A Canary Island Holiday

The newest adventure: the Hooper family took our first 7 day family holiday. After I had a very positive meeting in Lanzarote (Canary Islands located off the coast of Africa), the rest of the crew flew down to meet me at the end of my meeting.

We rented a fabulous 3 bedroom villa with our own private pool. The kids loved the pool!

We spent several days on the beautiful beach of Playa Blanca. Suffice it to say that it looked a little different than the Texas beach!

The entire island is volcanoes so we decided to ride camels at the large national park of Timanfaya. The landscape looks like moonscape. It was amazing to see. One of the neatest things we saw at Timanfaya is where they have found a hole (literally) that goes deep into the earth. The heat that comes out is so hot that they have built a restaurant around it. They use the hole to cook the food. Directly over the hole, the temperatures stay around 400 degrees Farenheit. Pretty amazing to see.

Next to that oven hole was several small holes. The nice man there would dump a bucket of water down the holes. After three to four seconds, a bit of gurgling, and then a loud boom, the hole would shoot the water/steam straight up into the air about 20 feet.

Perhaps one of the coolest things we saw was a giant cave made by lava called Cueva de los Verdes. Words and the photos simply can't do this place justice. It felt like you were walking to the center of the earth... Legend has it that the inhabitants of Lanzarote used to hide in the caves when the pirates cam ashore. Unbelievable place.

The kids were fantastic the entire trip. On our several hour trip back to Amsterdam, Keali slept while Caden sat in his seat and drew pictures and wrote lots of words. As he always does, he struck up a conversation with the person next to him. Just before getting off the plane I heard him ask her if she would like us to walk with her through the airport. So cute!

As we spent our time in Lanzarote, Scott and I both were simply amazed by even being there. Still feeling like a Texas panhandle farm girl, I never expected to have the opportunities that we have had. In just a few short months, we have vacationed in Paris, Belgium, Scotland, Venice, and the Canary Islands. Our kids have seen more in six months than both Scott and me combined. The adventure continues in a few weeks to Barcelona.

Below you will find a few other honorable mentions from our holiday.

The first 1000 piece puzzle I have ever participated in. Teamwork! More to come on the puzzle later...

The beach where we sat in El Golfo to eat a delicious lunch. It doesn't get any fresher than this. You can see the man who cleans the fish beachside that they serve in the restaurant. It was delicious!

This is how Alex spent seven days:

An example of (non)-stellar parenting:

Just an absolute beautiful place.