Warsaw, Poland

Okay, I'm ready to tell ALLLLLL about Poland.

Poland was very different. I liked it.
I can't make one of these slideshows go away... two are the same, two are different... you'll figure it out. :)


This trip to Warsaw, Poland was very interesting because you could "see" the past. It seemed the "past" was so recent that it was still around. Some parts of Warsaw appeared new and "American" looking... like the large, beautiful shopping malls or the big office buildings downtown; while other parts or Warsaw looked like they really had been through a war... beat up and falling apart.

It wasn't even different parts or areas of Warsaw. It was all mixed up. New, tall buildings next to a pile of rubble that previously had been a building. Rows of grey, cement, box-like apartments that looked very communist, and then right next to those were the new apartments with balconies and pretty paint.

I was more interested in the older things. I think many years from now Warsaw will be a boring, modern European city with new everything, but now it seems to be "in between" so you could still see the history. And I've never cared about history at all... but since we were staying with some friends they told us all about their country: it's history, famous people, events, specific everything; they were so knowledgeable about their country... I was very impressed. It made me feel slightly dumb though about my knowledge about the history of my own country. :) But having them tell me about Warsaw's past made our trip more personal because of the way it's history had effected them. ...It made me even choose a museum over a park one day! I wanted to learn about the "Warsaw Uprising" so we went to a museum about it. Instead of just roaming around the museum aimlessly while Paul read things, I read everything too and actually learned things!!

So our Poland trip to me was very educational. I really enjoyed it. I hope our friends know how much we appreciated them sharing their home and family with us too. I don't think our trip would have been as good without them. I probably would have just seen the plastic palm tree and called it good. (There is a plastic palm tree in the middle of Warsaw.) :)


Oh, this was the very first thing I noticed about Warsaw: They have concrete light poles and concrete power poles. No wooden poles... it's all concrete, and so old that some are falling apart and you see the rebar sticking out. ....yes, I know it's sideways. Turn your head. :) There were lots of grey concrete things around...

I have time to keep typing, Andrea is still asleep... lucky you, you get to keep reading!

We did find a McDonalds that served breakfast and we were so excited because it's rare for a McDonalds here in Europe to be open to serve breakfast. Other than McDonalds we ate some pretty interesting and different foods. The girls even ate duck happily! I ate liver, blood, other internal organs, the fat from some animal, and raw beef... all in one day! Phew! :) I told our friends we wanted to eat some traditional Polish food... and they sure provided us with some! :)

The food was quite interesting in Poland. Different, mostly good, and some mostly interesting! I did get some roast beef that was really good and some Easter soup. AND I ate the yummiest piece of Polish candy, it was a taffy of some sort but with a very unique flavor. YUM!

My liver experience wasn't so YUM though. I've never eaten liver, and this time it was even an accident. I thought I was taking a bite of a grilled chicken or beef so I had a BIG bite. Hmmm. I almost became ill after chewing for a few seconds... Then I see Paul laughing at me. It was very hard to swallow and took a great amount of concentration on my part. I didn't know liver could be so... icky. :) So, what do I do after I successfully swallow it and am convinced it isn't coming back out... Feed it to my children of course! :) They each had a bite and suffered as I did. :)

We spent Easter in Poland too. On Saturday each of our families prepared an Easter basket with different symbolic things inside: meat, bread, chicken, egg, and a branch from a green plant. Then we took our baskets to the church to have them blessed, your basket was to be your breakfast the following morning on Easter. So everyone is out walking on their way to all the local churches and everyone has their baskets with them. At the church every 15 minutes the priest comes out to the table where everyone puts their basket and he blesses them. Then you take your basket back home. You also don't eat meat or treats on Saturday... but you get plenty of meats and treats on Easter Sunday!!

On Easter we woke up and found a scavenger hunt for Easter eggs, not a Polish tradition, but a family one our friends had adopted/invented. We had our Easter breakfast, which I thought was just going to be what we had in the basket... I was concerned we would be hungry. :) Nope, We had a big breakfast and I was FULL. We took a walk to the local church where they hold services all day. We arrived at the end of one just in time to see the "chickys".

They had little yellow Easter Chicks (baby chickens) for the kids to go up and hold. You'd have to be there I think, but I'll try to describe this. All the kids, and parents for that matter, were shoving and pushing their way up to the chicks, it was loud and crazy, I couldn't find Scotty (who was up at the front), my girls were stressed, my friend told me show Andrea so in the middle of CHAOS I hesitantly picked up Andrea out of her stroller to show her the chicks. Meanwhile my friend somehow got hold of a chicky and as soon as I get Andrea out she hands this chick to me. I held it in my hand and showed it to Andrea. She just looked at it and it was the sweetest look my little daughter ever gave anything. It suddenly seemed very calm and we just sat there with this little chick; this was definitely the highlight of my day!! So Andrea and I just stood there with the little chicky and held it for a while. ...then I put the poor chick back into the mad swarm of children who had now broken the walls of the chicky enclosure down and now these poor chicks were trying to escape. :)

We left for the airport Sunday evening and had a relaxing journey home since the airport was empty. We arrived in Copenhagen and most of us except for Paul and Michaela slept for our ride home.

We woke up Monday and since there was no school we had an American day of Easter-ness... but that's another story...

In Italy!!

Hi Everyone...!

We are in Italy now and having a wonderful time! We've seen/climbed the Leaning Tower of Pisa which was SO LEANING!! It was my favorite so far. : ) We have been here in Rome for the last three days and we are leaving for Florence tomorrow. Lots of sun and warmth so we are happy to be wearing shorts! YAY

It's been great fun to watch people watch all six of us go by go by. We get lots of comments and "Are they ALL yours?" : ) Kids are all traveling well too... they are used to it and Andrea has learned well... : ) Our big family gets us special discounts at restaurants, skipping security lines, seats on trains, hotel suites, and extra large scoops of ice cream. : ) Everyone loves our kids!!! It's fun to travel in a country that enjoys large families. : )

I'll write more later... but we are all alive and doing well! : )

London

LONDON.

Most exciting thing: Scotty went Pee-Pee in the Potty!!!!

The night before we left London Scotty and I were having a long discussion about pee-pee and poo-poo while he took a bath. A few minutes after he got out of the bath he announced he had to "go pee-pee in potty". I wasn't too confident it would work out but figured I should go along... so we took off his diaper and I stood him on a stack of towels and he stood there for a second and then went pee pee in the potty!!! It was a super big deal! I was so excited! Nevermind it was 10:00 at night -we rushed down to the lobby to buy candy!!! We all had to get dressed and of course Scotty had to go pee-pee in the potty one more time. We all five went downstairs, bought a big bag of peanut m&ms, and then went to celebrate with ice cream at the hotel restaruant. We were all singing "pee-pee in the potty" and the kids were dancing. This of course, wasn't the most responsible thing I as a parent should have done becuase little Scotty was up "celebrating" until midnight with all those peanut m&m's and chocolate ice cream in his little body.

The next morning he wanted to go pee-pee in the potty again (perhaps to instigate another party complete with singing, dancing, candy, and ice cream!) but we were flying home so I said we'd wait until we got home to the M-house and his little potty. Sorry, I'm not up to a first day of potty training while traveling from London to Copenhagen to Aarhus. :)

So now that we are home and unpacked and life is as normal as it going to get we will see how pee-pee in the potty goes for a while. :) I found his big boy underwear and I'm going to decorate his potty with arrows (which he loves)!

Other than that little event London was exciting too. I thought it was fun I could understand people and read the free newspapers they hand out. Just these little things made me happy because I knew my English was shortlived. The underground tube was great fun too. (...not called a subway. We followed a sign for the "subway" and it was a walkway under the street to the other side of the street.) I liked all the tube lines going everywhere and we only got confused once. We didn't really get lost at all and since I'm a professional bus rider we managed the red doubled decker buses as well.

Rush hour on the underground wasn't exactly fun... it was amusing after we escaped the madness and fought our way aboveground. We were only halfway through our trip but I couldn't take it anymore. It was hot, mashed crowded, airless, stinky... I'm big and pregnant and highly moody so it wasn't the place for me. The girls were not excited about their heads being at "butt-level" either. ;) We shoved our way out, found a bench, and enjoyed fresh air for a while... It was an experience though. I can't believe people do that every day. I rather commute in traffic, in my own car, in my own space, without 85 people trying (and being successful) to shove their way into a space designed to hold 32.

Ouuuhhh - when Londoners/British people get on the bus... they form a SINGLE FILE LINE along the curb. No little old ladies shoving past my two year old to get on the bus first. :)

So. Let's see what did we do? We:
- Rode the London Eye. (big ferris wheel thing)
- Saw Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, and all the other building and churches you are supposed to see.
- Toured the London Tower (a giant castle where people were killed every inhumane way possible many years ago) :)
- Walked across the London Bridge. - It didn't even fall down. (HA. Get it. Like the song??)
- Went to the British muesuem and saw lots of cool things: Rosetta stone, Mummies, Old things dug from the dirt, and more...
- Learned the British Libaray doesn't have a children's section and No, they won't let you look at the Rare Books "just for fun".
- Portobello Road. ...like from Bedknobs and Broomsticks.
- We also went to Harrods shopping store and everywhere else mUm told me to go. :)

We ate yummy ice cream every day. It was so rich Scotty never finished one. :)

I liked the money better than kronners. A pound coin is kinda big and heavy - it feels like it's worth something ($2) On the other hand, a 20 kronner coin ($4) doesn't feel like much. I think pence are cute too. It was crazy expensive though. A happy meal on the menu read 4.00 but then you realize it's pounds, not dollars - so multiply that by two! At least I feel better about Denmark prices now. I rather divide by 5 than multiply by 2. So I just pretended a pound equals a dollar and went about my day.

I don't really feel like getting into it, but we missed our flight to Copenhagen because we thought we left at three instead of noon. Oops. We had to pay 200 pounds... (just think dollars and it's not that bad) for them to rebook us on a later flight and then ended up having difficulties in Copenhagen when we tried to board the plane to Aarhus. We made it home along with our 11 suitcases :) ...and I again vow never to bring that many suitcases, BUT we had to bring all new baby things back. I had zero baby items here - it was all put in storage before we left and nothing was shipped in the container weeks before we left the States. So baby stuff filled 4 entire suitcases and my little girl will be clothed for the next year. So there - not my fault... its hers. (Guess we should start thinking of names huh?)

Berlin Pictures

Here is Berlin. : ) We didn't try to see too much stuff and we always made it back to the hotel for nap time so we all stayed happy.

We saw the Reichstag which is a big parliment building... It looks really old and "european" but the top is a modern-ish giant glass dome with a walkway inside going round and round to the top. My favorite part about this was that it was rainy and hailing and windy and cold and people were waiting TWO hours to go inside the dome. We walked up and discovered the special "children" enterance and walked right in... didn't wait at all! YAY. The walkway turned into a long heeley ramp for Michaela and her shoes though so it was a highlight of the day. I still think we should have rented the kids to the people at the back of the line for 100 euros so they could skip the line too!

We went inside the Berliner Dom (Cathedral) too. It was huge and we walked all the way to the top and went around the narrow roof walkway on top... That was a lot of steps!!

It was pretty cold and windy the whole time so one day we hid inside and played at the Legoland Discovery Center. We visited the Sony Center and Potsdamer Platz, saw some Berlin wall... and even bought a piece : ) We also did some shopping at a giant mall and tried to take advantage of the cheaper-than-Denmark prices. We went in the big train station; Scotty loves trains!

...and we ate lots of yummy food and bought too many souveiners so I guess it was a successful vacation. :)

tara