Time sure does fly when you have a newborn. It seems like yesterday when I promised you pictures from our trip to Copenhagen and here we are… four months later and the amount I want to share piles up weekly.

Since we last chatted, we visited Marrakech, Yellowstone, Canada and England. Squirms has successfully traveled through three continents and believe it or not, is more of a joy in the air than in a car.

We have briefly paused to catch our breath until the holidays kick into gear. Our next international trip is back to England in a couple of weeks and then a long winters break back home in North America.

In the meantime, we continue to love Spain and all she offers. We are frequently teased and tempted by cheap airfare to exotic lands, but have committed to traveling Spain in 2020. We have only seen bits and pieces of this gorgeous place and it’s a sin that needs rectified.

There are traditions in Spain that we just simply don’t have back home.  A festival to celebrate migration is one of those things.  After verifying in several different places that we would not be watching a parade to the slaughterhouse, we boarded a bus to the center of town to watch Fiesta de la Trashumancia. The annual parade of 2000+ sheep and various other livestock through the center of Madrid. The festival is the kickoff of the north to south migration and a reminder of the importance of animal husbandry.

There just aren’t proper words to describe watching 2000+ sheep and goats walk by you. There were a few goats that wanted to go back where they came from, there were some sheep who were as suspicious as I was about their destination,  a few sheep dogs that didn’t have much to do and there were people! Man, did Madrid come out to watch a parade of sheep!

We even had the pleasure to meet a Norwegian man who had coincidentally drove sheep down a mountain in Norway just two months prior. He couldn’t believe that he stumbled on a sheep parade and stayed to watch it with us, all the while showing us the beautiful pictures of his own sheep drive.

This country and her traditions amaze me when I let it. It’s very easy to allow modern conveniences and the hectic life with an infant to distract us from remembering that we live in SPAIN!  Today was one of those days where we are pinching ourselves and breathing our gratitude (even though the air is a little stinky with the smell of sheep).

Love you,

Nan