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Week 13, 14 & 15 of 2024 (In Review) – Easter & April Heatwave
The weeks have flown by and I dropped the ball a little bit, so reviewing the past three weeks: Easter week and the first gorgeous weeks of our current month, April. Truly hope to be on time in about a week from now bringing us current. Man, besides this cold snap Central Europe is undergoing at the moment, haven’t we been so spoiled this year? Easter week was generally uneventful and wholly relaxing – even more so than spring break. I was so pleased that it was our little one’s first time participating in Easter traditions like an Easter egg hunt around the living room on Easter Sunday and his…
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Week 7 & 8 of 2024 (In Review)
Even writing week in review posts is proving to be challenging but it’s a special exercise this year only so I hope you are enjoying them so far! The past two weeks brought us Valentine’s Day, which is always a fun week to observe. It was a little bit cold and windy but I had a little coffee date with my Little Man in the monastery courtyard. It was fun watching him wander around. He’s in that phase right now where he’s discovering walking around outside and every single thing is new and exciting. The other day we all went on a family walk to a playground — the first…
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The Books of 2023 (Annual Book Post!)
It took me ’til February, but here it is! This was a great reading year for me, if 32 books with a 3.9 star (out of 5) average says anything about the it. It was a fantastic mix of memoirs, non-fiction, engaging novels and a sprinkling of parenting books thrown in for good measure. No book clubs or anything mucking up my choices (although they can be really fun sometimes). Mostly I read while breastfeeding on my Kindle but being able to read in bed again at night also helped a lot — man have I missed it! Here’s a sampling of the best of them… and really there were…
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Life, Lately: Autumn With a One-Year-Old
Happy autumn! I thought a catch-up was overdue, so here’s what’s been going on with us lately here in South Bohemia – life on maternity leave with a seventeen-month old toddler. THINKING… When I get free time, my mind is just a jumble of the hundred things I have been wanting to do. Writing it down in my planner, a series of random papers or a Google Doc has been saving me. Right now, Mouse is have an unusually long midday nap and I’ve been frenetically choosing activities: have lunch, pay bills/life admin, weekend plans… but then “which learning tower should I buy?”, I need to plan Christmas things already!,…
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The Books of 2022
I really thought I wouldn’t read that much this year. Fed up with reading a bunch of titles last year for book club that I wasn’t that interested in last year, I jumped in and did a bunch of baby/pregnancy-related reading in the first half of the year, figuring that was all I’d get around to once I had the baby. Boy was I wrong. Enter: breastfeeding sessions. I was not privy to all that breastfeeding a baby entails (in many ways, honestly). But basically, it means that every 3-4 hours, you are hanging out feeding your baby, something which takes little active effort from you, for at least thirty…
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The Perks of a Summer Spent at Home
The only other August I’ve ever spent so much time here in the Czech Republic was the year I got married (2015), and that was after two months away! I’ve called this year our “Baby Summer of 2022” as things are clearly a bit different with an infant. As we’ve been very much around, one thing which has firmly taken a place in our summer rituals is that of the weekly farmer’s market visit. We have a beautiful bi-weekly market in Piaristické Square here in Budejovice… I think I’ve never been to a market in a more beautiful setting than this one. As we aren’t getting a CSA (community-supported agriculture)…
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The Books of 2021
I made some major mistakes in my reading life last year. It pretty much all came down to being far too ambitious and picking up way too many reading projects! You might remember last year when I announced my participation in #OurYearInTranslation, in addition to trying to keep up with my book club. What a colossal mistake. I think OYIT is a great prompt if you’re stuck, in a rut and want to try something new, but that’s the thing – I was really happy with my big stack of books as it was and I didn’t really need a challenge. Honestly, I just needed everyone to leave me alone…
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The Spooky October Film Series, Part VII
What are your Halloween traditions like? Mine entail a near devotional spooky film every Sunday night in October in the lead-up to the holiday… however, it can’t be any of the same films we’ve seen in the past several years! It’s not too hard to think up different films that still perfectly fit the Halloween bill if you’re myself or Alex. This year, as I’m also reading Dracula, I was really feeling the vampire theme. I was, however, not allowed to bring Twilight into the mix (I guess on my own time…) so this is the list we came up with this year. I hope it helps spark some Halloween…
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Autumn, Lately
This year hasn’t been a banner year for the old bloggity-blog by any means. It’s hard to write when a) you are doing a million things and this space has frankly taken a back burner, b) there’s too much to put online, or c) somethings that are going on, you wouldn’t want to put online anyway. It’s also dispiriting when your favorite blogs on the interweb have a) gone dark or b) gone behind a paywall. (If you’ve got a cool blog or know of one, holler at me in the comments because I’m out of ideas!) I miss blog reading. Remember the days that everyone would post their daily…
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Gardening With What You’ve Got
Having grown up with my backyard an actual forest and spent my childhood playing in streams and in dark woods, I can’t imagine my life without an outdoor component at home. I would move! Since adulthood, I’ve been gardening everywhere I’ve lived in some capacity, although it’s gone through plenty of different iterations. I’m fortunate to have had a balcony for the past 8+ years here in Budejovice, and although north-facingand almost constantly shady, it is perfect on the hot summer days of Central Europe when you can’t stand sizzling in the sun anyway, and I love the light summer evenings, sitting outside with a cup of tea and a…
