Happy Birthday Sis

Today, my 'baby' sister Jeannine turned... no, I can't give the number. But we wish her a graceful transition to her new milestone.
Ugh...hard to believe, really. Not so long ago I was making her stuffed animals talk (esp. a Pekingese named Sam), getting Jeannine to laugh uncontrollably. Now, fast forward a few decades later, we're all grown up and laughing at life.
Jeannine's a pro expat, finishing some 8 years between Scotland and Saudi Arabia, as well as a personal heroine of ours.
Happy Birthday, Jeannine - we love you and wish you & Kari all the best for the move home.

-jeff & parkers

Dad & Gang Doing Fine

Maylia's away in Lisbon, Portugal with friends from back home Michelle and Erin for 4 days.

I would write "While the cat's away, ..." but the mice play fine even with the cat here.

Before she left, Maylia wasn't worried about dad and kids having plenty of play time. That part, Daddy does real good at. No, it was everything else, like planning meals and getting from commitment to commitment. Maylia is the more organized parent, so she, bless her heart, wrote out for Daddy a cheat-sheet and got all groceries ahead of time for meals planned out. But the real help was the schedule list complete with transportation tips. For example, Fridays are Ella's Palechek days. Palechek is Ella's get-together/drama class/puppet-show place. My Friday cheat-sheet starts with "Start leaving by 9am; hit sidewalk by 9:15am." Maylia even gives 3 alternate times for the wheelchair trams back home. (Wheelchair trams have big access doors for strollers). Cool.

May's gone from Thursday night to Monday night. I took Friday off from work, of course. Couldn't have Ella and Mattias fend for themselves, right? Right? We have hired help coming in for all day Monday, though I'll come home early.

Today we have a birthday party to go to. Tomorrow's open, so perhaps the aquarium

In short, we're doing okay.

Just before May left, she and Ella were treated to a ballet. Our friend Karen gave Maylia and Ella tickets to Swan Lake at the National Theater for their birthday. Last week, Maylia, Karen, Ella and her friend Sasha all went to beautiful National Theater. Talk about an experience for a couple 4 year olds, let alone adults. Sounds like Ella and Sasha really enjoyed themselves. Here are some pictures from that night.

Olomouc in Pictures

We're back from Olomouc. We really enjoyed our time there. It is a beautiful city of about 100,000 people.

As Jeff mentioned, Mattias and Olomouc just don't mix very well. Our first attempt was boycotted by chicken pox and this time the poor boy stepped off the train with a fever...we're still fighting the fever and whatever bug it is that is causing it. But, other than that, it was a great trip.

The Czech Republic is a small country. I was quite worried when we arrived in Olomouc that we would have a hard time getting any medicine for Mattias as it was late Saturday and the stores were closed and wouldn't be open on Sunday or Monday, the holiday. Jeff was with Ella in our hotel and she said, "Hey! That's one of my friends from Palecek!" Jeff didn't believe her at first, but sure enough, we knew the folks one floor up from us and they had come prepared with Panadol (like baby Tylenol). So we were in luck! It saved us tracking down the regional 24-hour pharmacy. (THANK YOU!)

So, the tour begins. Here is our hotel, the building with all the flowers.

And around the corner from our hotel was Vaclavske Namesti (Wencesles Square - yes, there is one in Prague, too, there are many repeat names throughout Czech Republic.) and the cathedral of the same name. To give you an idea of how old this city is, construction of this church began prior to 1107.

Next to the cathedral is the Archdiocese. It housed a really neat museum that all four of us enjoyed. You'll see Ella, below, with Cinderella's coach, or was that the pope's? Speaking of the pope, he was in the Czech Republic this weekend, supposedly the most secular (some say atheist) country in the world. But that's a whole other story.

Horni Namesti, the main square, is dominated by the Holy Trinity Column, which put Olomouc on the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage List in 2000.

The City Hall with it's beautiful astronomical clock is located in the center of the same square, and has been here since the 1400s. There is also a model of the city that Ella, Mattias and Froggie really got a kick out of.

You can figure out what day we were there with this close-up of the clock.

The square is also home to three fountains. Arion's Fountain was our favorite.

The city is full of beautiful and interesting architecture. Here are a few examples. They are simply residential or commercial space, now. Nice places to live or work, I say!

Of course, we can't go anywhere without checking out the parks and playgrounds. We visited two of the city's big parks and found a playground in this one, Cechovy Sady.

And we always appreciate yummy food, too. Here's Ella settling in for a meal at Konvikt.

Given Mattias' (and Jeff's) love of planes, we couldn't pass up the opportunity to take a peek at this 1950s TU-104 Soviet commercial jet. There were only 200 built and only one Soviet and one Czech airline ever used them. Now, if only we'd visited between 10pm and 5am we could have taken a peek INSIDE, as well.

I include this picture only because Ella took it. Not bad, eh?

Holiday in Olomouc, Czech Rep. (Finally)

It's a 3-day holiday weekend here, so we got away from Prague to spend a few days in Olomouc. Olomouc is a small city, Czech's 5th largest, located in the eastern part of the country nearer to Poland.  Lovely city, beautiful fountains and very tall Baroque statue which gave Olomouc its UNESCO heritage status. 
We came close to visiting here before, but Mattias getting chicken pox stopped us at the last minute.  Little bugger tried stopping us again with a cold and fever, but we told him to toughen up and we came anyway.  (Well, it's not a high fever). heehee.
Right now, we're split in two teams with mom & Mattias napping, while Ella and daddy are dining outside sharing trout, beer and juice.
We're taking many pictures to post later.

What We're Up To - Daily Life Update

We've got some new things going on in our day-to-day lives that I thought I would share with you...by spending time reading this blog one can only assume you want to know about such things!

Today Ella stayed at skolka for a "full day". Up until now, we've dropped her off by 8:30 in the morning (all kids must be dropped off between 7 and 8:30am) and I've picked her up at 12:30, just after she finishes her lunch. As is typical of Czech skolkas, the children that are staying after lunch change into their pajamas, climb into their little beds, and sleep for about an hour. Many skolkas just have a mat or something for them to lie on, but Ella's actually has individual beds all set up in the part of the room usually used for big group activities. It is pretty cute to see them all lying there! Of course, some kids have a hard time sleeping. But, Ella said she did sleep and only complained that it was too short and that the teacher had to wake her up! This is amazing since Ella hasn't really napped in well over a year. After their nap they have a snack together and then it's playtime. Pick up time is between 3 and 4:30pm. Mattias and I picked Ella up at 3:30pm (a time that I knew two of her friend's moms would also be arriving). She was in great spirits and actually much easier to deal with than when I pick her up after lunch (she is usually very tired and crazy then). In fact, it was a struggle to get her to leave - she wanted to stay and play with her schoolmates as they were just headed outside. I managed to lure her to the 'road sign' playground right next to her school where she was thrilled to find other kids from her class there too, enjoying the gorgeous day (77F and sunny). All in all, a great success! Will she be staying for full days every day? Not likely. I'll take her lead on that one. But in October she's signed up to take a dance class through the skolka one afternoon each week, so she will at least stay there for that day.

Mattias is learning in leaps and bounds. He's speaking more and more each day. He puts together small sentences now (I want....) and has started using adjectives, like "big dog". Poor little guy woke up with a runny nose today. We're not looking forward to flu and cold season at all. He's starting to have some friends of his own. We have a weekly playdate with some other younger brothers (no big sisters allowed!). He and our downstairs neighbour, Adam, pay lots of attention to each other, pointing out to us Moms and Dads when they can hear the other one crying or yelling. And they're always so happy to see each other. But I'd say his closest friend so far is Marta, a girl born within weeks of him. Her older sister is in Ella's class and our two families have spent some time together. This week the two of them seemed to really get to know and like each other. Mattias is also very adept on his "motorka" (little motorbike) and we even use it instead of a stroller sometimes to go shopping or to the playground. He and I are also attending some toddler music classes together which is fun.

Jeff is still finding his work challenging and fulfilling. He got himself a bike while we were away and has been using that (although not as much as he did when he was "baching it"). He's also taken up tai chi. Second class tonight, so waiting to see how that goes. And he's getting involved with working against racial discrimination faced by the Romani people here in the Czech Republic...and I'm going along for the ride. (It's a very worthy cause - I'm sure there will be more on this in the future.)

And me, well, I'm finding life pretty exciting these days. Each week my schedule is beefing up a bit more, and by the first week of October, it'll look like this:

Monday mornings: Lead music class for toddlers (1.5 - 2.5 yrs)

Monday afternoons: Do research for S'Mac (Ivana, our new sitter with kids)

Tuesday - Open day

Wednesday morning - S'Mac (Ivana with kids)

Thursday morning - Boys playdate or attend music class with Mattias

Friday morning - Ella's drama class, Lead music class for 2.5 - 4 year olds

Fridays become a full day with socializing in our old neighborhood afterwards. On top of that I'm helping out with storytellings one Saturday a month. I'm also on the Board for Class Acts, the non-profit that runs the music classes and storytellings. My focus is fundraising and volunteers. In the winter, one of the teachers of the Thursday music class (separate from Class Acts) will be home in Australia for 3 months, so I may be helping out with that one, too. And I just found out today that Ella's skolka may need someone to teach an English class - another English-speaking mom suggested that maybe we could share it. We'll see where that goes. It's all very fun and exciting!

So now you know what we're up to...why not drop us a note and let us know what you're up to?

The dishes are calling my name (why did I ever teach them to do that?!?!)

Maylia

PS This is a whole lot of text. Better throw in a photo. Pirate tatoo artist was Zoe, 3 years.