Sprinkles on toast

Does that sound strange?  Well, in the Netherlands that is a common breakfast item.  My friend, Inge, gave us some chocolate sprinkles (jimmies) for the kids to have at breakfast.  She said she always brings a lot back with her when she goes home becuase her kids love to have it on toast for breakfast.  It was so sweet of her to think of us while she was back home.  The box she gave us even had princesses on it which made it even cooler for the girls.  Sofia and Ali love having chocolate sprinkles on their toast in the morning.  Since this kind of breakfast food isn't something that is from America they completely accept (without whining) when they ask for more and I say, "Inge said you don't put a lot on your toast.  This is how it is in the Netherlands."  It is great and the kids get to have a fun breakfast treat! Thanks Inge!!

Burns Night 2010

This year was our third Burns Night.  Since I had so much fun the last two years I decided to join the committee to make Burns Night happen.  There is a lot of organization and work involved with putting on a successful Burns Night but all our efforts paid off.  Here is a picture of the Burns Committee.  We had a great time working together and I think most people had a really great night.  I was quite busy for the first half of the night with my Burns Night duties.  I missed the soup service since my major responsibilty was the raffle which meant selling tickets and collecting money during the serving/eating of the soup.  We had a lot of great prizes and we raised a lot of money for mama help which is a Czech organization that helps women with breast cancer and their families.  The highlight of the night for me though is the Scottish dancing.  I, of course, have no idea what I"m doing during the dancing but it is still a lot of fun.  I think "Stripping the Willow" is my favorite dance but that could be because it is the simplest and I can get through it without messing up too much.  I started out with my friend Kim's husband, Colin, who is Scottish.  It always help if you have someone who knows what they are doing to make things seem easier.  By the end of Stripping the Willow I had to take a break because even though I'm in pretty good shape I was definitely winded by the end of that dance.  Jason and I went back out for the "Gay Gordons" dance and it was a mess.  In theory Jason thinks we should be able to do it but I just can't seem to make any sense of it.  The good thing is that a lot of people are in the same boat as us so everyone just laughs and has fun.  It was a great night of dancing and laughter and I'm looking forward to next year. 

Headaches

Over trhe last week Ali has developed headaches.  On Thursday I picked her up from school and she had such a headache she started to cry.  We took her home and put her to bed.  We assumed it was because she was tired.  She woke up the next day and was fine.  The headache came back Sunday night though.  She woke up in the middle of the night crying form the pain.  We gave her medicine and put her back to bed only to have her wake up 4 hours later from the pain again.  We kept her home from school and she napped during the day but only to wake up in pain again.  I called the pediatrician since this seems very strange for a four year old.  The pediatrician immediately referred us to a neurologist.  Unfortunatly we won't see the neurologist for a couple weeks so hopefully Ali won't keep getting these headaches.  I'll post an update after we see the neurologist.

Cold Cold Cold

It has been very cold here which, I guess, goes hand in hand with the unusual amount of snow.  For the past three years it has rained a lot here and the temperature in the winter has hovered around 32 degrees F (0 Celsius).  The first year we were here we thought our thermometer was broken since the temperature didn't vary much in the winter and it never really got that cold.  Jason and I used to say, "imagine what it would be like if it was just a little colder and all this rain became snow?".  Well, now we know.  It is cold and snowy every day!!  It seems there is a snow flurry every day and today the temperature was down to -16 celsius (3 degrees F).  Today was a run day for me so I bundled up and went for my run but the first 20 minutes or so were not pleasant.  By the end of my run I had warmed up but I did have frost on my eyelashes and eyebrows.  I hope this cold snowy patch comes to an end soon!

Daily Life, hearing tests and running

I know it has been a while since my last post. Life has been moving along here. We have gotten back into our routines. The girls have gone to gymnastics, swimming and czech lessons after school. Actually Ali skipped her Czech lesson this week since she had a headache and was absolutely exhausted. I'm not sure if it is just getting back into the routine or if she is having a growth spurt but she has been very tired this last week. Swimming is going great. We bought Ali a shortie wetsuit for swimming lessons and it has made a big difference. She isn't shivering and asking to get out of the pool after fifteen minutes. Sofia has her ear plugs for swimming and she is also doing really well.

We finally had Sofia's hearing tested last week as well. She has moderate hearing loss in the very lowest pitch (frequency) in her right ear and mild hearing loss (or moderate depending on whose chart you look at to determine the ranges) in the lower pitches in her left ear but she is in the normal range for all the other frequencies. I'm not sure if they will do another hearing test in six months or not but either way we will be going back to the doctor for checkups on her ear every month for the next six months.

I've started my half marathon training. It has been slightly difficult given all the snow we have had (the largest amount of snow in Prague since 1979!). The upside of all the snow is that I get some good cross training activity as I shovel out our road repeatedly! (I'm just trying to put a smiling face on all the shoveling. If I say it enough times I might believe it myself. Haha) The temperature has dropped again making things a bit more difficult for running since it just froze everything to ice in the parks. My friend, Beanie, and I are perservering though and have managed to get in most of our runs. My Christmas present finally arrived so I have been wearing my new garmin GPS training watch for our runs. It is fun to see how my pace changes throughout a run. It is also nice not to have to come home and map out my run in order to find out my pace. Hopefully we will get a little warm up soon to help with the running and melt a lot of ice but as I look at the forecast, I'm not that optimistic.

More about the snow

Coming from the New England we are used to having lots of snow. People plow, shovel, or snowblow their driveways and walkways at the end of the storm and sometimes even during the storm to alleviate some accumluation. The towns clear the roads with massive snow plows which also sand and salt the roads. Even after major storms the roads are cleared by the following day and life continues as usual. Here it is very different. The big parks have had their paths plowed but many roads still have not been plowed.(The snow ended Monday morning and it is now Thursday night.) Parking is horrible b/c there are no parking bans in place so that the snow can be removed. Even if you find a spot to park you have to wonder if you will be able to back out of the spot or if you will be stuck in the pile of snow that you just bravely decided to pull into.

The problems with the snow go even beyond parking issues. On Tuesday I went to my guitar lesson and my teachers apartment had water leaking through the ceiling. I felt bad that she was having so much water damage. She had fixed a tarp to the ceiling over her bed and computer desk that dripped the water down into multiple buckets. I was shocked when I went there today and found the conditions even worse. I had assumed that her problem would be fixed right away. I'm not sure I know anyone who would live sleeping under a plastic tarp catching water (unless of course you were camping outside in a tent!). Today I arrived just after the tarp had broken free of the ceiling and the water had come pouring down onto her bed, books and computer. She was very upset and who can blame her. I would be so angry! I stood there while she spoke with her neighbor and she was one the edge of tears. I felt heartbroken for her. She is such a sweet lady. I told her that we didn't need the lesson today and I asked if I could help her instead. Her apartment is tiny and she lives there with her fifteen year old son. Without seeing how cramped this apartment is it is hard to believe but it is basically a one room apartment with a bathroom you walk through to get to the kitchen. In the one room that is smaller than our livingroom she has two twin beds (one for her and one for her son), a dining table, two bookcases, and armoire, desk and piano. We sit in front of the table at two chairs with music stands for my lesson. I just kept thinking this poor woman is going to have to pay to replace these things that have been ruined and she clearly does not have much money. I just felt so bad for her. So instead of a guitar lesson today I helped her move one of the beds and clean up the floor and reattach the tarp to the ceiling in an effort to send the water into one bucket. After I did everything I could to help I started to get my things together but she, in her kind way, sat me down with her guitar to look at a lesson she wanted me to practice for the next time. I can't even imagine caring about someone's lesson when half my apartment was in shambles. After leaving guitar lesson I ran into my friend, Sharon, who is renting our old apartment. She told me they started having the same issue in her sons room. She said that this morning drops of water started falling on her son's bed. This is amazing to me since that means the melting snow went through the roof and then through one floor. I'm sure there will be many people who will be happy when this snow is gone!

Still snowing!

As I was fairly confident we could get the car out today I was surprised to see it had snowed a few more inches overnight and was still snowing. My confidence faltered. Our car barely made it out yesterday since the snow was so high it was touching the underside of the car. With a few inches on top of that I figured there was no way we were getting the car out easily this morning so I kept the kids home from school. Jason left for work since he takes the bus and the girls and I headed outside for some shoveling. Well, the girls played and I shoveled. I shoveled for about an hour and a half and still have about another hour to go before I will be able to easily drive the car out of our road. The girls were cold though and needed to come in to warm up. After lunch we will head outside again and I will finish shoveling out to the road from where we are parked and then just create a single walking path all the way to our house. That way I don't have to shovel all the way to our house and we won't have to trudge through a foot of snow to get to our car every day. As much as shoveling isn't fun and it is slightly irritating that noone else on our road is helping me shovel (especially as Sofia keeps asking, "why are you and daddy the only ones who have to shovel?), it is still nice to be outside and the snow is beautiful.

Shoveling

We woke up this morning to even more snow. It has continued to snow lightly all day. Siince Jason has to go to work tomorrow and I have to drive the girls to school in the morning today was our day to dig out. Our car is parked at the end of the road since we couldn't make it up our hill so after clearing out in front of our house we headed to the end of the road. We cleaned off the car and dug out around it and in front of it and then gave it a go. I made it to the end of the road with only having to rock back and forth a few times. Jason then did more shoveling at the very end of the road where all the heavy slush/snow had built up. I'm confident we can get the car out in the morning even though it is still snowing while I'm writing this. The girls and I also managed to fit in some fun time of sledding, making snow castles and a snowman. Jason fit in a couple runs down the hill in the sled but unfortunately for him he spent most of the day shoveling.

A Big Snow Storm!!

We finally have had our first big storm here. It is not big by Nor'easter standards but big for Prague. We probably have about 8" on the ground so far and they are calling for more snow tonight and then again on Monday and Tuesday. It is great to see everything covered in snow. We didn't quite belive that a big storm was coming since the weather forecast never seems to be accurate here. The storm was suppose to start on Friday night around midnight but we woke up on Friday morning and it was snowing by 8am. By 6pm there was still only about 3 inches on the ground though so we decided we would still go out to dinner with friends. We had a fun dinner and then drove home. The drive home was very slow since plowing of the roads seems non- existent. The isn't quite true since there was a plow in front of us for part of the drive home but the plow didn't seem to be removing any snow from the road! Anyway, we pulled into our road which does not get plowed at all. Since there are only five year round houses on our road there is also not much traffic. The snow had piled up while we were at dinner but we decided to give it a go and drove down our road. We made it about half way up our hill before we started sliding backwards. I backed it up to the bottom of the hill, got slightly stuck which required Jason to do some pushing and then gave the hill another go to no avail. I got to the same spot on the hill. At that point we gave up and parked near the end of our road and just walked home.

This morning we woke up to more snow. We had made plans with some friends to go ice skating on the local pond so we headed out for some skating around 11am. The kids loved skating and playing in the snow with their friends. After a little bit we headed into the pizza restaurant at the pond for lunch. We ended up meeting up with another group of our friends at the restaurant. The girls were excited to have even more of their friends around and they all played together and had a blast. After lunch we headed out for more skating. I was a little surprised that the kids wanted to go back out skating but they absoultely love the snow and ice. Having their friends there made it even better. They played until about 4 and then we all walked over to our friends house for coffee/tea/hot chocolate. We ended up walking home in the dark after a fun filled day. I'm looking forward to heading back out in the snow tomorrow!

Redneck sledding

We had some snow the other day. Actually, we have had a little bit of snow everyday for the past few days but it only amounts to maybe an inch on the ground. I decided it was enough for some sledding but unfortunately we did not have a sled. I made do with a cookie sheet! The kids didn't care that they were sledding on a cookie sheet and we all took turns. Hopefully I will get around to getting a real sled soon but until then we will just continue our redneck sledding.