Prague (part 1)

     Well we’re halfway through our trip and I have to say, I LOVE Prague.  This is right up there with Rome on my list of favorite cities in Europe.  It’s just beautiful here and the Czech people are SO nice.  Maybe that’s just because we’re used to the Italians, which aren’t all that nice at all really.    I haven’t had the time, nor energy to do any blogging since we got here but I wanted to do some now before I forget all the details!  Here are the summaries of the first part of our trip.

Sunday, August 22
We managed to get out of the house by 7:30am, a little later than we wanted, but not bad considering our track record for leaving for big trips on time.

We stopped at a rest stop in Austria somewhere between Villach and Salzburg to get some lunch.  The food was good, the people were friendly and they actually had a changing table for Abbie!  (I have yet to be at any rest stop in Italy that actually has a changing table…)  The drive through the Alps was gorgeous as usual.  I’ll never get tired of looking at those mountains. 
We arrived in Prague, in Wenceslas Square, to pick up the keys to our apartment around 8:30pm.  Our GPS took us to the place right away, which was nice.  Once we got the keys, we set off to find the apartment, which was close by, but the GPS took us the long route.  But again, we found it.  We unloaded our car, which was VERY full, and just kept the Ergo and a backpack in it, and then set out again to find parking since we couldn’t read the street signs to know if we could park near the apartment or where to pay for it or when to pay for it, etc.  So we went in search of a parking garage.  That’s where it got a little interesting.  We were using the GPS again and it took us to 2 parking lots, but we wanted a garage or someplace with security so our car would be safe.  Finally we decided to go back to where we picked up the keys because they offered underground, secured parking for 16E per day.  We can WALK from our apartment to Wenceslas Square in under 10 mins and it took us at least 25 mins to find our way back, due to construction and the GPS taking us down roads that are technically roads, but not really…  Like narrow streets, lined with shops and restaurants, filled with people walking everywhere…  Yeah, that kind.  We were the idiots holding the GPS, trying to drive down the street while people blatantly stared at us.  Oops.  But we finally got back to the place.  And this parking garage is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.  You pull the car into this one car garage basically, onto this platform and park it there.  Then when you get out and get all your junk out and the garage door closes, another garage door inside opens and the platform moves forward into that area and then drops the car below ground.  It was weird, but neat.

(Wenceslas Square)
We had a fried cheese sandwich, which is really popular here, on the way back to our apartment.  It’s just fried mozzarella on a bun, with mayo.  They’re everywhere, and pretty good.  We all slept like logs, Abbie included, that night, which was good.   

(Old Town Square)
Oh, and Abbie did relatively well on the drive up.  There were a few times she got pretty screamy and I was ready to jump out of the moving car, but considering she spent almost 9 hours in the car that day, she did pretty well.

Monday, August 23
We were up bright and early, thanks to Abbie on Monday.  She woke up at 7:30am, which is early for her, and I think it’s because the room was so bright.  (I close the shutters in her room at home at night, so it’s pitch black in there except for her night light, until I open them.)  But that’s okay.  She slept well and I didn’t hear a peep out of her all night.  In fact, I don’t even think she moved all night, which is VERY unusual.  I got up at 6am because she was in the same position she was at midnight when I checked on her (on the video monitor I brought along with us).  That freaked me out so I went in to make sure she was still breathing.
Anyway, we were up and out the door by 9am and we decided to walk around the Jewish part of town.  We bought tickets to view a few synagogues and the Jewish cemetery and a museum.  They were pretty neat, but you couldn’t take pictures in any of them but the cemetery.  One of the museums was this church type building with over 80,000 names and dates written all over the walls of Jews that were killed by the Nazi’s during WWII.  The cemetery was the coolest part of it all.  The Jews were only given this small plot of land to bury their dead on, so they had to bury bodies on top of bodies and put graves on top of graves.  Very interesting.  According to Wikipedia, people were buried here between 1439 – 1787, and there are somewhere around 12,000 tombstones in the cemetery, and 100,000 bodies, with 12 layers of graves.

  
We were going to do more of the Jewish tour in our book, but decided to go get groceries and eat lunch and get Abbie down for her nap.  We went to this grocery store in the bottom of a HUGE mall here and I just wanted to cry because it was so nice to be in an actual mall again.  Seriously, Italy doesn’t have normal “malls” like we think of a mall to be.  At least the part of Italy I’m in doesn’t. This was 4 levels of normal stores, not 90%  outrageously priced kids clothing, like in Italy.  They had a STARBUCK’S, which of course, we got.  We didn’t really walk around the mall too much because I probably would have gone crazy looking at everything, but Mark did say “Too bad there isn’t a base in Czech.”  We both love this country.   

(The astronomical crowd looking at the astronomical clock.)  
Grocery shopping in a foreign country is tricky at times, especially a country with a language like Czech, which is pretty much NOTHING like English.  With Italian, you can pretty much guess, or figure it out by comparing and contrasting things, but not here.  Looking at packages of lunch meat type foods, we had NO clue what anything was.  And milks – no clue what was skim vs whole.  But we managed to get what we wanted/ needed and we managed to carry it back to our apartment, along with Abbie and a large backpack.
After Abbie’s nap, we wandered around Prague some more.  The nice thing about this apartment is that it’s pretty much in the middle of everything.  We can walk to Old Town Square in 2 minutes, or the Jewish Cemetery in 2 mins, or Charles Bridge in 10 mins.  We walked across Charles Bridge and took lots of pictures and then wandered around the part of town across the river.  We got some souvenirs for us and friends and watched this guy run into this other guy with his car and them start screaming at each other…  That was interesting.  By the end of the day, my shoulders were killing me from carrying the heavy backpack or the heavy Abbie, but it was worth it.              
We ate dinner at the Crazy Cow (by the way, Abbie knows what a cow says now and hearing her “moo” is hilarious, and she also has been pointing out all the “horth” (horses) to us, and puppies, and babies…).  We ordered a t-bone steak but I would have bet money that it was a pork chop we were eating and not a steak.  Apparently it was a “young cow”  and apparently, young cows look and taste just like pigs when cut into t-bones.  Mark said he thought it was a little different than pork, but I thought it was just like pork.  I don’t doubt it was beef, and it was good either way.  The waitress said that everyone asks if it’s pork so I didn’t feel too dumb.  
Things in the Czech are fairly cheap.  Gas is the same as everywhere else in Europe (read VERY expensive), but food and clothes seem to be cheaper here.  A pop is usually about 50 CZK (Czech Koruna).  1 czk = $.05 and 1 Euro = ~25czk.  I bought a pashmina for myself that was 150czk, so that’s about 6Euros.  The conversion was screwing me up completely when I first got here, but I’ve got it figured out now.  It takes some getting used to to hand over 500 czk, because we’re not used to seeing bills with 500 written on them, but that’s only about $25.  We got out 4000 czk when we got here, and it was just odd to see that much money.  It felt like a lot more than it actually was.  (It was only about $160… too bad it wasn’t in USD instead of CZK…)  The thing that REALLY confused me was at the grocery store, they had prices for things like 15.90 CZK.  (Side note – for the currency here, the smallest BILL they have is 100, and then they have coins for 50, 20, 10, 5, 2 and 1.  They do NOT have what would be equivalent to our cents.  So they don’t have any .25czk.  The smallest currency they have is 1 czk.)  So I just don’t get how they can price things at like 15.90 czk, because they don’t make cents here, so how could you pay for the .90?  I guess they’d round it up to 16 czk.  They’d have to.  It took Mark and I a good 20 min conversation for him to figure out what the heck I was talking about.  Lots of things in the grocery store had prices with “cents”.  Like eggs were 13.70 czk, and milk was like 15.90 czk.  I don’t understand why they price things like that when “cents” don’t exist here.  The smallest coin they have is worth a full 1 koruna.  I’ve only seen that in the grocery store though.  Everywhere else things are like 5czk or 349czk, or I saw a camera lens for like 16699 czk. (~$850)

Friday Fill-in

I’ve been doing my Prague blogs while we were here, but I have to sort through the almost 1500 (…..) pictures and add them to the blogs before I post them.  So in the meantime, here are this weeks questions.

• What secret indulgence do you act on while your spouse is away?

Hm…  I’m not really sure.  I probably have popcorn for dinner more just because it’s not very fun only cooking for one (and a half..).  I rarely cook when Mark isn’t home, unless I invite friends over for dinner.

• If you were a spice, what would you be?

Is garlic a spice?  If so, that’s what I’d be, only because it is my favorite.

• Where do you go for support when your significant other is deployed?

A select few friends, particularly ones here, who know what it’s like to be in Italy without their husbands, and also friends back home who are always supportive of me. 

• What is the oldest thing you own?

A few stuffed animals and blankets from when I was a baby.  And an afghan that my grandma made, or maybe it was my great-grandma.  I’m not sure.

• How did you vision your future pre-military?

I’m not sure exactly, but when I envisioned getting married and growing up, the military wasn’t anywhere in the picture, that’s for sure.  I never imagined living overseas and dealing with long separations, but that being said, my life and my marriage to Mark is far better than anything I could have dreamed of.

Friday Fill-in

I can’t believe tomorrow is Friday again already… I know I saw that every week, but seriously?!  Time just flies by.
Here are this weeks questions.

If you could be a fugitive from the law for whatever reason, what would your crime be?

Hm….  Something fun like stealing a Ferrari or something exciting like that.  It’d have to be something exciting.

How long do you think you will be a military family?

I honestly have no clue.  As long as Mark wants to stay in, I suppose.  I’m okay with whatever he wants to do.

What’s your favorite recipe?

I really like making chicken parmiggiana, but I think my favorite thing to do is try new recipes, so I don’t really have a favorite recipe.

What would you want your last five words to be when you leave this life?

I’ll see you in Heaven.

Where do you hope to retire?

I think we’re planning on retiring somewhere on the east coast.  Seems like you’d have the best of all worlds – coast, mountains, countryside, LOTS of major cities (DC, NYC, Boston).  Maybe somewhere in Virginia or New York, but that’s a LONG ways down the road for us so who knows where we’ll end up.

Almost 15 months

Abbie and I have been keeping busy since her daddy has been gone.  Or maybe I should say, Abbie has been keeping me busy.  This little girl is constantly on the go, and rarely slows down.

Abbie has been getting so much better at following simple directions lately.  I can say things like “Go give your bear a kiss”, and she’ll go dig her bear out of her toys and give it a kiss.  She’s really starting to understand a LOT of what I say.  She still gets “screamy” occasionally, but now I ask her what she wants when she screams, and that usually stops her.  She’ll try to point at what she wants, or she’ll say “help” (which sounds more like “hep”), or say “up” or “down” or “eat”.  If she doesn’t say anything I can ask her questions like “Do you want to get on your pony?” and she’ll shake her head yes or no, and we get through it by process of elimination. Considering all the sleep problems we had with her earlier, I am amazed at how well she’s sleeping now.  I will ask her now if she wants to take a nap, and usually she does.  (Granted, I usually ask her when she’s starting to get cranky.)  But she goes running over to the gate and waits for me to get her milk for her and I change her diaper, give her a kiss, and put her in bed, and usually she says there for at least an hour or two.  She’s down to 1 nap a day though.  At bedtime, I’ll ask if she wants to go take a bath, and again she runs to the gate signing bath, and when I ask her if she wants to go night night, she usually says “nigh nigh” and goes to the gate.  I read her a chapter in a book (we just got done reading Black Beauty), turn the light off, rock her for a few minutes and then put her in bed and don’t hear a peep from her until morning.  (Watch, tonight she’ll wake up and scream in the middle of the night…)  She’s been going to bed around 8:30pm and gets up around 9am.

The other night I made popcorn around 7:30pm and went and sat on the couch with it.  Abbie was climbing up there as soon as I sat down and signing that she wanted some too and saying “bite”.  I’d break tiny pieces off and give them to her and a few times she’d stick her hand in the bowl and grab a handful of popcorn and get this big grin on her face.  I was laughing at her, and she started laughing at me because I was laughing at her.  We were having a good time, and that was the first time I felt like Abbie was keeping me company and that we were just relaxing together, instead of me being in constant “parent mode”.  Abbie and I have lots of fun together every day, but this time it was just different.  Maybe it’s because she rarely sits still.  I don’t know.  We just had a moment and I wish Mark had been there also.

  She has 12 teeth now.  I need to trim her hair, but I’m afraid I’ll make her look ridiculous, so I’ve avoided it.  In addition to the other body parts she knows, she now also knows her teeth, mouth, and cheeks, and sometimes toes.  She’s learning fingers too and sometimes she’ll stick out her finger if you ask her where her fingers are.  And she loves to play peek-a-boo.  She giggles like crazy when you chase her, but that always makes me nervous since we have tile floors, but so far so good.  I need to take her in for her 15 month shots, but I’m going to wait until Mark gets back in case he wants to go with us.

Quilting project #2

Admittedly, I don’t know much about quilting, besides the fact that I love it.  I’ve made one quilt top, but I still have to put the entire quilt together and then do the actual “quilting” part of it.  All that sounds hard, and I’ll need Mark’s help (or SOMEONE’S help) to do it, so project #1 is on hold at the moment.

I got the supplies for project #2 before I left the States.  Actually, I got enough fabric for project #2-5, and then my mom sent me fabric that matches her living room so I can make her a quilt too, but I want to get better before I attempt a “gift quilt”.  I’ve been staring at them since I got here and this past week I got all my supplies out and figured out which quilt pattern I wanted to do and spent HOURS cutting fabric.  And I’m still not done.  But that’s half the fun and cutting the fabric is relaxing for me.

Here’s the fabric I’ll be using for my next quilt.

I bought the bottom 3 pieces of fabric at Joann’s before I left, but the squares on top is fabric designed by Me and My Sister Designs.  I absolutely LOVE the patterns and the fabric these two ladies create.  The colors are so bright and vibrant, and it just makes me happy very time I look at them.  Here’s a better shot of the squares.

The white fabric actually has little sparkles on it, and that’s what I’ve spent the majority of my time cutting up.  You can kinda see the sparkles here.

I’m using a pattern designed by Me and My Sister Designs called Confetti.  It’s not currently on their website, but you can get a great feeling for how happy and playful their quilts are by looking at their patterns.   I just love them.  I follow their blog and won a give away from them and have gotten a few emails from Barb.  Someday I would like to meet them, but they live in Phoenix, so I might have missed my chance.

Anyway, I’m going to get back to cutting my fabric.  It’s 10:30pm already and I’ve been up until 1-2am every night this week working on quilting stuff or talking to Mark or friends and I’m getting sick on top of it all.

Oh, and here’s a picture of my trusty side-kick, Sadie, who’s always up here keeping me company.  (That’s Abbie’s elephant that she’s laying on.)

OH!!!  And I think I finally found a fabric store here!!  It only took me 5 months!  SOOO excited!

Past, present and future

So I’m sitting here trying to gather my thoughts, and they’re just bouncing all over the place and I don’t even know what to write about or where to begin.  =)  If this blog is a jumbled mess, that’s why.  Maybe I’ll write a few separate blogs because I could write about 15 different topics and then I never know what to title a blog that’s doesn’t have a clear subject.  =)

I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that I married my soul mate.  Mark and I just click.  We balance each other out.  When one of us is freaking out, the other one is there with words of wisdom and a calming aura about them.  Admittedly, I’m usually the one freaking out, but every once in a while Mark lets me return the favor.  =)  What I love most about us, is how we are so open in our communication with each other.  My parents have often made comments about how open we are with each other and how well we communicate.  I think part of the key to surviving the military lifestyle is having an open line of communication with your spouse.

(Jan 2005)

These last few days have taught me SO much about myself, about others, about my marriage.  I’ve had some really good heart to heart conversations with friends, and they’ve all opened my eyes in one way or another and given me a broader view of my life and my actions and the person I want to be.  I’ve realized that situations that completely stink while you’re going through them, only make you a stronger person in the end.  And I’m even more aware that people are just different.  None of us have the same story, or the same background.  We all have our battles we’re fighting, whether they’re public or private, and we all have our own ways of conquering those battles.

I most definitely use this blog as my release.  I find comfort in writing and letting others know how I feel and I’m not ashamed to admit when I’m having a hard time.  Living in Italy is a dream come true, and I am very thankful for this opportunity, but that doesn’t mean that every day I’m here is a vacation for me.  I’m still dealing with life as I would if I lived in the States, especially since there are no F-16 bases anywhere near any of my family in the States.  The plane ride home is just a few hours longer.  There was a speaker at a spouses club luncheon here recently, who’d been a military spouse for a long time and I think her husband is retired now.  But she said that Aviano is by far the hardest base she lived at, because of the ops tempo here (aka – the guys are gone a lot), because of Italian culture, because the actual base doesn’t have that much to offer, because everyone expects everything to be perfect since you’re in ITALY, and that isn’t always the case.  I’ve heard the average time it takes to get adjusted to life in Italy is 6+ months.  I’ve been here 5 months.  (Really?!?! I can’t believe it’s already been 5 whole months!  Time just seems to be flying by!)  I would say I’ve adjusted to the Italian lifestyle pretty well since I feel comfortable here.  In fact I’m no longer scared of gypsies breaking in to my house and I even leave my shutters open at night when I’m here by myself.  AND I killed a scorpion by myself yesterday that was in our basement.  (Ew!)  It’s going to take me a while longer to get adjusted to Mark being gone so much since this is the first time we’ve dealt with this in our 5 years of living together and him being in the military, but I am confident that I’ll get there. 

Since we’ve decided Abbie and I will be going home (to my parents) while Mark is deployed, my worries have been eased quite a bit.  I’m not at all excited to spend months away from my husband, but I am VERY excited to go home and spend time with friends I haven’t gotten to spend time with at all in the past 5 years, and for our families to get to spend more time with Abbie.  My parents are already making plans for vacations they want Abbie and me to go on with them while we’re home, which gives me something to look forward to.  And I’ll get to be near a TARGET (AHHH!!!), and a HOBBY LOBBY (DOUBLE AHHH!!!) and restaurants that serve something other than Italian food!!!!!  I almost can’t contain my excitement!!!  =)

Anyway, that’s enough rambling for one blog post.

Friday Fill-in

Is it really already Friday again?  Crazy!!

Here are this weeks questions.

What is ONE thing you’d like civilians to understand about being a military family?

I think this is a hard question because I don’t think anyone could ever fully understand what it’s like being a military family, unless they are in one themselves.  That’s like trying to get someone who doesn’t have kids understand what it’s like to be a parent.  You can talk to someone about something until you’re blue in the face, and still never get them to fully understand what you’re trying to portray.

I guess if I had to pick one thing, it would be all the sacrifice that’s involved.  The military members sacrifice a lot – being away from home, missing family, living in not the best conditions sometimes, etc.  Family members sacrifice a lot too.  Besides the obvious spending time with the military member, we move all over creation, away from our friends and family, give up jobs we love, sell animals that are too big and expensive to move around with us, etc.  And I think all too often people forget about the children involved in the military and how separations affect them and how moving all over affects them.  These little people can’t speak for themselves and often don’t understand why daddy is gone so much, and it’s just hard.

What is your favorite mistake?

Getting a degree in business management.  That in itself wasn’t really a mistake, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life so I majored in that thinking I could combine it with just about any other degree I would get.  I eventually figured out I wanted to be a nurse, so I went back to school and that’s when I met Mark.  If I had majored in nursing the first time around I never would have met Mark.

What indulgence could you give up for a year?

Hobby Lobby was a HUGE indulgence for me, and I’m giving that up for a year, even if it’s not exactly willingly.  =)

• If you could be a winged animal, what would you be?

I guess I wouldn’t really care.  Not a penguin??  I’m not big on large bodies of water with big things with teeth trying to eat me.  So one that’s not typically in water.

Letters and dogs.

As many of you know, I am a huge letter writer.  I spend quite a bit of time writing letters to friends and family, and uploading pictures on the internet to print off so I can send pictures in my letters, and organizing all the pictures into neat envelopes for the family I usually send them to etc.  I try to keep the people that care even more updated on Abbie and us than I do on this blog.  I don’t expect people to write back, but if they do, great!  I LOVE getting mail.

Recently, Mark got a letter in the mail from someone in his family.  It was just a card saying that they loved him and missed him and they sent him a few pictures.  It was addressed to him only and written to him only.  I have to admit, this really hurt my feelings.  I am the one that sends out all the birthday cards and anniversary cards and get well cards.  Half the time Mark doesn’t even sign them because he’s too busy, which is fine.  I don’t mind doing that.  But if people ARE actually going to write, it’s a completely slap in the face when they write to him only and don’t even include me, when I’m the one that writes to them and sends them pictures.  I don’t know.  Maybe I’m blowing it out of proportion, but it makes me just not want to write to them anymore since apparently they only care about Mark.

I’m also dog-sitting right now, for a black lab.  He’s a nice dog, but he’s a puppy still, even though he’s about 70lbs or more.  I have to keep him outside because he’s a little too wild to be inside around Abbie.  He doesn’t realize how big he is and he always wants to play.  I felt bad for leaving him outside during the day (I bring him in at night) so I got him a huge bone to chew on.  He’d already chewed up half of Abbie’s outdoor toys, so I brought the rest of those in and gave him tennis balls and bones to chew on.  Well he proceeded to dig up half of my garden in order to bury the bone I got him.  Grrr!!!  Then he dug up my beautiful bougainvillea plant that my mom and I had just planted while she was here, twice!  So now it’s completely destroyed and I’ll have to pull the vines out of my fence and go spend another 20E on a plant.  That one was really pretty though.  It was a gorgeous pink and it had the most blooms out of any of them.  Oh well.

Yesterday was not a good day, but today is going much better!

shoes

I guess I had sort of a reality check just now.

Single parenting can be very difficult.  I think it definitely depends on the child’s personality and the parent’s personality – not everyone’s experiences are the same and there are many variables to factor in.  I think Abbie is in her most difficult stage yet, because she’s learning SO much and she understands so much, but she’s still a baby.  Or toddler.  Or whatever.  She can’t convey what she wants well at all, and she’s EXTREMELY clingy to me.  I don’t get a break from her at all.  The person that I emailed a few times about babysitting, never responded to my last email.  I’m just exhausted. 

I read another military spouse’s blog recently and it was all about how some military spouses give the rest of them a bad name because of their complaining when their husbands are gone.  She was saying how people need to find ways to keep busy while their husbands are gone and to put on a happy face for their husbands when they talk to them so they don’t worry about their wives.  I can only hope she ends up with a child exactly like Abbie so she’ll realize that blanket statements like that just don’t always apply to everyone.  I would LOVE to have hobbies to keep me busy, but the only time I get to do them is when Abbie is asleep.  And usually when she’s asleep, I’m ready to crash on the couch and watch TV or go to bed.  I have an entire room full of toys for her, but when I’m around, she wants me to be her playmate and won’t play with her toys more than 5-10 mins by herself at a time.  It’s really hard to do ANYTHING in 5-10 min increments.  Reading her blog just was an eye opener to not be so judgmental of others.  We all have our own situations and our own ways of dealing with things.  I, personally, would be really pissed if Mark willingly put his flying career in front of our marriage and CHOSE to leave us behind and go do his own thing for however long.  But I know Mark would never ever do that because he, too, thinks that’s ridiculous.  Different strokes for different folks.

I just came across another military spouse’s blog.  I don’t know this girl at all, just found her blog on one of the spouse support sites I’m on.  She lost her 18 mo daughter to SIDS basically (but it’s not called SIDS, I just can’t remember what the toddler version is called) earlier this year.  Her blog is a few posts of her absolutely pouring her heart out about the loss of her daughter.  I sat here and cried for 20 mins reading her blog.

I was talking to Mark last night, and he said something like “well we’ll be in Prague soon and we’ll have a nice relaxing time there”, and all I could think about was, my vision of “relaxing” right now has absolutely NOTHING to do with Abbie.  Which is terrible, but it’s true.  Prague will be great, I’m sure, but Abbie gets harder to deal with by the day, and it’s going to be an effort to keep her happy and quiet and on her schedule, which isn’t exactly “relaxing” to me, but at least there will be 2 against one then.

I love Abbie with all my heart.  She’s the best thing, besides Mark, that every happened to me, and I am so thankful that I get to stay home with her and raise her myself, even if being a SAHM is a very thank-less, often overlooked, job.  Reading that girls blog about how she’d give anything to hold her daughter one more time just absolutely broke my heart and slapped me in the face at the same time.  I CAN hold my daughter and I do get to see her smile again, and hopefully, God-willing, I will get to watch her grow up.  I need to start focusing on that, instead of how hard she is to deal with and how much I don’t get to do because I have her.  I know for a fact that girl who lost her daughter would give anything in her power to be in my shoes right now, so maybe my shoes aren’t that uncomfortable after all.