I love my life!

Clark is a joy- he loves life and people!

Today was monumental in Clark's life because he took 3 or 4 steps by himself.

He was very excited and proud as were we!

Christmas market madness

Old Town Square has been transformed into a winter wonderland, with dozens of booths set up with crafts, decorations, food, and the seasonal beverage of choice - hot wine. Last night was the official lighting of the giant Christmas tree, and with the falling snow it definitely felt like Christmas-time.

Here's Shanna and Lisa Marie taking it all in while huddling in the cold...

Food for others

About 10 of us (and kids) went to the main train station yesterday with some friends and passed out bags of food for some of the homeless people there. Having just celebrated a massive feast with lots of leftovers, it was very meaningful to be able to give a little bit to those who needed it. And it was great having Lucy and Clark participate. Many of the people were very appreciative and shook Lucy's hand saying "Dekuji" (thank you). I even had a little Czech lesson with two people who said "Nash Pan" (Our Lord). We also had a Czech friend write something up for us in Czech to hand out with the food, a word of blessing and hope for them - that the food we gave represented God's love for them through Jesus.

After we finished at the station, we made our way back home, stopping off for fries and nuggets at our favorite comfort-food location, McDonald's.

A turkey for me and a turkey for you

After we recovered from football and massaged our sore muscles (my, we're old), we got ready for the big Thanksgiving feast. We borrowed several tables and chairs from friends and had 37 adults and 7 kids for dinner! I thought the Davis family Thanksgiving dinners were big, but this was unlike anything I'd seen.

Four people were responsible for cooking the turkeys, Laura Syvertsen made lots of incredible pumpkin pie, and Shanna made a vat of her mashed potatoes "a la Derek Rogers." Believe it or not, we had lots of leftovers - someone said that it seemed to be like the multiplication of fish and loaves...

Before the pies came out, Phil gave a short devotion on Thanksgiving and Psalm 118. The psalm is one of thanksgiving and quoted many times in the New Testament, so it was a perfect one to share with our friends, as it anticipates the future Messiah. Now that Thanksgiving is over, we too are anticipating Christmas and celebrating the advent of Jesus.

T.O., we needed you

Frozen tundra? Check. Cheerleaders? Check. Curious spectators? Check/Czech.

We had a great start to our Thanksgiving celebration with a traditional American football game at the local park. Since it's not technically a holiday here, we had some people who had to actually work instead of joining us. But despite that, we still had great competition.

I (Phil) wore my Duke sweatshirt for the intimidation factor. Duke is 1-10 this year.

We did have a group of Czech children stop and stare for awhile, and it made us feel like celebrities.

Sexy Mama

When Shanna came home today, we thought a famous actress had just walked in the door! Woo-hoo! Check out the new 'do...

More silliness

Today Suri came over in the morning to play! There was lots of silliness and laughter (by everyone)...

I'm gonna be 3

Lucy's good friend Suri had a fun birthday party on Sunday, at which were all of Lucy's girl classmates. They had a lot of fun together, singing for Suri and eating lots of cake. This marks an exciting time for Lucy, because she knows that after Suri turns three, Lucy is next. So we hear about 25 times a day, "I'm gonna be free (a.k.a. three)!!!"

It's beginning to look a lot like... Thanksgiving?

We woke up Saturday morning to a nice blanket of snow on the trees and ground, our first of the year! It was a beautiful sight. It all melted by the afternoon, but we did get out to play a bit and make some snowballs. They ended up being snow, leaves, and dirt-balls.



Sunday morning was more of the same - another couple of inches had fallen, but once again it's all gone. It definitely feels like winter here!

She said Yes!

Friday night we hosted an engagement party for our friend Rob and his new fiancee Audrey. She flew in from London for the weekend, and he surprised her with the proposal and then a party at our flat. Rob knows lots of Czechs, so we had lots of new people visit and celebrate with Rob and Audrey. The happy couple got to share their different versions of the engagement story, and we had a good time of prayer for them too.

Bible Study, phase 2

We're back on with our Thursday night Bible studies, after a one-week break. This second series is a study on the book of Colossians, one of the lesser-known letters of Paul. We're now doing some worship as part of the study, thanks to Michael of Project Antioch. We've been averaging about 20 people each week, and our hope is that we can become a solid community that prays, studies, and worships well together.

We also eat well together and drink lots of coffee. People love to linger after the study to hang out and chat, one of our favorite times of the week.

Child of the new millenium

Do you remember the first time you used a mouse? I was in the 6th or 7th grade. Lucy is officially tech savvy now as an almost-3-year-old. Scared? We are.

Lucy loves to play the Dora Carnival game, and she's quite good. Next... Grand Theft Auto. Just kidding.

Friends in tights

We had one of Lucy's good friends from school, Suri, and her parents over for dinner last night. Lucy was so excited all afternoon that Suri was coming! The two girls, who were both wearing fun striped tights, played hard, ran around, and made each other laugh at dinner. Suri is turning 3 very soon too, and we parents decided that they understand each other a lot better than we understand them!

Little Red Lucy

My new favorite picture... taken by Chuck at the castle...

Macurdas in town

This weekend we were very blessed by having our good friends Chuck and Kim Macurda visit. They are on a 4-country European blitz and made Prague part of their trip. We had a great time, catching up, eating out, and showing off the city to them.



Lucy loved being tour guide too, singing Dora's song "Come on, Vaminos!" wherever we went. However, her version goes like "Come on, Dominoes!" Many a tour group at the Prague castle would have been much more entertained by her than their boring tours.

Chuck and Kim also participated in the Sunday morning chapel at Sir Toby's and had the infamous all-you-can-eat breakfast there. After some late-night heated battles of Settlers of Catan, they left this morning for Venice on an all-day train, and we were sad to see them go!

Owen turns one!

We celebrated little Owen Syvertsen's first birthday today with a party at Chris and Laura's. It was great fun, although Lucy really wanted it to be her birthday. Clark and Lucy kept busy with all the new toys and boxes, as well as enjoying static electricity with balloons. Here's Owen trying to play with fire already... boys will be boys!

Happy Birthday Owen!

Phil and Shanna's day "away"

Part of Phil's birthday present was to go away for a night without kids. Shanna lined up our favorite babysitter, Miss Jessica, to spend the night with Clark and Lucy. Phil decided that Karlstejn would be a nice place to spend the night, so he lined up the rental car and the hotel.

Just for fun, we wanted to see what a Smart Car was like to drive. A Smart Car is basically a really small car that gets incredible gas mileage and can be parked anywhere. Plus, it's half-automatic and half-manual so it drives like you're playing a video game, shifting while you accelerate with no clutch. As a bonus, ours came with huge advertising on it declaring how cheap it was to rent. Nothing but the best for our special date!



We made the 30 minute drive to Karlstejn after a nice dinner in Prague, only to find that our hotel did not get our reservation and was totally booked. As we stood there at 10:00 at night, confirmation print-out in hand, we were told that there was one other hotel in Karlstejn that had a free room. We had no choice and left to find it.

It was not ideal, to put it nicely. We decided that we didn't want to spend our one night away in a hotel with a moldy shower and a bed with a multicolored "clown headboard" as Shanna described it. So we politely said no thanks and drove back to Prague, found a nice hotel with a great room available, and slept late into Saturday morning! Everything worked out great, and we ended up having a lot of fun sleeping in, shopping some, and catching an afternoon movie before we went home to relieve Miss Jessica.

Slumber Party

Lucy and her good friend Eloise spent the day together! They had a ball... they made sprinkle sugar cookies, laughed and giggled and run around the house, had a slumber party nap and watched their hero Dora the Explorer! We are very grateful for Eloise and her family being a part of our Prague family!

Harvest Party time!

Call it Halloween, Reformation Day, or a Harvest Party, it was time to get dressed up! We had a great turnout for our Harvest Party, a tradition that we had started in Charlotte. Clark was all decked out as a fireman, and Lucy was a "princess ballerina butterfly," which is a close kin to a fairy, I think.

Another shot of the fireman in action, sans boots...

There were about 15 little friends who showed up, many of whom were (ironically) also princess ballerina butterflies. Owen Syvertsen was a frog, and Lydia Verbrugge was a carrot. If we'd had prizes for costumes, they would have won.

We also had cupcake decorating and bobbing for apples, which quickly became splash-in-the-water time. The chaos peaked with a spontaneous running around and crawling under the couches. It was like the "Where the Wild Things Are" wild rumpus, only with ballerinas instead of monsters.

Great fun was had by all!