doing just great, and Cassandra was a little upset for a few days, and could often be seen looking over the gate for her little boy, but thankfully she is also doing fine now, and is starting to put some weight back on!

Rafa and Galaxy happy in their new paddock

Rafa explores their new stable

He seems happy!