Font de la Torre

The kids are asleep after a weekend full of fun and activity.

They barely made it to 6:30pm before Eston was asking for books and Aurelia was reaching for her favorite blanket.

For the past two nights Eston has been sleeping in the twin bed in Aurelia's room.

Both of them seem delighted with this arrangement and I have no problem with it as long as they both sleep well.

I think it gives them both a little more comfort when Rory is gone and it is so cute to hear them chatting before they fall asleep.  Obviously Aurelia is not saying more than a few words, but they have their own way of communicating with each other.

Kaitlin decided to go visit her fiancé in the Tour de France on Friday and planned on driving four hours to the town of Nimes.

She asked if I would check the oil and coolant levels in her car, so we headed to the garage (our cars are in the same garage) on Friday evening.

The kids ran around while I had a look and made sure everything was okay.

I am not a mechanic by any stretch of the imagination, but I know the basics.

I was putting the coolant cap back on when my phone rang.

The caller ID informed me that it was my husband calling and I instantly felt my heart rate increase.

Rory was calling me en route to the hospital in Italy after being in a car accident.

He was with a couple of teammates and they were returning to their hotel when a motorcycle ran into the side of the car.

The motorcycle hit the passenger side door, where Rory was sitting, and the side and front air bags instantly deployed.

It was a warm day and the window was down, otherwise he would have been covered in shards of glass.

He was bruised and cut up a bit, but otherwise he thought he was fine.

The hospital in Italy checked him out and sent him back to the hotel and though he woke up yesterday with bruises, he seems to be okay otherwise.

Honestly, it has been a bit of a rough month.

I always stay positive and appreciate all that we have, but it would be nice for him to have a little shimmer of sunshine about now.

I know we are back on track with training and such and good things are right around the corner.

 The kids and I enjoyed a normal Saturday.

Bike rides through our neighborhood, market visit, park, etc.

Eston prepared our snack on Saturday afternoon:

 Aurelia dashes to the door in hopes that I will leave the stroller at home:

 And here are my children, snuggled in and ready for some stories.

Aurelia is able to sit and listen for longer periods of time and I just love this time each night.

 This morning we had a big excursion planned!

Aurelia helped me water the plants before we left:

 I decided to take the kids out to Canet d'Adri, a place where I ride all the time but never hike.

The small town dates back to 1497 and sits on the edge of the La Garrotxa volcanic area.

Everything I read was in Catalan, but many years ago the volcanic activity in the area created gorges all over La Garrotxa and you can hike through many of them.

The gorges in Canet d'Adri were fed by local streams and rivers and there are some really gorgeous volcanic pools as well.

We had to drive to Canet d'Adri and hike from there, but here we are leaving the apartment:

 It was difficult to find a detailed map of the area, so we parked in town and walked on a dirt road to the trail head.

Eston was super excited about this adventure.

 We found Font de la Torre quite easily and Eston was so excited about the pools!

 Looking at tadpoles:

 Beautiful hiking trails...and yes, we saw a snake.

Gulp.

I had to teach Eston what to do in event of emergency, just in case something happen to me and he needed to treat a snakebite.

The thought of it freaked me out a bit, but he listened and seemed ready for anything.

 We made our way down to the pools after our hike.

We kicked off our shoes and walked around the shallow bits.

There was moss everywhere and sure enough, Eston slipped.

I had changes of clothing for all of us, so it was no big deal.

 We had a little picnic on the rocks.

It was pretty simple--just sandwiches and fruit--because I had Aurelia and all of our stuff on my back, so we were limited in what we could bring.

Eston's pack was full of our clothing and a towel.

 This little waterfall dumped into a larger pool in the gorge below (hard to see).

Before children I would have been sliding down those rocks!

I told Eston that and he offered to watch Aurelia so I could do it (he said he wanted to watch).

I said we would think about it.

I am an adventurous person, but you couldn't really see the bottom of the gorge and I am not sure how I would get out of it once in.

Probably best not to do that when with my children!

 Both children are sleeping soundly and the rain has started again.

View of our street from our windows: