Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells...

We finally made it to the Czech mountains this past weekend. Jeff arranged the trip with some of his coworkers, who happen to be Malaysian and Indonesian, so there weren't many skiiers in the group. :-) We rented cars and made our way to Spindleruv Mlyn, which lies in the Krkonose Mountains, about 10 kilometers from the Polish border. We were very happy that the weather cooperated, and the chains for our tires remained in the trunk.

Rather than ski, we enjoyed exploring the town...

playing in the snow....

admiring the view (it actually reminded us quite a bit of the White Mountains in NH)...

and sledding....

We also enjoyed an absolutely lovely ride by horse and sleigh...a real "over the river and through the woods" experience complete with "jingle bells just like Santa".

All too soon it was time to go home. The kids were happy to be back in Prague...

...but Mattias is already saving for our next trip.

An Update on Jeff's Job

Update to this update: Yes, it means we're heading back to North America (don't know where exactly yet, but when we know, you'll know).

Back in early December, we mentioned that Jeff's (my) days are numbered at work.
There's not been a lot of talk about it here, because -- there's not been much to say.

I first heard rumors in September.
In October, rumors were more credible, with estimates of numbers & dates.
Through November, memos and meeting minutes were leaked and spread (but no official announcement).
Finally, in early December, during our annual "all-hands" meeting, we got the official word, complete with one slide showing a timetable. Layoffs to happen sometime between February and April.

Corporate culture is what it is.

But, yesterday was a breakthrough. Yesterday, those of us who already knew we were "affected," got to meet with HR. HR had us sign a form as a formal "at risk" warning of a layoff. [Required by law here.]
What was on the form? An outline of applicable employee protection laws (Czech national, plus some EU ones).
The key points that affect our timing are these:
- A forum will decide on February 4th whether to proceed with layoffs or not.
- If decided, notices will be served no sooner than 30 days after yesterday.
- Once a notice comes, we work 2 more months, to start the next calendar month.

So, it looks like 2 scenarios could happen for us:
1. Notice comes 25th or 26th of February; I work March and April.
2. Notice comes in March; I work April and May.

'Course, if my notice is delayed, the end of work is delayed. We're keeping our fingers crossed for Feb or March. We'd like to spend the summer here, but no later.

On our end, we're arranging our flat's future, making travel plans, making party plans and reviewing our CVs/resumes.

Hope to have more word in late February!

-Jeff

2010....So Far

We haven't had much to say lately, but isn't because we haven't had much to do. Here is a quick summary of some of the things we've been up to (or those things we can describe with photos, anyway!)

Jeff and Maylia celebrated New Year's Eve in Prague, the way they know and love....in the middle of the mayhem at Wenceslas Square. It was just as crazy as the other years. Maylia even got hit in the arm with one of the smaller rockets. Luckily nothing but a singe mark on her jacket resulted.

New Years Day saw the arrival of Grammy and Grampy. We found out their flight was delayed after Jeff and Ella had been waiting for them at the airport. Ella was so excited to see them that she made the decision to stay and wait, basically resulting in a full-day spent at the airport! We had lots of fun while they were here, starting with the official city fireworks the night of the first.

Ella and Mattias loved having Grammy and Grampy here. They visited the Salt Cave, drank hot chocolates in the cafe across the street, went to the municipal house to see an exhibit of costumes from Czech fairytale movies...but most importantly, they just spent time together.

As seen below, Mattias turned two to great acclaim. But another member of the family also celebrated a birthday. We enjoyed a fun night with a bunch of friends at a Peruvian restaurant (Casa Andina) and club (Barra Libre). The next day was a LONG day.

Another birthday celebrated, was Ella's friend, Santi. Who turned the big 5. He had a costume party where Ella got to dress up like "Fancy Nancy" (Thanks for the fancy costume, Grammy!)

And...we've got snow! Ella has been going sledding with her skolka nearly every day. Yesterday we even got to build a snowman with Karen, Sasha, and Roman.

Mattias' Birthday

Our big boy turned 2 yesterday.

Mattias invited 14 of his closest friends & siblings to the Prague aquarium. The parents got to come, too -whew.

Grammy & Grampy Parker are visiting us here since the 1st. They made sure the kids were supplied with plenty of fish food for the aquarium's open tank where kids can make a lot of swimming friends. The party was a really fun time.

We would post some of our own pictures, but they can't compare to a video made by our friend, Susanne. Susanne's daughter, Elise is Mattias' newest playground buddy.



Thank You, Susanne! :-)

There's No Place Like Rome for the Holidays

Just returned from Rome where we spent 19-26 December. It was really great; one of our most fulfilling vacations.

We really want to write a fair amount about the trip, but the number of pictures we took is overwhelming, not to mention we haven't fully unpacked yet. So, we're settling for a just a few pics of the hundreds, plus super brief stories.

Weather was fickle, ranging from needing hats & gloves to just long-sleeve shirts. We had rain (most afternoons), but some sunshine - but no white Christmas.

We rented a 2 bedroom flat. It was described as 'luxury', but that was a stretch of someone's imagination. The location and neighborhood really made the flat great. We were just 200 meters from the Vatican.

As we've said before, renting a flat just makes family life much easier than in a hotel. Having a kitchen allowed us to make pancakes a couple times, plus cook up decent suppers when we weren't bringing pizzas home. Yeah, Italians can really make good pizza!

We seemed to take advantage of and enjoy the buses and subway pretty well, far better than the old, deep metro of Paris.

What did we do? First full day was spent getting familiar with the city on a double-decker tour bus. The bus company had several buses rotating, letting us pop off where we wanted, then catching the next one. Maylia and her sister Erin did the same thing in Dresden last year, and since then we're big fans of the idea.

• Spent the next day going through the Vatican museum and the Sistine Chapel.
• Spent a day at a kid's museum called Explora, where exhibits are very interactive. We had booked this online far in advance since they allow just 6 or so families per 2 hour time slot. All kids had a good time there.
• Spent a day at the Colosseum and exploring the nearby Palatino. Not so exciting for the kids, but Maylia and Jeff really enjoyed it. Mattias does not like gladiators, nor men in gladiator costumes.
• Spent Christmas eve shopping at Rome's christmas markets. Definitely a step down from Prague's markets. Kids were happy with carousel rides. Mattias tried cotton candy for first time. Very happy little boy, until Ella decided he'd had enough of her cotton candy.
• Jeff attended Christmas eve mass in St. Peters (Vatican), delivered by the Pope. Almost worth the hassle of getting advance tickets and queuing 5 hours before mass started. Most interesting part was when a woman lept over the barricade at the pope.
• Spent Christmas morning at home, ripping through paper and boxes. Spent the afternoon at the Pantheon.
• Last day in Rome, we spent downtown at the Trevi fountain. We had seen a lot of fountains in Rome and elsewhere, but the Trevi is one big mama of a fountain! Kids surprisingly like it, too.

Overall, we're happy we reached all the tourist spots we hoped for, plus a few more 'extras' like the Explora museum, Rome castle and the markets. We had ordered or reserved most of it all in advance, which helped tremendously for planning.

We also figured on the flight home, this makes Ella's fourth country out of her 5 Christmases (US, Egypt, 2x Czech & Italy). So, now we're challenged to keep up the pace for her.

Okay, I have to throw some pictures on here ...and get to bed.

Us with St Peters behind us.

Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
Close-up of the ceiling
Inside the Colosseum
An idea of how HUGE it is inside of the Vatican's St. Peters basilica.
About halfway down a very impressive hall of maps, of the Vatican museum.
We did a few carousel rides over the week
The flight home
The rock star delivering his sermon

And, we can't forget to mention some new friends - Jamie, Heather and their kids, Issac and Zoe. While they're from Nova Scotia and share a lot of mutual friends with Maylia, they now live and teach in Kuwait. But they spent their Christmas vacation in Prague! Since the timing with our holiday was nearly the same, they used our flat for their home. It was nice coming home (to their home) to spend some time with them before they caught their flight back to Kuwait.

One last picture.... what our Christmas tree looks like right now, tonight. Yes, Santa came again tonight. So, we will have our 2nd Christmas tomorrow morning, since Santa couldn't carry most packages to Rome. This will be a big surprise to Ella and Mattias.