Week with Grammie and Grandpa

This past week has gone by very fast. The girls had a great time with Grammie and Grandpa. It was nice to see them be so comfortable with their grandparents. Since we don't get to see Dan and Diane that often we try to talk about them a lot and remind the girls of things we did with them when we were in America so they won't forget. They didn't seem to forget. They were thrilled with Grammie and Grandpa arrived and had no shyness at all. They enjoyed playing board games, soccer, and dress up with them as well as just chatting away. A lot more fun then playing with plain old mommy and daddy! Since Dan had never been to Prague we took an afternoon and went up to the Prague Castle. We hadn't been there in a while and the kids love to go to the castle. They were slightly dissapointed though that the main floor of Ladislav hall is now blocked off after they did the restoration. On all previous trips to the castle the girls have danced all across the hall. We made due with dancing down the aisle that was roped off for visitors. That was the only site seeing we did on this trip though. Dan and Diane took a day and went into town by themselves to see all the obligatory sites and the girls and I took that day to run all our errands. The only other place we took Jason's parents was our favorite Italian restaurant. It was nice to share it with them and now they will have a visual of where we are on many Friday nights. Other than that this week consisted of staying at home and playing in the yard, walking in the woods, pumpkin carving and eating.

Jason's Parents arrived

After many delays out of the Rome airport, Jason's parents arrived on Friday night. We kept checking the arrival stastus online and since they had been delayed we decided to have dinner before they arrived. Once we sat down at dinner and our appetizer arrived I checked the Prague ariport website for an updated arrival time. To our surprise it said that they would be arriving in fifteen minutes! We quickly asked the server to pack up our dinner to take away and headed to the airport. When we arrived at the airport we checked the arrivals board only to find out that their flight wasn't arriving for another hour and a half! Such is the life of air travel I guess. We got our take away food out of the car and sat at McDonald's to enjoy our dinner. We took it easy yesterday and went for a walk in the woods. It is nice to just enjoy some relaxed time together and the girls have loved having grammie and grampa here. Today we are heading off to Prague Castle and church. It should be a fun filled week ahead!

Bye Sung Soon!

Our friends, Sung Soon, Stuart, Daniel, James, & Matthew are moving to Munich. We are sad to see them go. They are one of our friends that we thought we would be with for the long term here in Prague but Stuart's job has brought them to Munich. James has been in Sofia's class since she started at Riverside. He has taught her about Ben 10 and Star Wars. She comes home from school asking to play star wars and I'm not exactly sure what she expects me to do. I come out with qoutes from Star Wars and she thinks I'm crazy. Sofia will miss James. Sung Soon has been a great friend to me as well. I have had a lot of fun talking with her. She has taught me more about korean culture than I ever thought I would know, including how to make Sushi (really kim bap). She has watched my children while I've gone to the doctor which is so important when you don't have family around. We will miss spending the afternoons in the playground with them in the summer and hanging out in the school playground after drop off and at pick up. Last week we had an all girls night out with Sung Soon. It was a fun night of laughter. Sung Soon chose a korean restaurant which was, of course, fantastic. She ordered all of our food for us and it was amazing. Here is a picture (thanks Shanna!) of all of us from the dinner. I hope that we will stay in touch. After all, Munich isn't that far away!

Harvest Celebration - Round 1

Every year the girls have a harvest festival at school. The school actually holds three harvest celebrations - one in early years, one in lower school, and one in upper school. Last year I only had to attend one harvest celebration since both kids were in early years. This year I should get to attend two celebrations but today I recieved an "F" in parenting and completely forgot to attend Ali's celebration. Luckily Jason was able to stay and watch her and our friend, Charro, took some video of her. Ali seemed happy that Jason was there and she had even asked him if he could come in to school in the morning. She doesn't usually ask for him to come into school but we just assumed she wanted a little more time with him. Apparently she really wanted him to see the performance. Here is one of the videos that Charro took for us. There are two others on youtube if you want to see them.

First fire of the season

We had our first fire of the season in our fireplace today. It may seem a strange thing to be excited about but we had a fireplace for six years before moving to Prague. Both of our parents have fireplaces as well so we are used to having a cozy fire going on a chilly night. When we moved to our apartment in Prague we did not have a fireplace and I cannot say that I missed it. Since I never saw a fireplace I didn't really think of it but now that we have one again we have all been anxiuosly awaiting a cold day to fire it up. The kids are fascinated by the fire. We heard the following once the fire was going. "How did you make it? Did you use a lot of matches? It is so big! It's cold, let's sit in front of it. It's too hot in here. I'm roasting!" We are looking forward to having many fires this year.

Snowflake girl

It is nice to see the kids using their imaginations. Yesterday Sofia came up with a character called Snowflake Girl. She proceeded to make snowflake shoes, necklace and wings so she could fly. It was amazing to watch her figure out how to make it all work the way she wanted. Here is a picture of "Snowflake Girl".

Family Day

With our lives so busy we decided to take a day out and have a family day. We spent the day at home yesterday and cooked together. Jason's mom sent me a children's cookbook for my birthday which we decided to use. The girls picked out the dessert, strawberry shortbread cookies, and Jason and I chose the dinner, chicken with tzatziki and naan bread. The girls really did a great job listening and helping to make the food. After we enjoyed our dinner and dessert we all sat on the couch and watched Monsters vs Aliens while eating popcorn. It was a fun day/night.

Tubes...grommets

Our lives have been so busy lately and time has flown by. This past week has been filled with school activities, after school activities and doctor appointments. I had to bring Sofia back into her ear doctor for the control visit for her most recent ear infection. Her ear is no longer infected. We have decided, however, to move ahead with having the tubes (or grommets as they are called in Europe) put in her ears. Seven ear infections on the last year is just too many. Unfortunately they don't do that surgery at the hospital where we currently go. Sofia's doctor wrote the referral to the neighboring hospital and told me to take it there and make the appointment for the surgery. Unfortunately, it isn't that easy. I took the piece of paper to the other hospital and checked in and then went up to the ENT (or ORL as it is called here) department where I had to check in again and wait. I waited for quite a while with Sofia but eventually the doctor took us in and asked me a lot of questions and then checked Sofia's ears. We then went to a different room where she tested how well Sofia's ear drums were working. The answer, "not well". I can't say I was shocked. Anyway, this new doctor doesn't know Sofia at all and isn't going to just operate on her so we have to start the process again. The upside is I think this new doctor will be very thorough the downside is Sofia will probably have another ear infection before we can get the tubes done. We go in to the hospital again in a couple weeks so Sofia can go to audiology and have a proper hearing test done. It's unclear but I think after that we might schedule the surgery but this is Czech and I never really know how things will unfold. I will keep you posted.

Happy Birthday to me!

Today is my birthday. This one snuck up on me which is a sure sign that I'm old. As the old people say though, I'm young at heart!! Last night we went to a party at my friends house and since we were there after midnight and it officually became my birthday my friends sang me three rounds of "Happy Birthday". It was a lot of fun and unexpected. This morning I got to sleep in and to my surprise I slept until 10:30!! Jason made me eggs and home fries for breakfast and then we headed to the pumpkin farm. The girls and I have been every year but Jason had never been so I thought it would be fun to go as a family. The girls were a bit confused as to why we were going to teh pumpkin farm and not going to school since in their minds the two are linked. After choosing our pumpkins along with some gourds and a lot of squashs for making soup, muffins etc. we headed back home. Jason made me a cake that we had after the girls early dinner and now he is making me Orange chicken which is one of my favorite dishes that he makes. It is labor intensive with a lot of dishes but he is making it for me anyway and doing the dishes! It has been a nice relaxing day. I'm blessed to be able to celebrate my birthday with my friends and family.

*on a separate note I added posts below on our Slovakia trip. They are below the swimming post.