Pictures of Spain should now be in. They’re not as incredible as the ones we took in the Azores, but it was still a fantastic trip. We spent four days over on the Mediterranean, visiting between Denia, Alacante and Valencia. These were mostly sun-soaked days of reading books on the beaches, but we did some touring of old Spanish ruins as well. You can see some of the incredible fortresses that overlooked almost every ocean town and city for defence. Some of the architecture we saw was as old as the second century.

We then spent three days in Madrid (I had to work one day) touring around the plazas, castles, cathedrals and monuments. Heidi would tell you that we walked way too much, but we ended up getting subway passes and doing it the quick way as well.

The weather was a truly incredible 90 degrees every day which is right up Heidi’s alley, but is a little beyond my preferences. In terms of places where we visited, Spain was truly incredible but both Heidi and I would go back to Brazil in a minute. If nothing else, it was wonderful to just have some time to ourselves to enjoy the summer and sunshine with a SMILE!

I’ve uploaded some pictures from this years hike up Mt Katahdin. The disappointing thing is that you really can’t get a sense of the scope and grandeur of where we actually were. It’s obviously quite a hike with snow well below where we were, but the pictures don’t nearly do justice to actually making the climb. If you’ve never done this one, I highly recommend it. We usually climb Cathedral and cross over the Knife’s Edge, but this year we went up Hunt’s Back. Although the hike was much longer, the scenery was probably a little better with incredible horizon shots.

The house! Heidi and I have put in an offer on a small (but cozy) home in Southern New Hampshire and its been accepted. While it probably won’t be a house that we will stay in for the long term, its wonderful just to have a place that we can call home. I guess I shouldn’t be counting chickens yet because we still have financing and almost two months to close, but the big hurdles (terms agreement, inspections) have already been passed. When I have some time, I’ll post some pictures.

Guess what? We’re off to Spain tomorrow for seven days. We’re staying on the east coast in a small town called Denia. We really don’t have any idea of plans or anything like that, but it will be good to just sit back and relax a little. I don’t know how often we’ll be doing that after the baby comes.

The baby? Oh yeah … Smile!

So this past week brought two awesome products to my attention: ERD Commander which allowed me to recover a completely dead installation of Windows 2000, and PC Inspector Smart Recovery which allowed me to retrieve my photos from the camera. I’ve now uploaded some of the pics from Oz for you to look at … not much because I was always the one taking the picture. The excitement from this particular trip was the phenominal restaurants which I got to eat at, going snorkelling with Rob, and seeing my first shark in the wild (albeit not too large). I guess I didn’t fill you in too much on that trip, but it was so fast it seemed like I was hardly there. The first day Rob, Dan and I drove south two hours for fish’n chips – ask me about it sometime. That night we did the zippity quick tour of the aquarium, then crashed. Keep in mind that I had not really slept in almost 48 hours. Then on Friday, Rob and I wandered over through Manly and enjoyed the water, views and some excellant Mexican food.

Did I mention that Heidi and I were in Nova Scotia this past weekend for a well overdue visit home? It was excellant to sit at 130 MacKay street and relax even though the weather was less than perfect. Oh yes, lots of news coming up about trips, our house and the baby! But we’ll save that for next week. Smile.