Easter

Unfortunately our camera has been broken since our Utah trip (but it should return fixed in a few weeks) so this post won't have any pictures. We've had a lot of fun this Easter! On Friday afternoon Vinson and I went to our friends the Wicker's house to do some easter egg dying. Vinson was very excited about playing with Vivian and Martin, but didn't seem so impressed with the egg dying. I think I plan a lot of things for myself more than Vinson. I'm the one who really wanted to dye eggs.
That evening we invited a LOT of people to come to our house and dye eggs. I had blown out 1 1/2 dozen eggs for the occasion, but Magda was the only one to come. We had learned last year the Czech technique of melting crayons and painting the egg with the crayon. Magda had this technique perfected. She had a bottle with metal lids attached with wire so that she could put wax into the metal lid and put a candle underneath so that the wax would stay melted. To make it work you need to use 1/2 bees wax and 1/2 crayon for the color. Otherwise the crayon will just burn. Then you dip pins into the wax and paint the egg. My first egg wasn't so hot, but I improved immensely and made some pretty awesome eggs! Dan also did amazing on his first and only attempt. Magda said that Dan was the first man she has ever seen doing easter eggs. (Here the men/boys make whips and the girls paint eggs). We had no trouble painting all of the blown out eggs and even some of our cracked hard boiled eggs. It was kind of sad to throw the hard boiled masterpieces away when you wanted to eat the egg. I will post pictures when our camera returns. Saturday morning we returned to the Wickers for an easter egg hunt! It was pretty funny because camouflaged eggs really threw Vinson off.
Sunday night we were spoiled with AMERICAN FOOD! We had ham, green jello, funeral potatoes, and homemade "reese's peanut butter eggs." Ham was the only food that is easily found in Prague. :)
Monday is when Czechs celebrate Easter. The girls decorate eggs and the boys make whips and on easter the boys "lightly tap" the girls bottom and the girls give them an egg. I guess the "bottom tap" is supposed to help girls stay fertile. It's an awful tradition, but kind of fun. Unfortunatly Vinson was sick so we had to cancel all of our whipping appointments :(. He's feeling much better now, but still not back to normal.

Things about Me

Things about me
Rules. . . . .
A. The rules are posted at the beginning.
B. Each player answers the questions about themselves.C. At the end of the post, the player then tags five people by posting their names; then goes to their blog and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged. -I won't tag anyone because everytime I have no one has done anything :)
What were you doing ten years ago? I was in 9th grade. I'm one of the only ones I know who actually loved junior high. It seemed to me that every year just got better and better. I couldn't wait to drive, and was signed up for summer drivers ed.
Snacks I enjoy: In the Czech Republic there are these chocolate waffer things called Tatronky that I love! Probably because they're cheap :) When we were in the U.S. I bought 5 bags of chocolate chips to last me. I've munched down 1 and a half of those already. My pregnancy craving right now is oranges. I eat at least one every day. I'll eat any green olive you put in front of me. If I were living in the U.S. I would probably eat cheap chips, yummy salsa, cheese tortillas and peanut butter and jam on bread that you can squeeze into a ball.
Five things on my to-do list today.
1 - Prepare my nursery lesson. This actually takes a while because it's in Czech.
2 - One of my projects is translating the cute nursery handouts into Czech. Dan does the translating I get it ready to make copies.
3 - We're all sick, so I need to pick up some caj (tea).
4 - I've really slacked off on emails lately - but with everyone sick, I might not make it.
5 - Take a nap (Vince woke up at 5:00 in the morning and I let Dan sleep in.)
Things I would do if I were suddenly made a billionaire. Breathe easier. Since we're already in Europe we'd do some traveling. Put a lot of money in savings, a high-yielding savings account in the Czech Republic because the dollar is dropping daily now :( Save some so I can buy a house and pay for Grad. school for Dan. We'll see how much is left. . .
My bad habits
1 - I loose my keys all the time! Well, I put my keys in places Vince can get to them and he does the rest.
2 - I'm definately a lot better than I was in High School, but I double book myself ALL THE TIME!
3 - I procrastinate until after 5:00 to buy food for dinner which means the grocery store is CrAzY! But at least it's across the street.
Jobs I have had.
Fast food crew chief at the Purple Turtle
Ross Dress For Less - everything . . . cutstomer service, fitting rooms, cashier etc.
Vaccuum Sales person (the worst job I've ever had)
BYU Marriot Center and Stadium Janitor.
Park Ranger- I was a tour guide for Timpanogos Cave National Monument
8th Grade teacher - I can't wait to go back in 10 or so years. I still love Jr. High!
I teach random people English here in Prague
MOM! The best job ever - change diapers, play, feed, play, clean, play, bathe, play . . .
Things people don't know about me. I get a thrill in using something completely - all the way. Using pencils until it's impossible to write. Cutting open lotion bottles to get the last little bit. I was the country dance president for BYU for 2 years. Dan can find this little place on my cheek that tickles like crazy. I hate clutter - unfortunately this and my first quirk sometimes make things difficult.

Utah

Vinson was absolutely amazing for the airplane ride! The flight from Prague to Atlanta (11 hours) was pretty empty so Vinson got his own seat. It would pretty much have been a nightmare otherwise. Then we had a five hour flight to Salt Lake. He cried more in the car ride to my parents house than he did the whole flight. He would wake up at about 5 o'clock every morning and Dan and I took turns waking up. Highlights of the trip were:
Sledding: Vinson hated sledding. He would cry even if Dan or I went down the hill by ourselves. But he didn't seem to care what happened to his aunts or grandma. It actually was pretty funny. Vinson didn't seem to mind when Dan held Vinson on his cross country skis and went down the hill.

Eating : We were SO spoiled with food :) My mom had our favorite cereals stocked (cracklin' oat bran and Wheaties), we had that and sausage for breakfast. (Sausage here is more like pepperoni here.) While we were at Dan's house we had mom's yummy tomato soup! YUM! And we ate Mexican a lot! Here we are at Mi Ranchito. Vinson accidentally ate a hot tamale, I wish you could have seen his face. I gained 10 pounds. I blame it on the pregnancy ;) We also fed my family Halusky - a traditional Slovak dish that tastes a lot better than it looks, and Dan's family Svickova.Swimming: One of Vinson's favorite things to do in American Fork was go swimming. He wasn't afraid of the water and even tried to push the water out of the way when it got too deep.
Shopping: I LOVED SHOPPING!!! We bought food and clothes and I understood everything that was going on! I could eavesdrop if I wanted to! :) It was great to have a cart that I could control and BAGGERS!!! Fast food that cost normal prices! Wow!!

Children's Playhouse: Vinson and his cousin's Lori and Charlie went to the Children's Treehouse which was a lot of fun. They had a whole bunch of themed rooms.
Skiing Skiing and More Skiing:

This is definitely one of the things that we looked forward to most. Dan got 4 skiing trips in and I got in 3.

Us at Alta. Go ahead and drool, the snow was amazing!!

Us and Tiffa, one of my absolute best friends ever!

Cross Country Skiing at Pine Hollow up American Fork CanyonDan and me at the top of the trail. I love the canyon!
Of course Dan decided to ski down the steep hill we just climbed.

Me and Rachael, also one of my bestest friends ever!

Dan and I at Canyons, this was one of our awesomest Christmas presents!

Ahhh!!! Virgin powder everywhere!

Friends: We got to see a lot of friends that we had missed while have been here. I got to see Tiffany and Rachael, and later we got to hang out with Dan's old college gang: the Wades, Shammy's (except for Shammy), and the Joels! There were a lot of new kids added to the group and Vinson had a blast! He especially liked playing ring around the rosies. Later we got to see a bunch of Dan's High School friends. It was a lot of fun!Family: And last and BEST of all! We got to see our families!!!! I feel bad we didn't get more pictures of Dan's family. It was so much fun taking pictures of Vinson play with his cousin Lori that we spaced on taking other pictures.

I loved jus hanging out and talking to my family!

Here's the whole gang!

Lieing all over eachother is pretty normal in my family.

Hanging out with Dan's cousins! We've missed the Ward Family gatherings.

Vinson was Lori's shadow. They had so much fun.

He still points her out and says, "Lori!"

And these are just some cute pictures of Vinson.

Stay tuned...

So we recently came home to Prague after visiting home in Utah only to find that our internet connection has gone fickle. It works once in a while--usually when I am prepared to call our provider for help, but most of the time we have limited or no internet service. This has for obvious reasons made us slow to add updates about our Utah trip and other exciting events. So, don't give up on us, we are still here. And someday soon our internet connection will work properly and we will post some pictures of Utah's beautiful mountains and our beautiful families!


For now, here is a nice picture I took from my parents house on one of those strangely bright nights that seem to happen only in the winter.

Getting Ready to Go to America

We've put off packing . . . the normal stuff you need to pack for any vacation so we got ourselves pumped up. Vinson was watching "Cars" which meant Dan and I could have 2 . . . at least 1 hour of time to pack. "Dan pojd," Vince called from the living room. Apparently he didn't want to watch the movie alone, and yes he lovingly refers to Dan as Dan. I think it's because it's so close to "Dad." So I packed all of Vinson's stuff and my stuff and took my turn with Vinson. Dan was almost done and we decided to pack a book from the bookshelf. Crash!! The entire shelf fell off the book shelf. We found that a screw was missing and spent the next half an hour trying to fix the bookshelf (which was a failed attempt but the book shelf is lighter we'll see if it stays :) while Vinson kept himeslf busy stacking the books that were all over the floor. He had two good piles going and we figured he was busy and happy and weren't paying any particular attention to him. Then Vinson decided to put BOTH of our cellphones in a cup of water. I caught him pretty quickly, and Dan hurried off to try to get all of the water out that he could. I was still trying to put the bookshelf together and Vince got out of being punished. Our phones still aren't working properly. Hopefully two weeks of drying will fix them. Long story short . . . it's taken us a lot longer to pack and clean up than we'd expected to. It's still not done, I took a break to try to laugh at the day.

Apparently I wrote too soon. I started making dinner and Dan decided to see if our Temple recommends were expired. Mine is expired. So between making dinner and trying to make calls on our still not entirely functioning phone and burning a few french toast Vince decided he was hungry and grabbed the opened box of milk -yes milk comes in boxes :( - and dumped it all over the floor. It might have started out as an accident, but by the end it was obvious he was quite enjoying himself pouring the milk all over the floor. There is a happy ending: we cleaned up Vinces mess while he was being punished in the crib, I was finally able to eat (man do I get hungry) and with Skype I was able to finish all of the phone calls. What a day!