Around Madrid in February

Amidst all the traveling of January & February, we were able to do some cool things hanging out around town. I thought I'd give you a little update on our day to day life here... not just all the stuff about traveling!  Most of the time, we spend hanging around our apartment, or out with friends, but we try to do fun stuff around town as well.
 I have this super amazing friend here, Bea, and she and I have been hanging out more lately, and I've loved it!  

We've been doing cooking classes - our first in January was for pancakes & maple syrup from scratch.

In February, we did rice krispie bars (I had LOTS of bags of marshmellows, thanks to Mollie & Kez!)  The second photo of Bea is her showing me some Mac & Cheese that she found on another friend of mine's blog!  She made it from the recipe, and it tasted amazing :)

Also, random photo from my life.  This is probably my favorite breakfast, but I don't let myself have it too often... Chocolate Croissant & a homemade cappuccino with brown sugar.  Thanks Emaz for the cool cup & saucer!

Then, we had a weekend of amazing weather, and Tep asked me to go cross country skiing with her.  One of the amazing things about Madrid is that I can drive 45 minutes north of my house and be in 8000 feet above sea level in the Sierra de Guadarramas.

The snow wasn't the best, and as you can see by my sweet outfit, it was pretty warm.  Check out those leggings....

But, it was really nice to get out of the city, and to get some great exercise in the beautiful weather!
I'm also going to try to do a better job of simply documenting the city around us.  There are some amazing things that I walk by on a daily basis, and whenever it comes time for us to leave Madrid, I want to make sure that I've captured the everyday, as well as the amazing sites within our city.  This is one of the main buildings that welcomes you to Gran Via - the main road in Madrid.  There is some awesome historic architecture in our city.

Lastly, we had a small group of YWAM-ers (Youth With A Mission) stay with us at the beginning of the month.  It's a cool story how they happened to stay with us.  I noticed a few months ago that an old friend from mine from Wooddale's youth group had moved to southern france when I was facebook stalking one day.  I messaged Carissa to tell her that I was living here, and that we'd love to have her come visit at some point.  She wrote back, explaining that she was starting a new YWAM base in Biarritz, France, and they were having teams going around Europe promoting a base.  I offered up our place, and we ended up having these 3 kiddos pictured above - Ellen from New Zealand, Girard from the Netherlands & Cory from Canada hang out with us for a few days as they met with people around Madrid to spread the word.  Brian did 6 months with YWAM back in college, and we were glad to help out and host them!   (Notice the beautiful flowers that Brian brought home for me!!!)

And, they were great cooks!  They made an amazing stir-fry dinner for us one night.  It was so much fun to have them around, and we loved getting to know them even in the short time they were here.

We've been having amazing weather here in Madrid.  We've been trying to enjoy it as best we can, and so on a couple of Sunday afternoons we've headed to a little outdoor cafe in Retiro not far from our house and spent the afternoon reading in the sun.  I love it!