Birthday Madness

Some of those pictures were from this last weekend, when Lucy went to 2 birthday parties of her friends. One was at her friend's house, where they could have easily run a summer camp - they had a trampoline, indoor pool, baby pool, and rented a bouncy castle for a day (you can too at www.bouncycastles.cz) - it was awesome, and also the inspiration for us buying a grill two days later.

The other was a princess/pirate party for another friend at an incredible brunch place (we'd been there before). Face-painting, dressing up, art, and more!

As promised...

The Sound of Silence...

As you can see, we haven't been blogging lately - that's not from a lack of desire... it's more a lack of time, energy, and internet access. So sorry.

But we are back online here at our new home and have been busily unpacking, organizing, and cleaning. It's only been 2 weeks at the new place, but we love it and feel like it's been much longer. Life has been busy lately and very fun these last 2 weeks. Some highlights:

- Visitors have continued. Our first overnight guests were Emily (9 mos. pregnant) and Anna Lee (Clark's buddy), who wanted to be nearby in case baby Oliver decided to show up while Radek was out of town. Fortunately, she didn't go into labor then, but Oliver did come into the world a few days ago. Congratulations!

- Next we had Lauren, our awesome intern from last summer. Lauren (or "Lo," as the kids call her), was back in Prague for a few weeks and we got some good time with her. She was also our last guest at our old flat before we moved - she did it all while she was here, including a little Cream 'n Dream action just like old times.

- Our friend Katie from Charlotte was here too, and she stayed with Dot for a week. She brought Lucy a cheerleading outfit with pom-poms. She loves it and we all had a night of cheering, including Clark.

- Church has continued to go well. We had our first communion service today (using our new communion set that the team from Uptown delivered in April - thanks, guys!). It was very special for us, and the sermon was appropriately on Unity in the Church. Next week starts a new summer series - the Life of Jesus from the Gospel of John. Hopefully we'll finish our logo and website soon. We'll keep you posted.

- Now we have another great guest - Miss Angela! She was one of our favorite Charlotte baby-sitters, and for a graduation (from seminary) present from her parents , she got a ticket to Prague. The kids have been beside themselves with excitement... actually, that's just normal for them, but we are even more glad now that she's here. We're going to secretly steal her passport so she can't leave.

- Shanna and the kids have hit 3 pools in 5 days, plus we just bought a new baby-pool for our patio. The summer has now officially started.

- Clark and I had a "man-outing" to the hardware store today, where we bought a grill. And a BIG tank of gas. Grrrrrr.... fire.....

- Lastly, our five summer interns arrive on Friday! We can't believe they're coming next week, and they have big shoes to fill from last summer's girls. Right, girls?

Pictures will come soon - we promise!

Hollywood Update

Interestingly, we received more comments on the Brangelina post than any other post we've done. What does that say about you, our faithful readers? You must want MORE! So here you go... your next issue of Prague "People"...

Today I (Phil) had my first Brad sighting too - again, at school drop-off. It's becoming a regular Tues-Thurs activity: wake up, get dressed, pile in the car, take Clark to school, see Brad Pitt, etc. etc. Pretty surreal.

In other Hollywood news, filming has also been underway for several weeks now on the new Narnia movie (Prince Caspian). We haven't seen any of the actors for this one yet, but we did get to have dinner with the winner of Disney's Ultimate Narnia Fan contest. Not kidding. You can check her out at www.narnia.com - her name was Emily, and she and her husband won a free trip to Prague to view the Narnia set for the filming. We also have a mutual friend, so before they came over, we exchanged emails and arranged a dinner.

As we talked, we quickly realized that she was a well-deserving winner of this contest. She had a party for 250 people in her home for the first movie, and she made all the food and her family's costumes. That's just one of about 30+ things they do relating to Narnia.

It was a fun time to meet them and hear their stories from their studio visit - they got to meet all the children in the movie, plus a few others.

Who would have thought that we'd be so connected with such fame??? We'll keep you posted on all these developments!

Waterboy

Sunday morning was the annual Prague marathon. Our friend Petr works for the Prague International Marathon, so a few of us decided to sign up and volunteer at a water station. Little did we know how hard this was going to be! Fortunately, it was a beautiful day (we now have red necks to prove it - you can make some jokes about that now), and we had lots of fun. We couldn't serve our Isostar (something like Gatorade) fast enough. At the end I felt like I had... well, run a marathon or something.

Then there was the aftermath...

We had a nice cheering section too.

We're not avoiding you...

We don't have our internet, and hence our internet phone, hooked up at the new place yet. Hopefully we will this week. Sorry we haven't returned emails or phone calls for a few days.

We had a great church service yesterday and honored all the moms and moms-to-be with some flowers, passed out by all the kids. Hope you all had a good Mothers Day!

Mr. and Mrs. Smith move to town

Forget the move, the real news around here has been that the one (or two?) and only Brangelina have rented a villa near our new place while Angelina is filming a movie in Prague. We've driven by a couple of times - it's only 2 blocks from our place. There's a constant crowd of paparazzi, security, and onlookers (like us).

That's pretty cool, but not as cool as this: yesterday Shanna went to take Clark to school and as she pulled up, she noticed another crowd. As she walked in with Clark and Lucy, there's Mr. Pitt himself, dropping off 2 of their 4 kids! They had a nice little chat - he even introduced himself, and Shanna managed to keep her cool and form coherent words in reply. On her way out she spotted Angelina sitting in their car waiting, and they exchanged waves.

So Clark is hanging with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's kids at school these days! We're thinking about having LOTS of school-related parties at our new house now to get Brangelina there.

Cardboard box chaos

Yesterday (Thursday) was the big move day. It was a looooong day of packing, watching big Czech men move things into the trucks (yes, plural), and trying to set up some stuff in the new place. It was a little sad to leave the Prague 2 flat, but we really love the new place. Our first night last night in the new flat was great - the kids even slept in, which we credit the new blinds which make their rooms absolutely pitch black. No waking up to early morning sunrises.

The loading process took a bit longer than expected, possibly because our street was so narrow that the driver had to constantly move the truck to let other cars get by while leaving mere millimeters between him and the parked cars.

Packing and Painting

(Caution: sarcasm) We really haven't had enough to do lately, what with two visiting teams, a big concert event to organize, and starting a church. So we decided to spice things up a bit and move to a new flat!

This has been a several-month decision for us, but we're really excited about the new place. We're really sad to leave our awesome flat here in Prague 2, but the new place is in Prague 6, mere minutes from Lucy and Clark's schools. It's a little smaller, but it feels even nicer, with brand new appliances, upstairs and downstairs, and a backyard (or garden, as they call it)! It's in a villa, so it looks like a big house with 3 flats inside. More pictures to come soon.The big move day is next Thursday, so we've been trying to get the old flat packed up and paint a couple of rooms in the new one. We had a great crew helping us yesterday with some painting - there were six of us at one point, and we almost finished. Shanna brought pizzas for everyone, so we got to enjoy our new patio along with our new outdoor furniture - for the kids.

Thanks to everyone who's helped us paint!