nice weather

Yes nice weather is noteworthy! And we have been taking every advantage of it. Lots of bike riding, time at the bike ramps, hiking, and lots of outside park time. Saturday we headed to the park with friends for some bike riding, we rode around for awhile at the park and then headed to the zoo on our bikes. We played at the zoo playground, ate lunch and rode home. It was the perfect start to spring!

Locks of Love

Lucy has been wanting to cut her hair for a couple of months now but has waited until she could donate her hair to Locks of Love. This is an organization that takes donated hair and make wigs for young cancer patients. You must have 10 inches ponytailed. Lucy hit that mark and cut her hair! She looks adorable and I am so proud of her.

before
after

the teeth are falling out!

Clark has lost three teeth within weeks of each other. The tooth fairy has been at our house a lot lately! The first time she brought a silver dollar, then 2 euros (because his tooth fell out in Austria), then a 50 cent piece. Clark has several grown-up teeth that have already broken through the surface and he so proud of them. He is also trying to decide what he wants to do with all his cash!

one more ski day

We had one more ski day in us and we headed to Lake Lipno to ski with our favorite teacher Miss Lucy. She started with Piper and after one go on the bunny slope decided she was ready for the big slopes and the chair lift. Piper was so excited! She has been waiting for the chair lift and now was her big moment. She is a very good listener to Miss Lucy and listened to all instructions while going down the mountain. After her lesson she came with us and almost gave me a nervous breakdown at how fast she wanted to go down the hill. So Phil opted to ski with her. I skied with the big kids and they also wanted to go very fast and never wanted to stop. We had a great last day of the season skiing, with the sun shining and a really great family day.

Happy Birthday Mama!

Shanna is truly an amazing woman - wife, mother, and friend. The quality in her that I always admire (besides her hot-ness) is that she makes everyone around her a better person, in that she sees great potential in people and helps people realize it. We celebrated her birthday this year by trying to do what Shanna always does for us - MAKE FUN HAPPEN! She'll always be better at this than us, but we tried.

But what's the first thing you'd want to do on your birthday morning? How about run 15 miles with your running partner? Like I said, she's amazing.

After the kids got home from school, we went out for dinner at a pizza place, right on the river. It was a beautiful setting with nice views of the castle and bridges, and yummy food.

Then it was home for presents, and the annual Silly Song for Shanna. This year's rendition was "I Gotta Feeling" by Black Eyed Peas. We did our best to honor her with our attempt at humor...

We love our Mama! Happy Birthday to you - we love you and are so glad that God has blessed us with you!

Ski Week!

Ski Week! All schools in Czech Republic and most of Europe get a week off in the winter called Ski Week. It usually coincides with a term break but not always. This year in our efforts to "take back the winter" we decided to try our own ski week. We headed to the Alps with our friends the Pokludas for a week of skiing! We stayed in a little apartment right outside the Saalbach area. We found a little ski school for Piper to go to. The teachers told us she was "advanced" and that she needed to move up to the next level, she ended up skiing with 6-8 year olds. Lucy and Clark stayed with us and we tried out different slopes each day. We found our favorites at the end of a gondola ride. Skiing is one of those sports that if you start young you excel quickly. I think by next year Lucy and Clark will definitely surpass Phil and me.

We skied each day and then swam each afternoon. We alternated dinner between our place and the Pokludas. It was so relaxing and fun. We were all sad to leave.
Clark on the gondola on a very snowy dayPiper getting ready for Ski school

Clark, Vivi, Lucy and Michelle

Hot chocolate was had multiple times a day

We LOVED having lunch on the mountain especially the second half of the week the SUN made a glorious appearance...

Lucy is a crazy skier, she is loves to go really fast and sing at the top of her lungs while doing it. I think she loves the independence of it...
Perfect!

Mary Kingsley

Welcome to the Year 3 Explorers Museum. Each Year 3 student was given an explorer that they needed to research, write a speech about, and dress up as.

Lucy was given Mary Kingsley, a British woman from the late 1800's who explored Africa. She originally headed out to explore Africa to finish her father's research that he started before he died. She also discovered a new breed of fish that the British museum collected. One interesting fact is that she always traveled in her Victorian dress even while canoeing down the river on her outings.

The room was turned into a museum and the explorers were dressed up and lined up around the room. They were frozen until you came up to them and then they started up with their speech and once they were done they froze again.

Please meet Mary Kingsley...
Can you guess these other explorers?
How about these ones?
Lucy did an amazing job on this project. She had research each week and then she had to compile it all together. She was very proud of her hard work and so were we. It was fun to see her whole class really encouraging each other and wanting to see each other's costumes and hear each other's speeches.

Valentine's Week!

Yes you heard me right we LOVE Valentines day... so much fun, so much love and so many beautiful decorations... LOVE

We started the week baking cookies with the Falk's. It was a whole day of cookie baking, decorating, eating pizza buns for lunch, a couple of games and great chat time for Connie and me. It is always like being with family when we are together. Sweet.
The cookies have improved over the years too, the kids are so creative with the decorations.

Special Valentines for special friends. We made these little guys up over the course of a few days and made some heart goodie bags filled with conversation hearts to give to friends at school.
And of course heart muffins for breakfast.
We continued the celebrations the next day with a Valentine's day disco... loud music, fun games and lots of dancing.

And Phil and I went on a romantic date and celebrated how much we love each other!