When visiting krakow. . . . Day 1

It's been GORGEOUS weather here in Krakow. and Joe's sister and her boyfriends has picked the perfect long weekend to come visit us. So here we are doing some touristsy things we were waiting to do until we had visitors. If you ever come to visit, this is pretty much the itinerary we will follow so you know :)

carriage ride around the Old Town.
Ethan under the impression that he is some kind of a royal, waving to the common folks.
coffee at our favorite spot in the market square.
munching on cotton candy.
watching the breakdancers. . . . yet again. . . . the same routine. . . . old for us, new for you. though kids doesn't seem to get sick of them. they do change their t-shirt colors to red and blue here and there.

chase big bubbles and relive your childhood.

spring '08

man, where does the time go??? already mid-april. i've been quite stressed about renting our house back in the states. praise God - we found a renter and it seems like it'll work out really well. we're finalizing our summer schedule and we will be back in the states end of june! whoo-hoo. i've also been busy sewing and jewelry making. after making some necklaces, i realized that i enjoy making daintier jewelry rather than chunky funky ones. it's weird, i know, because i'm not a dainty person.

check out rest of the collection (earrings and kid's earrings) on flickr.

these are two necklaces in one - did you guys see "27 dresses"? in it, the actress wears two or three small necklaces at once which i really really liked. i need to get my hands on silver sheets to cut out shapes to make it the way i really want. . . .

Spring Break

Makayla is on spring break this week and early next week. we initially wanted to take a trip to cinque terra, italy but after some simple math with euros and dollars, we decided to postpone the trip until the dollar comes back a bit. (which to my swedish friend replied - "oh, you mean in 15 years?" - nice.) so we have many activities scheduled to keep ourselves from going crazy from boredom. today was a first real spring weather, we decided to plant some flowers in the garden. though apparently, you shouldn't plant anything until may since the weather in april is super unpredictable. . . . we'll see if it'll last.

makayla picking out flowers

ofcourse she picked purple and pink flowers - her favorite colors at the moment. i now realize why it's so hard to find non-pink clothes for girls. mak is starting to be picky with what she wears and refuses to wear all the classy browns and blacks i have for her - and only demands pink, hot pink, pale pink and occasionally purple. yikes. what to do with all her fabulous neutrals? if there's a girl who's only into neutrals, i'd like to meet her and give her half of mak's wardrobe. . . .

ethan carrying the tray of flowers - doesn't he look so grown-up here?

watering the fruit of our labor

Boleslawiec Trip

Happy 6th Anniversary!! (joe looks litle too tanned - doesn't he??)

So for our anniversary gift, joe sent me along with couple of the ladies to go to the Polish pottery factory to purchase some dishes. Apparently, it's really famous but ofcourse I didn't know - though my Polish friends don't seem to have them - but all the foreigners do :) I just went to buy some bakeware since they told me that it's really easy to clean and bakes well. But once i stepped inside to see all the different patterns, i was mesmorized. i usually like my dishes super clean and simple but i really liked some of them (though some are not at all appealing...) and how it felt in my hands - especially the mugs! i think i'll be going back to pick some more pieces before i go back to the states permanently - especially if the dollar comes back!!!

Boleslawiec pottery - read more about it here

my favorite purchase - huge platter with handles.

obviously, i bought way more than i planned. . . . but those polka dotted mugs make me smile everytime i look at it :)

chronicles of makayla

i realized that both of my children could be poster children for sibiling order. ethan as described before is a charmer, manipulater, irresponsible and fun. makayla on the other hand is a typical older sister - responsible and sympathetic. other than that, i feel like she's a mini-me.

point 1: loves crafts

makayla is a prolific crafter - the amount of paper we go through in drawing and making will make al gore cry. she loves it. she put on a paper puppet show the other day. she drew and cut out different people and went behind the cabinet. using two puppets, she said "hi mommy, this is ethan and this is 'kray-gee'" i was like "excuse me?" what is the other puppet's name? " "kkkkrrraaaayyyy-geeeeee." i started to crack up - she even talks like me - whenever i see something strange - i say 'that's kray-gee.' i guess she couldn't help but pick that up.....

point 2: language inclined

i'm not joking when i say that her polish is better than mine - and we both take a class once a week. she can count in polish, french, italian and chinese and sing happy birthday in english, polish and french.

after one lesson in sunday school, makayla comes to me and tells me "mommy, do you know what corn flakes in polish is?" "i don't know" "it's MANNA!" apparently, they were doing a lesson on moses and wandering in the desert - the teacher (obviously teaching in polish) sprinkled cereal shouting "manna, manna!" how can i confuse her further and tell her that it's Hebrew and that was the language used during the Bible times - too much info for even my fully developed brain. so we just left it at that. we'll most likely have more trouble when we go back to the states and she has another bible lesson about manna. she'll REALLY be confused as to why people are speaking Polish!

point 3: empathyetic

makayla is a bundle of empathy and sensitivity. though i'm empathetic, i'm not so sensitive so it's difficult for me to understand when makayla can't watch any of the disney movies b/c she's crying at every remotely sad scenes. i.e. when belle is separated from her father in beauty and the beast "wahhhhhh, belle is not going to see her father again.....wahhhhhh." or when nemo is taken away "wahhhhhh, nemo is separated from his father.....wahhhhhh." she'll start bawling that it's not worth watching it with her. so we usually settle for miss pattycake or leapfrog word factory.

point 4: can't let things go

this is another similarity between mak and i. we can't simply let go of conflicts until we're truly reconciled. the other day, makayla got reprimanded for disobeying. she immediately said "i'm sorry" and i thought we were over it. but she continued to sit there, thinking about it and when i finally approached her, she started to tear and said "but you hurt my feelings when you said ....." so i had to apologize that i sounded harsh and we hugged and made up.

point 5: she's a great sister

since only my brother can deny this fact and i don't think that he would be posting any rebuttals here so here it goes.

makayla takes great care of ethan - i couldn't have asked for a better helper. she puts on his coat and shoes and feeds him when he's being lazy. when i gave pasta salad to them today, she started to feed ethan. i said to her "you should eat yours, let ethan eat his." she replied, "it's okay, i'll feed ethan first, i think he's hungry."

it's also funny to see her future parenting style - which is a replica of ours, obviously. she would say something like "ethan, eat your pasta. do you want a cookie? then you have to eat your pasta. if you dont' eat your pasta, you can't have any cookies!" - just like joe - reward and threat - only ammos in joe's parenting bag. me on the other hand, is much more sophisticated, i also have manipulation and coersion!

it would be nicer if ethan appreciated all his sister's efforts and didn't try to swipe everything mak plays with and end up wrestling which inevitably ends with one of them wailing.....

Easter weekend

Hope everyone had a great easter!

On saturday, we went over to one of the missionary's house for an egghunt. It was really nice becuase they have 3 older daughters who took care of all the little ones! whoo-hoo! kids had a great time that we had to hide the eggs twice and makayla managed to zoom through the yard and collect 13 eggs and came out a winner! should i be proud or a bit scared of her greed?

ethan wanted me to pick up all the eggs... so typical. if you notice, they don't have those plastic eggs you fill with candy here - actually, they don't have the whole egghunt tradition.... so we just used boiled eggs - oh, and it was really hard to find white eggs so we had to stick with brown.
makayla claiming all the eggs
egghunt ended with ethan with crocodile tears - he was hit by a ball that boys were playing with.

After the egghunt, we headed over to the local Catholic church. There's a Polish Catholic tradition where you take a basket (filled with eggs, kielbasa, horseradish, bread, orange) to the church and get it blessed with holy water. Kids got super excited about filling the basket and ethan kept sneaking a bite of the bread - i wonder if Polish people will be horrified about that??? I was told by my Polish friend that during the communist time, she hated going to the church for this tradition since it was kind of a show of who can bring the best kielbasa or best hand embroidered doilies - something like that. i guess kind of like fashion shows you can have at some American churches.....

i actually went to get a picture of this! the head is cut off because i had my camera on my waist trying to be inconspicuous as possible :P Polish people clean their house from top to bottom a month before Easter in preparation. So often times, mothers are still busy cleaning the house so they send their sons or grandsons to get the basket blessed. So you see these punks who you usually don't see at churches carrying these dainty baskets to get holy water sprinkled on them. really funny. we, too, were successful in getting some holy water on our basket - hope we have a fruitful year!

we rounded up our Easter weekend with some egg dyeing. note to self: brown eggs don't dye as well as white ones.

barcelona

Originally, several of my friends were suppose to visit me here in Krakow. but after much heated debate (not really), we settled for meeting up in Barcelona. Obviously, i wasn't complaining since i've always wanted to visit all the amazing architecture in the city and it certainly didn't disappoint! here are some (well, lots) of pics.

Day 1: eating and walking down La Rambla.

Day 2: Gaudi Day - super inspiring and amazing!!!

La Casa Mila
La Sagrada Familia
amazing unfinished interiors of sagrada familia

Parc Guell: MAGICAL - and if you know me, i dont' use that kind of language, but it felt more like being in a fairy tale than disneyland!!

Day 3: Montserrat - almost man-made looking rock formation of a mountain. strange but awe-inspiring.

monastery nestled in middle of the mountain. it really blends in. too many tourists, no monks to be seen :( riding the furnicular (never heard of that word before) going up the mountain hermitage - we can barely survive 10 minutes, let alone days/weeks/months in these holes.
jamie trying to rock-climb in her burberry coat. (she's just lying down, actually)

Day 1, 2, 3 and 4: FOOD, FOOD, FOOD!!!

our first stop was the famous La Boqueria market's lunch counter. intimidating because nothing is written in English but my super spanish speaking Jamie ordered fabulously as she pointed what everyone else was eating shouting "uno, dos, tres!!!" this one is little fishies (maybe anchovies) with fried eggs. yummy. too busy eating, little time to take pictures.

me and cava sangria.
array of tapas - look at those mussles!!
paella
tapas bar hopping - more like cavas (local sparkling wine) hopping for hyelee.
food was just SUPERB - couldn't have asked for more! oh, the company was alright, too :)

we found a perfect car suited for hyelee's size - the SMART car - she insisted that MINI that was parked right next to it was more her but we disagreed.