Prague update from Andrew

I've been working off and on to write about my trip here in Prague, but I haven't had a whole lot of free time. I finally got a chance to finish things up this afternoon and post it. So here goes a summary of my trip so far...

Day 1 (Saturday)
Travel to Prague was an adventure. It was Friday the 13th when I took off. I didn't sleep very well the night before I left so I wasn't exactly running on all cylinders all day on Friday. On the way to the airport I told Liz that I felt a little nervous and that I didn't normally feel that way before trips. Maybe it was a premonition. All in all, the trip over went fine. I'm making it sound like the plane crashed and I had to paddle a row boat to Europe. In reality, I forgot to check my bag all the way to Prague originally and the plane was very uncomfortable from RDU to London. They were able to find my bag and check it to Prague before I left RDU so that was awesome. There wasn't much to do about the uncomfortable plane except to grin and bear it. Just meant that I didn't get much sleep on the way to London. And airplane sleep is never good sleep, at least for me. Maybe 30 or 40 minutes at a stretch before you wake up confused and sore.

We had a long layover in London and it was uneventful. We did have to go through security again after we landed even though we had just gotten off the plane and never left a secure zone. But it was just walking through a metal detector and having your bag scanned. We didn't have to change terminals at Heathrow which was nice. The strangest thing was that they had a huge waiting area in the middle of the terminal where you had to wait until they posted the gate for your flight. They posted the gate right before boarding time so that was kind of strange. I did get to eat a Bounty bar for breakfast so that was pretty awesome!

I slept pretty hard on the flight to Prague from London. It was only an hour and a half flight but I ended up sleeing for about half of it. I got my bag with no problem from baggage claim. Transportation to the hotel had been arranged so there was a guy holding a SchoolDude sign outside baggage claim. We ran into about half of the KL team at the gate in London so we had a pretty good group of us on the flight.

After checking in we walked around down on the square for a little bit and took in some of the sights. There were street vendors with little stands where they were cooking ham, sausages, and bread that also sold beer. I had a beer and then went back to the room and took a nap for about an hour.

A group of us, I guess 11 or 12 in total, went out to supper. We found a place that was recommended and had an awesome meal. I got to drink Pilsner Uquell which was one of my goals here. It was good! One of the unique things they eat here is what they call pig's knee. It's essentially the leg of pig from the joint down. They do cut off the hoof so you don't have to see that. They slow roast it and it's really good! I didn't get that this time but a lot of people in the group did. I ended up getting a schnitzel that was really good.

After supper we went to a place called the Propaganda Bar. It had a lot of propaganda posters from the Communist days. Kind of interesting. We had a beer and then called it a night.

Day 2 (Sunday)
Sunday the only thing we were doing was a half day city tour. I thought it was going to be a walking tour but we ended up riding a bus for most of it. We walked around the square here in Old Town and the tour guide told us about the clock and the church here in the square. Then we got on a bus and rode to Prague Castle. On the way the guide would tell us about various famous buildings that we passed. We walked around Prague Castle for about an hour. I tried to take a lot of pictures on Monday but the battery in the camera died after a while.

The tour included lunch and we went to an awesome place to eat. I hope we can find it again because I'd love to eat there some more. They brewed their own beer and it was a really good dark beer. We had a really good soup as a first course, then some smoked pork with dumplings (which are like pieces of bread, really), and an apple strudel for dessert.

After the tour I took a nap and then we meet to go get some drinks. We went to a place that was a boat on the river. It was permanently docked. I had some more Pilsner Urquell and then we went to dinner.

We went to supper at an Italian place called Club Architecture. At least that was the English name. I can't begin to say or spell the Czech name. Czech is a really hard language. Nothing sounds like it reads. After supper I headed to bed.

Day 3 (Monday)
Monday was the first day of meetings. Our meeting room was in a restaurant. It was an old wine celler (built in the 14th century) that had the most uncomfortable chairs in it. It was like going down to the dungeon and sitting on a medieval torture device. The meetings were fine, but it was a long day. We started at 7:30 AM and went until 6:00 PM, although we did get a 2 hour lunch.

We ate supper on another boat restaurant. It was an Italian place again. I had a really good pizza but it took a really long time to get my food. The service was really, really slow. Then on top of that, they messed up my order so they had to go back and cook my pizza after everyone else got their food.

We went out after supper and bought some cigars. I got a nice Cuban Montecristo #2. We were going to go to a bar and smoke them and have some beer but we were all tired so we lost momentum and went back to the hotel.

Day 4 (Tuesday)
Another long day of meetings. 7:30 AM to 6 PM again.

After the meetings we went out to supper and found a place that had cheap beer and awesome food. I should say that they beer here is really cheap anyway. Usually on the order of $2 to $3 for .5 liters of beer. This place had .5 liters of beer for 29 crowns which is about $1.50. I got one of the pig's knees here and it was awesome. There's a good amount of meat on there.

The CEO went out with us that night and ended up picking up the tab at supper. We came back to the hotel and had some beer and he picked up that tab, too. That was cool!

Day 5 (Wednesday)
Wednesday I went for a run with one of my co-workers. Felt nice to get some exercise after just eating all this good food and drinking beer. We just ran for 30 minutes. Then it was back to meetings all day.

After the meetings we went back to supper at the place we went the night before. We thought it was so good then that we wanted to try it again. The food was still really good but about halfway through the meal a tour group came and sat in the room we were in. They were really, really loud. They were Spanish and were yelling Spanish back and forth to each other and had some really loud toasts. Somebody had a decibel measuring app on their iPhone and pulled it out. It was over 100 decibels in that room!

After supper we decided to walk around and find a place that served Budvar. It's the original Budweiser. We found a place pretty close to the hotel and had a couple of Budweisers. Definitely better than the US version but it wasn't the best beer I've had since I've been here.

Day 6 (Thursday)
Today I went running by myself in the morning. Did another 30 minutes, although I didn't have a watch and didn't really know how long I had been gone. I guess my internal clock is pretty good!

Today was the last day of meetings and we wrapped up around 5 PM. We're meeting for supper at 7 PM so I finally had some time to write about my trip.

Good Morning - mostly the backlog of pictures ;)

Good morning! I didn't take the time to blog last night because I went walking with Elizabeth. We actually each pushed one of her kids in strollers since Leslie was gone, so it was a great workout. When I got back, I talked with Mom and Dad, and the next thing you know, it was 10:00! So, I went on to bed. The biggest news is that Alex slept all night last night! Went down around 6:45, and slept until a little after 5:00, so that was awesome. We also had a much better evening last night. Tuesday night did not go well, as you will see in the pictures. I am at work, so I will write more tonight to let you know what has been going on.

Andrew says that he went for another run this morning and that was really good, and that today is the last day of meetings! Tomorrow is either a free day or sightseeing.

More tonight, but here are some pictures - I finally found the red camera and downloaded the ones from it and from Mom and Dad's camera...:

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday

Videos and pics of Alex from yesterday

I got a couple of pictures of Alex yesterday and some video. There were some pictures of Johnny, but they are all on Mom and Dad's camera. I still can't find the camera, so these were all taken with the iPod. Johnny seemed to have had a good day at school yesterday, and Alex's fever was totally gone, and he seemed to feel much better, but really didn't nap well at all. I think he may be ready to drop to just 2 naps a day. I'm going to try that on Friday, maybe. Mimi and Gramps came mid-day and went to pick Johnny up from school. Johnny and Alex both had fun with them, and we had a good afternoon, overall. We love you, Andrew/Daddy! The videos are at the bottom :) The second one is a little less exciting if you are pinched for time :)

These were tricky, but I managed to eat a few of them!!

This is fun! :)

  

Mmmmm

 Videos:

Update from Andrew

I got this update from Andrew this morning about his Tuesday night. The trip seems to be going well!

From Andrew's e-mail sent his Wednesday morning:

I'm up [early] this morning because I'm going to go for a run!  We'll see how it goes.  There are a lot of cobblestone streets and narrow alleys in this town so I'm exactly sure how running will be.  There is a group of 3 or 4 of us going running this morning.

We had a pretty good time last night.  We went to a really good restaurant we stumbled across that had awesome food and amazingly cheap beer.  Beer was 29 crowns for .5 liter.  The exchange rate is around 20 crowns to 1 dollar so that beer was about $1.10!  I ate a pig's knee last night and it was awesome!  I forgot my camera but I got Steve to take a picture of it.  Hopefully I'll be able to get a copy of that picture.  The food was really good and it came a lot faster than the night before so that was cool.  Kent was with us last night and he ended up picking up the tab for supper.  That was very nice!

After supper we came back to the hotel and had a few beers here.  We didn't really do anything exciting, but we still had a good time talking and laughing.

I hope you sleep really good tonight.  I need to head downstairs to meet for our run.  I think we're just going to try and run for 30 minutes and see how that goes.  I love you very much!

Love,
Andrew

Monday, monday..

Hi there! Did I promise a picture today? Hmmm.... well I took a couple of pictures, but I can't find the camera now. I'm sorry! So, here is a picture, it's just not from today. These were on the other camera, and I downloaded all of those yesterday. This was from December 11th, so Alex would have been 3 days old :) Yes - I cropped my unshowered self right out of these pictures!

Johnny and Alex - Johnny 2, Alex 3 days

Today was a pretty crazy day, mostly because Alex was sick. He did not feel good almost all day and needed lots of holding and attention. He was up several times last night, and I re-dosed him with ibuprofen at 2 am because he was so hot. I fed him at 5:30 am, and he went back to sleep until almost 8:00! His temp seemed to max out at 102.7, and stayed there pretty much all day when he didn't have Tylenol. He took some OK naps, and didn't really seem to have any other symptoms besides the fever and being fussy. He did get really upset about me trying to check his ears using the scope and trying to use the ear thermometer, so I started to wonder if it might be an ear infection. He also was really fussy this afternoon even when his temperature was low, so I ended up bringing him to the pediatrician's office late this afternoon just to get them to check his ears. They said the ears were totally clear, and couldn't find anything else wrong, so they took a blood draw - from his heel - he was NOT happy about that, poor fella!! and checked his white blood count to rule out a UTI. The white blood count seemed low enough to rule out the UTI, and the doc said she thought it was viral. She said to bring him back if he developed any non-viral rashes (and told me how to know the difference) or if he still had a fever on Thursday. He had a really hard time settling at bedtime, but seemed happy that Johnny was home and had some fun playing this evening. He won't be going to daycare tomorrow of course, and maybe not the next day. Really hoping he feels better tomorrow!

I did get to Skype with Andrew twice today - once this morning with no sound,  and once this afternoon after Johnny and Annette had arrived - with sound! That was awesome. It was really good to see him and talk to him and it was fun for Johnny to get to talk to him that way. Alex even gave him a grin of recognition this morning, despite feeling so bad! Looked like a nice hotel right in the middle of everything. He had done his presentation today and had felt like that had gone well :) He noted that beer is cheaper than water there! :)

Annette and Johnny arrived a little before lunchtime bearing a wonderful gift - lunch from Chick-fil-a!! I hadn't really had much breakfast since Alex had been so fussy, so I was really excited about that. It was also really good to see Johnny. He had a great time at Grammy and Grampy's and was still talking about getting the ice cream last night at church, lol :) He was also doing a lot of wooshing around the house acting like a Transformer. Pretty funny. Grammy stayed all afternoon and evening and was a huge help since Alex needed lots of attention still. We moved the sand table in to the porch (with plastic under it - don't worry) so that Johnny could play on it even though it was raining. He also got some swinging time, which he was very happy about.

We had Daniel's for dinner - Grammy went and picked it up after we got back from the late afternoon doctor's appointment, and since we got pizza, we let Johnny watch Thomas and Friends while he ate it. The evening sort of turned in to a disaster. Johnny was pretty tired and fussy about going to bath and bed, and I thought I had Alex down for the night, but about the time I was going to bathe Johnny, Alex woke back up and cried hard for a while. Poor Grammy had the duty of calming him down. I wondered if he wasn't re-living the heel stick or something like that? Or maybe he was just overtired. Who knows? Anyway, I had to forgo laying with Johnny to go in and relieve Grammy. Alex finally calmed down and went on to sleep, but it was almost 8:00. Thank goodness Grammy was here, I really needed her help! It will be interesting to see how he does tonight. Speaking of that, time to go to bed!

Hope you have a great Tuesday in Prague, Andrew! We love you!

Andrew in Prague

Before Andrew left, he, Johnny and I built Johnny a "spaceship", so I had to take this opportunity to show that off: :)

Where's Johnny?

There he is!! Wait - if his eyes are closed is he still hiding?

Andrew made it to Prague on Saturday with no problems! We have heard from him a few times, and I think he is settling in nicely. He has been on a tour of Prague, and one of the wives that is with them spent part of last summer there, so knows her way around, which is helpful. I tried to Skype with him this morning, but his connection was so bad we never did even talk, just did some asynchronous messaging...

 The boys and I have been doing well. We all three went to the airport to drop Andrew off, and I intended to take them to the observation park at the airport to let them "watch Daddy's plane take off", but they fell asleep on the way up there! So, they didn't really get to say goodbye at the airport to Andrew :(. I drove to a park closer to home, and we played there for a while and even found a really nice family with three cute little boys to play "fish, fish, crab" with, which was a lot of fun. Johnny really liked the oldest boy, who was 5. Next we headed to pick up pizza for Johnny and I to have pizza and a movie night! I got Johnny all set up with the movie and pizza and got Alex ready for bed. I ate and watched the movie with Johnny once I got Alex in bed. Even after the 50th time, probably, Cars is a good movie. Love that Mater. To top off a good night, I went to bed early expecting to be up in the night with Alex, and he slept all the way until 5:20 Saturday morning! I know that is an early wakeup, but no interruptions in the sleep made that a great wakeup time :)

Saturday morning we got ready and headed on down to Carthage to spend the day. Johnny drew a couple of pictures on the way down. I thought the second one was especially good!

Ummm - Hope we don't need these directions anymore!

A Dinosaur! Roar!

Johnny went to VBS at Eureka, and Alex and I hung out there with him until Alex was about ready for his second nap. Johnny was a little shy at first, but warmed up and was having a great time. The kids made some really cute crafts, and were listening intently to the Bible story when I left.

After VBS, we all went swimming, even Alex! He really seemed to like the water and getting pulled around in it. The boys had a great time playing with the water balloons that you bought, Andrew. They were very long lasting in and around the water!

I actually did like this - but Mommy didn't get pictures of me grinning :)

Would you like some "ice cream"?

The boys were seriously wiped out from swimming. But managed to stay awake long enough to watch some Transformers.

Tired bunnies

 Alex and I headed on home after dinner. We did not get pictures of it, but he did NOT like peas, lol - lots of shivers and funny faces :) He fell asleep on the way home.

If you look closely, you can see Alex asleep on the way home

Alex didn't have as good of a night last night. He did sleep all the way until 4:30 am, which was pretty good, but then he would not fall back asleep and I finally gave up a little after 5 and got him up for the day and fed him, except he fell back asleep after I fed him. He slept until 8:00, and I noticed he was warm, and checked, and sure enough he had a fever of 101.1. Gave him ibuprofen later in the day when he was fussy and still feverish and it helped, but then he wouldn't nap much because he felt so good! Only slept for about 30 minutes around 2:00, so I did another stroller ride around 4:00, and he catnapped a bit. He was in a really good mood most of the afternoon, and did a lot of exploring around the house and crawling. And pulling up on the red ottoman :) Managed to delay bedtime a bit by giving him a bath, which he enjoyed, but he was asleep a little after 6:00. I gave him a bit more ibuprofen, as his temp was up to 101.5. He didn't have any other symptoms except the fever today, and being a little bit fussy, so we will see how he is tomorrow...

I talked to Johnny a couple of times today. He was really tired last night and got upset when I left Saturday night, but calmed down quick and Annette said he went right out after we left, and was in a much better mood this morning when I talked to him. He was very chatty this morning, which was nice. It always amazes me how little he sounds on the phone - so sweet! She said they swam some more, and then tonight they did some songs and things from VBS at church. Johnny was most excited about the ice cream that they had with chocolate syrup! He was excited about that and about going out to play with Klay, so I didn't talk to him long tonight. Sorry about no pictures from today. I'll try harder to take some tomorrow!

Oh - and here are all the pics above and a few more in a Picasa album:

For Andrew in Prague

Fall, Santa Train, and Andrew's Birthday

Here are pictures - a few just random fall ones, but mostly from our trip on the "Santa Train" yesterday and from Andrew's birthday today - enjoy!

Fall Random, Santa Train, and Andrew's Birthday