The other Red, White, and Blue

We're now all in the States for a few weeks, visiting family, friends, and a couple of churches. Yay! I (Phil) arrived last night and was reunited with Shanna and the kids, who had already been here for a week staying with my parents. So far it's been great - eating unhealthy food, swimming in Becca's pool, seeing family, and getting ready for a week at the beach. The kids are having a great time, and Papa and Yaya have set the house up with various "stations" like arts and crafts, TV, books, toys, etc. (I don't remember them doing this when I was a kid!) I'm sure some pictures will come soon.

Tour De Davis

Today we took a bike ride to the zoo where we met Owen and Laura for some zoo time and lunch. On the way I noticed how much we resembled the Tour De France, our competitiveness, our dedication and determination.

If there is something to climb this boy is climbing it...Pipes loves the petting zoo, in fact she loves all animals and squeals anytime she saw something...

I love this picture of Lucy because it so sums her up she just laughs a great hardy deep laugh she just takes life independently and free...

They saw horses today that you could ride and they had to ride them... it cost 20 kc about a dollar and before we could even talk about it they had hoisted themselves up and were ready to go...

And then it was off to church...

a night at the Falk's

Lucy and Clark were invited for a sleepover at the Falks' house last night. They waited all day for the clock to strike 5 so they could go. They had a fun night with homemade pizza-making, Happy Feet movie, and getting to be with Mark, Andrea and Sarah for the night. They came home this morning laughing and smiling and feeling so grown up from their adventure away from home. They were very cute. While they were gone we had the Syvertsens over for dinner along with our guest of honor Miss Sunny who is in town for a visit!

Playmobil Land!

We spontaneously decided to take a trip to Germany to visit Playmobil land, which is basically a huge playground with life sized Playmobil figures. They have a huge outdoor area that the kids can climb, dig, play with water, visit the pirate ships, the farm, dig for gold, run around Noah's ark, visit the wild west and then a huge indoor area that has a massive climbing area along with all the Playmobil sets set up in areas that you can just sit and play with for hours. I love that it only cost 4 euros for the kids to get in and 8 for grown ups. We went with the Porter family and had a blast.

Here are all the kids...Lucy, Piper, James, Daniel, Clark and MatthewLots and lots of digging... they had so much fun getting SO dirty especially Miss P... Ahoy Mates!

I love the life size farm animals that look just like Playmobil animals it is like you have been transported into one of the sets...The girls working hard to care for the horses... Lucy is lobbying for us to buy a horse...

Matthew and Clark just riding a zebra and then after pictures and sitting on it for a while Clark pointed out this sign he saw...True love..We had a fabulous time with the Porters and caught an amazing thunder and lightning storm on our way home. Another great day!

I do it myself

Piper thinks she is 4 physically - but in reality she is only 18 months - verbally she chooses not to say a word, she just grunts. Some new favorites are eating with a spoon, drinking out of mom's water bottle, and exploring on her own (always with rice cake in hand). She makes us laugh and smile and we are so blessed by her. We love you P!

Fun in the Sun

Monday was a beautiful day - the sun was shining, we spent the day at the pool with lots of friends, and lots of sliding on the water slide. The fun then continued that night when we had the Bulthuis' and the Falk's for dinner. It was our last goodbye to Eric and Leanne as they head back to Canada soon. We wanted just a little more time with them, they have been so amazing to get to know over the last two years and we will dearly miss them. We had a cookout, a little slip n slide and a whole lot of laughter. Any day that the kids get to hang with the Falk kids is a great day for them. It is really amazing to me how much fun they all have together despite the age difference: 18 months to 13... crazy!

Rafting

This past weekend we rounded up a bunch of friends and headed to Cesky Krumlov for a rafting trip. We stayed at the same little hotel on the river that we stayed at for the women's retreat and amazingly the conference room was completely done and looked beautiful. This town is so cute and picturesque and the river is just so beautiful running right through the whole town. We rafted on Saturday and were a bit unsure if we would be able to or not. We have had so much rain this year and the river is actually 3 times as intense as it usually is and moving quite fast. We had 4 boats that we all rode on, and at times we held them together while the kids went back and forth from raft to raft. They were LOVING it. The water was moving really fast and it just made for more fun. The nights were spent at the pizza place on the river next to the most amazing playground. While the grown ups sat on the outdoor terrace and talked, the kids ran, climbed, dug, jumped, spun and dangled till they just could barely walk. They also had a late night showing of The Incredibles at the Falk's room, they all snuggled in together and not a peep was heard, so of course we took advantage of it and had a chance to just sit and chat. It was a very relaxing weekend with lots of fun and good memory moments.

"...that morn shall tearless be"

Saw this on a bike ride last week one evening along the river and had to just stop and give thanks.

Horse Camp

This week Lucy and Clark, along with good friends Vivi and Michelle, attended horse camp! Each day was filled with 2 riding lessons, a carriage ride, pony games, grooming of the horses (including braiding the tails), feeding the horses, learning about horses, more games, lots of smiles, and lots of laughter. They both really learned a lot about riding - both cantering and trotting (words that I am still a bit unfamiliar with) - and have such a confidence at the farm that was really fun to see. Camp was from 10-4:30 everyday for 4 days. Then the ride home was filled with excitement, lots of chatter from the day, and at some point Clark would close his eyes and start snoring. We usually continued our days with the Pokludas together by sharing dinner and the kids would do a performance or two of the Saddle Club. (Hopefully we will get some pictures that the farm owners will send of the days spent at camp and I will post them.)

Happy 4TH!

We celebrated the 4th of July with an all-day trip to the pool. We swam and swam and swam. We met up with a few families and had a picnic and topped it off with ice cream. Then in the evening we had a few friends and the Vienna interns that were visiting over for a cook out complete with a slip-n-slide (it was no Uncle Tom's slip-n-slide but we managed). The kids just played and played and played and finally around 9:30 fell over. We are proud to be Americans and it was fun to share our American pride with a few of our expat friends!

pool fun!

The sun has finally made an appearance and we have had so much fun playing at the local pool as well as friends' houses that have pools. Each day we have met up with someone for a lot of water play. I am so glad that all three of the kids LOVE the pool, because when the weather is warm there is no place that I would also rather be.

Beautiful City

Just found this picture on my phone that I've been meaning to upload for a while... took it a few weeks ago walking across the Charles Bridge with friends. The view never gets old.

Here comes the rain again...

Even though we're finally witnessing some much-needed sunshine here, it still rains at least once every day. And for several days it's rained a LOT. So much so that several parts of the country are flooded and people have died. It's bringing up some scary memories from 2002 when Prague had major flooding, but so far it looks like we've escaped the worst. However, Piper and I did have to cut our bike ride short yesterday when we came across this...

Our nice little ride by the river became more of a damage-assessment. The river was very intense looking and higher than I'd ever seen it. There's usually a good 5-6 foot drop down to the water from this level...

special guest

A couple of weeks ago I got a fun email from one of my oldest and dearest friends Kati Nygren whom I have known for 18 years (She was in our wedding, along with her two oldest kids). She wrote that she was heading to Estonia for a festival (she is Estonian) and that she and her sister were going to leave the rest of her family and spend a couple of days in Prague. It has been such a sweet treat for me. We have stayed up very late every night and just chatted and chatted! It was a very fun unexpected gift!

Karin and Kati