Ahoj from Praha

I'll write more later but wanted to share some of the Prague sights that we've seen in the past 1.5 days. It's awesome!

Pivo! Pivo! And more Pivo!

Growing up we took a family vacation every summer. My mom saved money all year and planned and planned. We had some great ones too. We seemed to rotate Kansas City (Royals game, World's of Fun and Ocean's of Fun) with Minneapolis (Twins game and Valleyfair). Sometimes the folks would throw in camping or a trip to Adventureland. Good times and always enjoyed by myself and bros. Before each vacation I would get SOOOO excited. The kind of excitement that kept me up at night, too giddy to sleep. The kind of excitement that made a few days seem like forever away, the day we left for our vacation never came fast enough.

As I've grown up I haven't had those "kid" feelings as often. Taking trips is awesome and I love to travel but now either we travel with 2 little kiddos (excitement-NO, nervousness-YES) or we travel for work and usually alone. It's still fun to take a short trip back to Colorado and go shopping (and work!) but then we miss the kids terribly. It's usually good for the dad/kid bond to have me out of the picture for a few days but it's pretty hard on me. I always steal something of the kids to keep close at night...stuffed animal or blanket, so I can smell them at night when I'm lonely. Since having kids the only trip Randy and I have taken together, not work related, was here, to house hunt. Not exactly relaxing.

Our Prague trip is fast approaching and I'm so excited to report I have those feelings again, just like a kid. I can't wait!!!! If I start to think about leaving the kids I just start crying so I'm suppressing that for a bit. The in-laws and my mom, accompanied by Aunt Joleen and Gram are babysitting and most likely have spoiling on their mind. I know the kids will have a blast and I look forward to their daily chats, recalling what funny thing grandpa did or what grandma made for lunch. Lily is already requesting a blanket as her souvenir. She requested a blanket on our last trip but she got a snow globe instead. Guess cuddling up to a hard plastic dome isn't ideal and she really could use another blanket since apparently the other 5 thousand she owns don't work.

The countdown is T-2 days. Unfortunately for Randy he will be working a few days in Prague. But once his talks are over a huge weight will be lifted for a few months. I plan to leave all memories of work aside and, as recommended by a friend, sit and people watch and drink beer. In Prague. I can't wait!

I did it!!

I did it. I finally did it. This wasn't an April Fool's joke (unlike 2 April Fool's ago). This wasn't done on a dare. Or after 3 shots of Jägermeister. Okay, nowadays I would only require 1 shot. But still, this was a decision made by an unintoxicated mature woman.

Months ago, I hesitated to do this mostly because of an office job and being the wife of a professor. Well, my office job is now conveniently located in my house and the only person I see regularly between 8-5 is the FedEx man. He probably doesn't care about a nose piercing but rather is wondering what type of crazy pajama pants I'll be wearing. The other issue was being the wife of a new professor. This concern was axed during my first lunch with his faulty co workers and the female professor had a....nose piercing. YES! Besides Randy really didn't care anyway.

So I did it and it hurt like hell. But no regrets.

My conversation with Lily yesterday:

Lily: Whatcha doing?
Me: Cleaning my nose piercing.
Lily: Can I get a nose piercing?
Me: Gulp. Yes, you can. When you're 32.
Lily: Are you 32?
Me: Yes, I am.
Lily: Okay. Is poppa 32?
Me: Nope, he's 33.

Moral of story...Lily will be allowed to date, pierce, tattoo when she's 32 years old. And Randy will always be older than me.

Reward charts

Soliciting advice on reward charts. We want to do one for Lily (3.5 years old) but we need ideas.

We have 2 main issues:
a) Getting dressed in the morning
b) Listening during bedtime routine (putting on pajamas, going potty, brushing teeth, going to bed)

How many stars (or marbles, or whatnot) should Lily receive before her reward? Should it be a number that she can easily count to? If so, should we have 2 types of rewards...5 stars=picnic or a small toy and 15 stars=trip to mall for carousel ride? Do we take away stars/marbles for bad behavior? Or only reward good behavior?

Comments are open for discussion!

We hosted our first annual Easter egg hunt last weekend. We met more neighbors and the kids had a blast. Except Harrison, he woke up on the wrong side of the crib and didn't snap out of his funk the rest of the morning. We had 17 kids and over 300 Easter eggs full of candy and toys. We kept it pretty low key but maybe next year I can talk our friend, Ted, into dressing up as the Easter bunny and scaring the kids. Fun!

I didn't get a great picture of the mass of colorful eggs but at least you can see all the room to hunt...












Lily's overabundance of eggs (all the kids had this many-except for the wee ones who really didn't care)

















Harrison managed to score a few eggs.












My awesome neighbor, Shauna, and her son, Vonn.












Two girls battling for the eggs (i.e. candy).












Shauna's husband, Greg, and little guy, Kingston.












Lily was quite pleased with the Easter bunny eraser












Harrison was much happier playing with his Thomas train set.

Reminders of Lily while I work

01 Apr 2009

Yes, yes, yes, my last post, composed on 01 Apr 2009, was a funny, funny, funny joke. Granted I'm probably the only one laughing.

More moving news

Later this month Randy and I are traveling to Prague. Randy was invited to give a talk and I invited myself to tag along. :)

Well...instead of a vacation (for me) it's turned into a house hunting trip. Yep, that's right...we're moving again. To Prague! Randy is going to participate in a professor exchange program in Prague so we'll be there for 2 years.

We have a lot of details to work out...we now own 2 houses in 2 different states and won't be living in either, living abroad with kids, learning Czech. We think it's a great time to go before Lily starts kindergarten in 2 years so we taking this rare opportunity.

Got your passports ready??