Happy Holidays

Happy Holidays!

We are so thankful to be celebrating Christmas with our family, and are also thinking of our family in the Czech Republic, where we had such a blast celebrating Christmas last year.

Have a lovely holiday, everyone!

*AND, if you are looking for something to do with your time off, feel free to check out a great new blog - Western Mass Mama - by someone you're a little familiar with, about baby-related stuff in Western Massachusetts, and pregnancy in general. Enjoy!

Holiday Madness Begins!

I haven't written much lately. Truth is... I've been really sick! Like, 1st trimester morning (all-day)sickness and serious fatigue.

It's not pleasant. Especially since I'm nearly 18 weeks pregnant (this Sunday!). I should be feeling better, and I'm not. But I am looking forward to feeling the baby move, which could happen any day now.

But, we go on. Other than that I'm fine, and obviously very obsessed with baby stuff right now, which is the real reason I haven't written as much lately. Oh, and work. That takes my time, too.

On the bright side, it's the day before Thanksgiving! We will be spending the time with family, and it's exciting to realize that next year we'll have an extra mouth to feed pureed sweet potatoes to. Yay! It's also amazing to think that on Thanksgiving last year we were in Prague and went to our favorite Thai place, Noi, in Stare Mesto (I don't have the energy to go looking for proper accents right now, sorry).

Have a great holiday, everyone!

Outside Seasonal Decorations

As promised, here's the fall decorations on the front of our house...

Actually, we think we'll leave the crazy weird and slightly scary (and creepy) flying monkey hanging from the nail in the middle of the porch ceiling. This was my dad's and we love it. No matter how weird it is!

Coming Soon...

...My new unhealthy love for seasonal decorations.

Seriously, I don't know who this person is that I've become, but all I want to do is buy, like, twelve different wreaths for my front door.

Stay tuned...

Helloooo 2009!

New Year's eve was fun - as I mentioned in my last post, we were with Andy's brothers, David and Lukáš, and their women, Hanka and Katka.

The ladies made yummy food - chlebíčka (little breads with spread and pieces of meat like ham or salami, with bits of pickles, eggs, veggies... whatever's around... taken from "chleb" which means bread, it's a cutesy way of saying little breads - "chlebíčka" - cute, right?), salted almonds, and pork with a horseradish/apple/pork fat mixture that was awesome.
We listened to music and played poker and drank wine.

As it neared midnight I insisted we find a radio station that would have a proper countdown - I need a proper countdown on New Year's. We figured the station we were listening to would have one - shouldn't all stations? We got our champagne (Bohemia Sekt, actually) ready, and when David's clock read 11:58pm, fireworks started going off in the town. Confusion. A minute later the song on the radio ended and the DJ said that midnight had just happened. No countdown! Sad. And David's clock was wrong.

Oh well, we drank our sekt and celebrated. We watched fireworks from the window. Because anyone can buy fireworks it was quite a scene - there were fireworks shooting up in at least eight different places we could see. We could even see them through the bare trees of a nearby woods, going off in the next town over. It was pretty cool.

New Year's!

We had considered going into the city of Prague for New Year's Eve. Surely watching fireworks over the Charles Bridge and Prague Castle would be magical.

But, like New York, New Year's in Prague is crowded, expensive and cold.

Supposedly fireworks are sold to anyone and thus you've got drunken commoners lighting those suckers up in the streets, and with my luck, aiming them for my eye. Firework in the eye? No thank you!

So, after much debate, we have decided to spend this New Year's - our 11th together! - in Vojokovice, at David and Lukas' house (originally Andy's grandfather's house). We will drink wine, eat food that Hanka and Katka are making, play poker and have a great time.

Happy New Year!

Prague Christmas

Christmas in Prague was wonderful - on Christmas Eve morning Andy and I went with his parents to the cemeteries to put flowers and candles on his grandparents' graves.
We came back home, hung out, ate yummy yummy fish soup for lunch, then watched a movie. David, Lukas and Katka came over and we did dinner - fried carp, potato salad and Christmas cookies. Here, presents are exchanged on Christmas eve, which I'm not crazy about, but it was nice and fun. We had a good time.









On Christmas morning we woke up early and went to Prague, to St. Vitus Cathedral, which is in Prague Castle, for mass. Yes, it was all in Czech, but it was very pretty. Sadly, I have been totally spoiled by my little modern American church and didn't realize that because I was in a real church, old and stone, that I'd be freezing. Oh well, it was still beautiful and lovely.

We returned home, and I spent several hours talking to my family and Edith.
It was a great holiday! Click here for pictures, including many of the Christmas carp!

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays! After Christmas I'll post some pictures and exciting details of my first Czech Christmas...

as they say here in Prague, Veselé Vánoce!

Boredom Abated!*

Thank goodness for facebook**! Otherwise I couldn't have begged people to send me entertaining messages. Ask and ye shall receive! I loved the SNL skit AND the Dolly Parton video, but the best was sent by Anna - thanks Anna!

Check it out for Christmas humor - click here.
Ho, Ho, Ho.

*This sounds odd to me... "boredom abated"... does it seem odd to you? Abated is a normal enough word for me, but you know how sometimes even your written name looks weird...? That's what's going on here. Did I just turn stupid?Hmm.

**Life's getting a little sad when I feel like I've said that numerous times now...

Mikuláš, Anděl & Čert

Before St. Nicholas was a saint, and before he evolved into Santa Claus, he was a bishop. This is how he is portrayed here in the Czech Republic every December 5th (the eve of his feast day), when people dress as Mikuláš (Nicholas), an Anděl (angel) and the Čert (devil or demon) and visit the homes of children (usually for a small fee and/or a shot or a beer) to give them gifts of candy and goodies, but not before scaring the hell out of them.

Here's what happens: Mikuláš, Anděl and Čert visit the home, the children stand there facing them, scared to death of the Čert (who has a long tail, and a chain and is just frightening). Mikuláš, who is kindly and warm, reads from a book and lists the ways the child was bad this year (lying, not cleaning, etc.). The child then owns up to this wrongdoing saying "To je pravda" (It is true) and then each child has to say a poem or sing a song to receive the gifts. At some point the Čert tries to put the child into a bag to take them away to someplace (hell?) where all bad children go.

For my first Mikuláš, Anděl a Čert experience, we went to the home of Katka's sister, Petra & her boyfriend. Her daughter, Cristina (who is the adorable brunette) is five and said she wasn't really nervous, but check out the look on her face. That girl is seriously freaked out. Andy's brother, Lukaš and his girlfriend Katka dressed as Mikuláš and the Čert (we didn't have an angel) and were awesome - especially Katka as the Čert - she spoke/screamed like a lunatic and made these horrible sounds.

This tradition is awesome!

It incorporated drinking, dressing up and scaring (but then rewarding) children.










Notice the (fake) child's leg
hanging out of the Čert's bag!

For more pictures, click here.

Nuremberg

Before I start I'd like to say I really didn't like my last post. Particularly, I didn't like the scrapbooking (is this one word? or should it be hyphenated? everything gets it with the red underline...) picture I included, because I started thinking maybe people would think it's a picture of me scrapbooking. It's not. Don't be confused.

Nuremberg, Germany.
It was fun. But I'm beat from traveling! Even such a little trip! It was cold, of course... surely a few degrees colder than here in Prague. Going on a trip in this cold weather can be difficult, because you're standing the whole time and you can't just relax on a bench and people watch. We stood and people watched plenty, but we realized we were on our feet for basically two days. That was a little rough, but the rest rocked!

I have two albums with Nuremberg pictures (the first starts with a few in Prague on Thanksgiving). To see pics click here and
here.

We arrived in Nuremberg after a pleasant and fast-moving 5 hour train trip. We dropped our two backpacks at the Hotel Victoria and went for lunch. Then we went to the Nazi Documentation Center Museum which is in the old Nazi Congress Hall, which was far as I know, was never finished. We walked around a lot and saw the Zeppelinfield, where the Nazis would rally together and share their craziness and hate. It was freaky, and strange. The stands were overgrown which made it even creepier than it was.

The rest of our trip was spent on a Rick Steves' walking tour, eating Nürnberger Bratwurst on a bun, drinking glühwein (mulled wine) and hot alcoholic egg nog - all from stands on the streets.

There were so many glühwein stands, and when you get your glühwein you pay a little extra for the annual cup of the market, and carry it around to the other stands for more wine/egg nog/etc, and then you can keep the cup as a keepsake to remember your glühwein-drinking days in Nuremberg, or you can return it at any stand and get your money back. We kept ours, of course. We also got some cups from another stand that were different from the cups all the other stands were using. We like being individuals, so we kept those, too.

Our hotel was very nice. It was quite fancy which we felt we could handle since it was only one night that we would be there. It was right at the beginning of Königstraße, inside the wall for the old town, so it was a great location. We were able to easily get around, and make our way to the Christkindlmarkt, which is the annual Christmas market that draws 2 million visitors every year. Some say it's the biggest in Europe. It was big, and pretty great. Of course, kind of like NYC street fairs, there seemed to be a limit to what the stands were selling... it was kind of the same thing, over and over again. So there was glühwein, bratwurst, gingerbread, ornaments, hats/gloves/scarves... and the same over and over again. There were some differences, of course, but not much. Regardless, it was a lot of fun to walk around and see everything. It was very festive and Christmasy, which I love.

People were pretty controlled and friendly and not that big of a pain in the ass, except for the few who did the tourist stop-dead-in-their-tracks and not move thing, right in the middle of a giant thoroughfare... but then, that always happens.

We barely made our connecting train on the way back, got stuck in a cabin with some smelly people and then the lights went out making it impossible to read for the remaining 4 hours. 45 minutes before we came into Prague the train broke down and we had to wait for it to be fixed... but only for about 25 minutes. It didn't ruin the trip in any way.

It was a great time, and I'd definitely recommend the Nuremberg Christkindlmarkt to anyone... it was great holiday fun. It was so festive and nice.

I'm a big Christmas fan and any excuse to feel all warm inside while I walk around in the cold - whether from happiness and children singing, or from the wine - make for a great time for me.

Last note: Speaking of children singing... we happened to catch some little German kids singing Christmas songs in front of a church (Frauenkirche I think) and it was really cute so here's the video. Unfortunately I missed taping them singing "O Tannenbaum" but this other thing is funny and cute, and I like how the teacher sounds singing in German.