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Going to Rome With a Baby! Our Experience & Tips
Ciao, all! We had our first family vacation that was just the three of us last month. Sadly, Ferdie couldn’t come as we were headed to ROME, home to some of the best museums in the world and managing it with a dog plus a nine-month-old wasn’t the most relaxing-sounding thing. It was a wonderful trip! I’d been dreaming of returning to Italy for a long while now… and then the pandemic happened. As of last summer, things are running pretty normally in Italy and even though we couldn’t have our babymoon there as I wanted, it was so fun taking Baby M there and enjoying it as a family.…
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How to Recover From the Complete Mess of the Past Eight Months Now That It’s June
Go outside. Leave your house. Just to practice leaving it, really. To build up your confidence with leaving the house again. It’s going to take some time. Consider the mornings, when there’s not many people. Consider a regular practice of nice evening post-dinner constitutionals in the light. It’s the end of spring and hiking season is here! Plan a hiking or walking trip, even if it’s raining a bit. Maybe even if it’s pouring! Walk through the park and marvel at all of the green. Meet a friend for a socially-distanced coffee as you are almost fully-vaccinated but not quite. This month you’re going to have the first swim of…
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How I Come Alive Again
Hello friends, happy May wishes. Although writing here hasn’t been a priority here lately, you know I’ll always be coming back ’round to this space. We last talked a month ago right after Easter. All month long I was calling April “Second March” or “The Marchiest April Ever” which is nooooot a compliment. March is typically my least favorite month and now I probably will always think about it as “Corona month” – the month when it all started. This end of winter and spring period was really, really tough, especially most of March and April. I had not been in a poorer condition than in the past ten years,…
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Quiet Days & My First Easter Lamb Cake {Recipe}
Happy spring, I hope everyone’s made it through the other side of winter okay! We just had Daylight Savings Time (worth every minute of evening light, in my opinion) so the warmer days and lighter nights have made everything so much better. Sometimes I think I could be a winter person, finding the season more pleasant with each passing year. Then the first warmer, light days of the year come and it’s like, nah. It was another weird March. The virus is still raging around us here in Czechland, and in fact, the first half of the month, we were bound to our own municipalities. Fortunately just in time for…
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The Earth is Shifting
Hello, friends. What a strange but impactful few weeks it has been. In the days leading up to last week of May, I had rare bout of anxiety about the world opening up again after the worst of Coronatimes had wound down here in the Czech Republic. When the director of your school e-mails you and starts into “good news! we can go back to school!”, it’s incredibly unsettling because for the previous two months, we had all been unlearning how to be and teach at school. How to do everything from home. How wonderful having no commutes were, let’s be honest. That first week back, I was a little…
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Make Your Own: Lilac Syrup
Some readers know that two years ago I started my journey with studying herbalism (more reasons why I’m doing that on that post) but I decided last month that, given the current world situation, now may be a better time than ever to go past “beginner” and take my studies to the next level with an intermediate course of study. I guess joke’s on me a little bit– hoping I’d get to “enjoy” the lock-down life because despite the pandemic I have been absolutely busy with normal things and really have to try hard (between work, cooking, garden, the necessary relaxation necessary to enjoy life) to study three subjects again……
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may, lately
hey, it’s may! may sure starts quiet slow and cool but boy does it ramp up quickly! especially when you live in the czech republic which has a holiday two weeks in a row. i don’t know about you guys, but i can already feel the slowing of the school year and delighting in the approach of the second half of spring (the better half). here are some things that have been making me smile lately… our hiking holiday at the end of april really got the spring/warm weather mood going! i posted the above photo in that particular post but it’s just too darned cute not to share again.…
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walking london + the afternoon tea bus tour
i don’t really ever go on those “weekend away” trips everyone talks about when they move to europe. well at least, not of the kind with an airplane. flying is a much bigger “to-do” than the ever-convenient train, and when you live in the center of europe, it’s easier to get almost everywhere by train… except great britain. but a couple weekends ago, i did! it felt really fancy! i went to london, mainly with the intent of seeing a band i love so much i’d fly for– which i could write a whole post about in and of itself as it was incredible– but all the other in-between stuff…
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find your spring bliss {south bohemia easter hiking weekend}
hi all, i hope you had a nice easter! it’s our tradition to go on a trip every easter (as here in the czech republic, we have a nice long four day weekend – five if you’re lucky!) and as this year it fell deliciously late into the season, we opted for another countryside hiking trip. last year’s trip was much too cold and bleak, and this year, all i wanted was sun and relaxation with a bit of hiking, which led us to the czech/austrian borderlands, basing ourselves in vyšší brod, a kilometer or two from the border. we had been to vyšší brod once before as we started…
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april, lately
i’m writing this from a place of calm. something about the weather lately, maybe. every day, noticing new buds, green leaves unfurling, cherry blossoms starting to make themselves known. or possibly it’s because these april weeks have felt really nice and slow – it’s that strange and unexplainable cancellation time of year that many language teachers seem to be feeling right now. life is starting to feel lighter again. it has meant a lot more leisurely time spent with a nose in the book on cushy sofas, hiding under blankets, nestled between pillows. i’ve been reading michelle obama’s ’becoming’ (after being on the library wait list for months) and the…