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Thursday, July 31, 2008

Dentists and "bonks"

Kendra had her first visit to the dentist this week. I was so proud of her and couldn't believe what she all let the hygenist and the dentist do! She sat in the chair like a trooper while they cleaned, polished, poked and flossed her teeth. I didn't even tell her that she would get a prize after it was all done so that was the icing on the cake!

Owen has had a little bit of a rough couple of days. He climbed out of the straps in his umbrella stroller, stood up and tipped the whole thing backwards, banging his lip on the handle as he hit the ground. That caused a fair bit of blood to come from his mouth. Good think there was a nice 'gramma-like' lady in the store who got me some kleenex and helped calm him down! Then, this morning, he missed a step on the way down the stairs and tumbled the rest of the way. The goose-egg on his forhead is the result of that fall. He walked around for a while whimpering, "bonk, bonk". He was fine after a few M&M's! So, he looks a little rough but seems to be okay!! Good thing kids are as resiliant as they are!!

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Home Sweet Home!

After almost 7 weeks away from home, it feels good to be back. That being said, we had a great experience as a family on our little adventure.

To update from our last entry: We left our little apartment in Klaipeda and went to the capital city of Latvia, Riga, for a few days. It is a very old city, whose Old Town is actually a World Heritage Site. We spent our days wandering though the old town, looking at lots of old buildings, taking in some of the Latvian Folk music festival, wandering through one of the largest markets in Europe.


The view of the city from the top of one of the churches.


Sitting in from of one of the "11 speaking rocks". Kevin is getting Kendra to read his Lonely Planet book and turning her into a true traveller. (Because everyone knows you don't travel anywhere without a Lonely Planet guidebook!)


Owen and his applesauce! For anyone who is familiar with the eating habits of our son, we didn't go anywhere without a jar of applesauce to mix his dinner with. It was the only way to get through mealtimes!
After a few days, we packed up just a small bag of stuff (we were able to leave most of our stuff at our hotel, as we were returning there later) and hopped a train to the small town of Sigulda.

Kendra keeping us all entertained on the train!!


It was a much different pace from the big city. We did lots of walking along paths, each took a ride down an Olympic training bobsled run (the bobsled was on wheels) and actually found a real playground for the kids to play on! Of course, we had to find a few castles to explore as well!






Kevin in the back seat of the bobsled, ready for his 30 second ride down!! It is amazing how fast we went!


Me and my little man checking out the scenery out the window of our gondola.



We each took Kendra on a tobaggan-on-a-rail ride. What a hoot!!


Owen simply enjoying life out of his stroller and on a real playground!!

We got rained on a few times in those days so that definitely changes how you spend your day! We returned to Riga for one night before taking an overnight ferry to Stockholm, Sweden. I'll save that for the next post as this one turned out to be quite long!

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Farewell to Lithuania

Well, it's been a slice as they say (slice of what I am not really sure). My marks are all in, some happy students, some sad ones. It has been a busy time but rewarding. But now our time in Lithuania is over, so this will probably be our last blog for awhile. This afternoon we head to Riga, Latvia where we will spend a few days. We have a few more days until we take the overnight ferry to Stockholm next week. From there we will catch our flight to Frankfurt (honestly worked out better that way) and will be home on the 19th. Thanks to all who have supported us, we look forward to connecting with you all in a couple weeks.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

In the library

About 3x a week, I get out of the apartment for a little while and volunteer in the library at LCC. As Kevin mentioned in his post, they are in the process of entering all their textbooks into the library computer system. Previously, students had been signing them out the old pen/paper style. Having them all in the system will make it much easier to keep track of all the textbooks. It is a tedious job but there are usually 2 of us working at the same time so that is alright!

For 2 of those mornings, we found a student from LCC who was interested in babysitting for us. Her name is Victorija and the kids love her! She was eager to babysit some Canadian kids and so it worked well for us all! (We also had her babysit last Saturday night as Kevin received tickets to the Jazz festival downtown - we actually managed to get in a date!!)