It's hot

We've already found lots of ways to cool off here...

Happy 4th of July!

It's always nice to return to America in time for July 4th. Sadly Uncle Tom's slip-n-slide was not available this year, so we had to find alternative celebrations. There was holiday cookie-baking...

a visit to a local pool...

and after a fun church service (at City Church) where we shared about Prague, we went to the Richmond fireworks show with a symphony concert. This is where things got interesting because we were all still pretty jet-lagged at this point. Things went from this...

to this...

in a few hours. But we kept everyone awake for the fireworks, which were worth it (minus the deafening Howitzer cannons that kept Piper huddled in my chest for the whole show)

We had a great time with Papa and Yaya, and after staying up late and sleeping in the next day... no more jet lag!

America, the land of making your own stuffed bear

We left Prague last week, tired but very satisfied from all the activity of the end of school. We're now in the States for the summer, visiting friends and family, sharing at churches, and resting. For our kids, coming to America means Build-a-Bear!!! So it was only appropriate that our first day in America was spent there.

This was Piper's first bear adventure, and she loved it...

Satisfied customers...

End of School, final Good-Byes

The month of June is full of all sorts of activities and emotions - celebration and joy, sadness and departures - but we felt like this year we said good good-byes and were able to close out the school year really well!

One last pool party...

Lucy and her wonderful teacher this year, Mrs. Gower... we will miss you!

Last girl group hug...

Lucy's end of year assembly...

Clark and Grace - great friends who had a great year together...

Clark receiving his graduation certificate...

GOOOOOOOOOL!

We've had football fever long before World Cup action - every Saturday morning this spring has been another season of football practice at school. Lucy and Clark have done a great job and gotten better over the season. The last Saturday is the Grownups vs. Kids, where the Kids always win, but just barely. This year's score was 8-7 in favor of kids. Halftime featured the Mommies vs. Girls, and I have to say I was very impressed with Shanna's abilities. I hear England is looking for a new goalie...

Sports Day

Sports day is a fun day filled with all kinds of sport activities at school. Lucy and Clark had so much fun participating. They had different races and competitions. There was an award ceremony - Clark received an award for 3rd place in the "dash across the field" race and Lucy's house Hus won first place.

life

The past month has been very exciting and full of very fun things - here is a sampling...

hosting a babyshower for a dear friend...

movies, popcorn and sleepovers with lots of friends...
dinners with dear friends that last till the wee hours of the night...
visits from old friends...
silly goodbyes to dear friends...
parties....lots of them
it has been amazing. We have lived life to the absolute fullest.

Piper's end of the year festivities

Piper's school Our Submarine is really one of the most creative schools, art and creating is a high value. Lots of amazing art projects come home and music and instruments are always heard. They always have an end-of-the-year picnic out in the beautiful garden which all of the families come to enjoy and spend time together. Then the following week is an end-of-the-year performance and party. This year's theme was Rock Star. They dressed all of the children up as rock stars and made the most amazing guitars out of cardboard and lots of shellac. Piper's class sang the Beatles song "Hello, Goodbye". She was so funny she did a lot of the hand motions and with her hair crimped you could not help but laugh.

This is Gust (pronounced "HUST" (with lots of gusto)), Piper says she loves him, but she is not sure if she will marry him...

Bachelor Party Boat Trip

Our friends from church, David and Laura, are getting married this summer, and David had a bachelor party boat ride down the Vltava river. This was something I'd done before, but this was even better - we had our own private boat, complete with a grill on the top deck to grill whatever meat we brought with us. Plus there was beer. And it was a perfectly beautiful day. And we were all dressed up as different kinds of beer.

That's David in the orange hat (he was some sort of Dutch beer)...

Richard pointed the way...

The whole gang - Frank (bottom-left) is dressed as a hedgehog, and I'm wearing that cool orange vest in the back (in honor of Branik, the working Czech's beer)

more field trips

I (Phil) got to take a couple of field trips with Lucy and Clark too. One was with Lucy's class to the IMAX theater to see a 3D underwater animal movie. Very cool. They let the kids see the film room too, which is fairly risky with lots of fidgety 7-year-olds around very expensive equipment.

Not sure who the old guy is on the metro, but he chose to stay in his seat...

The other trip was with Clark's class to a museum that's featuring a Lego exhibit. Pretty cool, unless you actually want to play with Legos. Like most 5-year-olds. So there was a great deal of enthusiasm with running around the nearby park and finding tadpoles.

Father's Day boat-building

Clark's class had all us dads come in for a Pirate Day boat-building celebration, in honor of Father's Day. They sang a few songs for us, served us some refreshments, and then we made boats with various materials. I did this with Lucy 2 years ago, so I had learned a few boat-making lessons then - I think when Piper comes through this in 3 years I'll be a styrofoam boat-making genius. We had a great time...