Christmas!

This has been a super awesome Christmas this year!! Vinson loved having the carp stand outside our apartment. Czechs eat Carp for dinner and they pick the carp from the huge bucket. If he didn't want to go outside all we had to do was remind him that there were "fishies" there. Our upstairs neighbors the Vondorskovi's got 3 big carp and had them in their bathtub. Vinson loved torturing . . . I mean petting them in the tub.

We had Turkey and Ham for Christmas Eve dinner. We went to the Glenn's house and they, the Wicker's and us potlucked a huge Christmas Eve dinner. Enough to feed us, some inlaws, 10 missionaries and 2 couple missionaries (one was the Mision president and his wife). Dinner was great! After we exchanged/stole white elephant gifts. Vinson managed to get 3 presents. Once when Dan was going to trade his present, because it was a stuffed animal, Vinson cried. In the rules you can't make kids cry, so Dan had to keep it:) After that we acted out the Nativity story. Vinson made an excellent cow! The Slovaceks were Joseph and Mary. Then Vinson climbed into the manger and the Glenn girls Elly, and Anna pushed him around in the manger. It was probably Vinson's favorite part of the evening.















Dan and I were so excited about Christmas!! Vinson wasn't quite sure what was going on, but he would figure it out.














He loved opening the presents. Mom and Dad probably made him jump from one present to another too quickly, though because all he wanted to do was play with the last one he opened. In the end he got a great stash! My favorite present was the tractor. I found the tractor in a garbage can, but it didnt' have a steering wheel. I made one out of a back scratcher and a frisbee, but unfortunately it only lasted about 5 minutes before it broke. We tried again with string and he still plays with it. Now we just need to reattach the frisbee :) His favorite was probably the train set and the man that climbs down the ladder. . . well he liked everything!

Dan's favorite was the book of Prague buildings that have cut out drawings and drawings of the cool paintings/sculputres etc. int eh building. The funniest one was probably 101 Regions of the Alps text book in German. Even thought he loves it, it was an accident :)

My favorite gift was the game Thurn and Taxis, which is a post office route game of Eastern Europe. It was the German game of the year for 2006. Those Germans sure do make some good games!!! We have played it every night since Christmas and everytime Vince has had a nap.

For some post Christmas festivities we went to the Wicker's and made ginger bread houses!!! It was so much fun. Dan is holding Vince weird cause he wants to eat the house. I bet you can guess which house is mine and who did the crazy extension. I think he just wanted more gingerbread to eat ;)

P.S. I did two posts today, so don't forget to read the next one

Shout out for Anna

I love Anna!! My sister Anna is absolutely amazing. She's one of those crazy talented people that are good at EVERYTHING! She's crazy smart and an amazing artist. Our favorite wedding present is a picture of Kolab canyon that she painted. I have to tell everyone it's a painting and not a picture, though because it's SO GOOD!! A little while ago Anna compiled some of her pictures on a website, and I thought everyone should know :) Here are two of my favorite and you can click on the link to see more. http://sisterduh.googlepages.com/

Vesele Divadlo

Around Halloween one of the girls in our branch (Magda) asked Dan and I if we would be willing to be Joseph and Mary for the Christmas Divadlo (theater). Magda organized a nativity theater last year for her YW project and wanted this years to be even better. I said, "we'd love to" and dragged Dan to all the practices. I never did Drama in High School and thought it would be great fun! I also was flattered that Magda thought my Czech was good enough that I could do it. It wasn't as much as you would think. Four lines and "Mary's Lullaby" in Czech.

Dan was an awesome Joseph! Vinson hung out at a friends house and was great until he saw Dan. Apparently he didn't recognize me, but when he saw Dan he said, "Daddy!" happily and then was restrained when trying to run to the stage, and that's when he cried. It was pretty cute. Poor Holly missed the whole thing.

Here is the whole cast. It went really well!

December Fun

While my friend is in America, we borrowed her zoo passes and all went to the zoo. The main reason for our visit was to do some Christmas shopping. Unfortunately the zoo was all out of their "Jsem Prase" and "Jsem Gorilla" I'm a pig and I'm a gorilla T-shirts, but we still had a lot of fun at the zoo. Vinson liked sitting on this tiger more than watching the real tiger cubs. We also got to hang out with the "people animals."

December 6th is St. Mikulas, but it's celebrated on the evening of the 5th. Dan had to work until late on the 5th, so I called some friends and Becca, Logan, Vinson and I went to old town square. St. Mikulas is the Czech's version of Santa Clause and he's always accompanied by an angel and a devil. If you say a poem to Mikulas they will give you a candy. Sometimes they go to homes and if the kids are good they give them a present, but if the kids are bad, Cert (the devil) gives the parents a whip to keep the children in line. I guess you could say that happens as often as kids get coal in their stocking. Vinson was sick, but I still dragged him out in the cold . . . hrmm . . because I wanted to see Mikulas. We didn't stay out too long.


Some of the costumes were pretty ornate, but a lot of them were cute home made costumes. Next year if everything works out we'll dress up. Hold your thumbs and cross your fingers!
Some other fun things we did was go to the foot exhibit in the Museum. It was right up my alley! There were shoes from all over the world. Vinson and Laurence (see picture below) had a lot of fun hiding behind the drapes and having races through the exhibit, and Melinda and I were pointing out cool shoes to each other. Among the exhibit was Neil Armstrongs space boot, Shaq's boot, some famous Czech olympian shoes, and other fun things like the tiny Chinese shoes, and eskimo shoes.



Melinda and Laurence at the entrance of the Foot exhibit

Choo Choo!

I thought you might like a translation for this one. "Pojd" is one of Vinson's latest Czech words. It means "come here." He used to say "meam" meaning "come" of course.

Vinson "Pojd'" "Come here"
Dan "Kam Pojdu?" "Where should I go?"

Little Angel?

I love this video! I laugh everytime I see it. Vinson looks so angelic, almost like he is praying and then all of a sudden. . . well watch you'll see!