Beginning of školka for Sofia!

Sofia, my princess, you LOVE school.  You are only 2, but you already want to be at pre-school with the other kids, with Jake, and to learn and play with others.  You are very social, though shy at first, and love to be around other people and where the activity is going on.  You talked with us many times about going to school, long before the day came to try it out.

In December your class at pre-school opened- a brand new class.  They are called "little mice" in Czech.  Since you will begin full-time in February when you turn 3, you are now allowed to "try" school for 5 days each month.  You were and are so ready for it.  :)  On your first day you were so excited and jumping around the house, getting ready enthusiastically, and practically running to school with your little back pack on.  You're adorable and happy almost all of the time (until you get sassy and bossy).  Unfortunately I didn't get to go with you on your first day because Jakub was very sick at home, but Daddy took you and you were so brave.  You put your things away in your locker and left him to go into the classroom and to your teacher, a very kind woman you call "Pani Učitelka" (ms. teacher in Czech).   You held her hand as she walked you around the room to meet the other children and tell them your name.  You were very quiet, but brave, and stayed until lunch time with no problems.  The teacher said the entire week you were very sweet and very quiet and happy to be there. You did many crafts and played with some of the kids.  You were also happy to play alone.  On your first day to be picked up you hugged the kids goodbye. :)  Sweet, sweet, sweet Sofia.

You liked it very much and are ready to go back "when I be 3."  As you say.  My heart breaks for you to leave me.  I have loved having you home with me every day and through all things.  You are sweet to me and love to be by my side doing most things together.  And I love to play and cook and clean and do those things with you as well.  But I'm also happy for you to go and play and learn with the other children, because it makes you so happy and you already thrive there.  I think you will be just as social, energetic, smart, and happily challenged by school as your brother has been.  I can't wait to see what all you learn there and how you grow. :)  And I can't wait to see you confidently speaking Czech.

We love you Sofia!!

Happy Birthday Jakub!

Happy Birthday Jakub!  We had a wonderful time celebrating your 6th birthday at home.  Your best friend Mikuláš and his Mom, my best friend Stana, came to celebrate with us, as well as our good friend Madison.  We had so much fun opening gifts together, eating, and playing.  You and Mikuláš ran around like crazy, as usual. :)  You can see in the two pictures above that you two have been friends since you were babies.  In the first picture you are both 1 year old.  Now you are 6!  The time has gone by so quickly.  You both remain good friends at pre-school and like to play together there as well.  You sometimes still fight like brothers, but you also play very well and love each other.  You especially love to go to his house and play and spend the night.

Madison helped me make this beautiful cake for you.  I saw a picture of it on the internet and really wanted to try and make it.  You really love super-hero things right now, playing with spiderman and batman, and you also love to build with your legos.  You have great ideas about how to engineer things and maybe one day you will want to build, design, or be an architect.  You really liked the cake, but didn't want to eat much for some reason.  We would later find out in the night that you were going to get a stomach flu and be very sick for a few days (and then a few weeks... more on that later.)

Here's a picture of me and Stana.  She has remained a very good friend of our family's.  She's very encouraging, positive, and sweet.  I love to spend time with her while you kids play.  :)

And very close to your birthday we had a "fall festival" party with our "Moms and Kids" Wednesday English program.  You were dressed as Spiderman and Sofia was a princess.  You both had a lot of fun on this day and we had a good party.  Two of your friends from school started coming this semester and it made the class more fun for you.  In general, though, at this age you didn't like to participate anymore because you were "bored" and already knew all of the English well.
It was hard for you to sit through the classes, but you loved to play with your friends. :)  I always have a lot of fun teaching this class and many of the moms have become my good friends as well.

So, Happy Birthday to you Jake!  You're awesome and we love you very much!  You are confident, smart, energetic, and constantly wanting to learn something new, try something new, run, play, and live life to the fullest.  You keep me on my toes and striving to challenge you and show you new things.  I think you are going to love first grade next year and the new challenges it brings.  I can't wait to see it!

A swimming they will go!

Look at them go!  The swimming lessons are continuing to go very well.  Jakub is growing in confidence and skill and often likes to show us now, in the bathtub, how he can successfully hold is breath and head under water for a bit.  I'm so proud of him for being brave and for enjoying this class with his friends from school.  I can't wait to see what his swimming is like at the end of the lessons next February!

Happy, Gorgeous Fall 2015

We have had a very beautiful fall season this year!  Though many days for the last 3 weeks have been cloudy and quite cool, or even cold, the trees and flowers around us have changed to some brilliant and vibrant colors.  I would say it's one of the prettiest autumns we've had in a few years.  And on the rare days the sun has come to shine down on the leaves it has felt like a true fairy-tale land around us.  I love this season and I love God's creativity!

These pictures are all taken from around our home and neighborhood.  Those with red trees are from directly around our apartment building and local playground just across the road from our home.  We play there almost every day and have spent many hours picking up the leaves, playing hide and seek beneath the trees, and collecting chestnuts from the trees.  The golden trees are from just down the road, and still near our home, at a local park where we love to play with the kids and friends also.

We have been blessed with a great home and area of the city.  I can't imagine living anywhere else here with the kids.

Around the World - Kindergarten

Jakub's kindergarten class is learning all about their personal world around them as well as the world at large.  They focused a lot this semester on learning about their country, city, neighborhood (most of them live in the same one as us), street address, family information, etc.  They've also started focusing on the world as a whole, learning about different continents and some of the larger countries and people groups.  Jakub has been singing or reciting a lot of songs and poems he's learned at school for each place.  And he has his personal information memorized.  It's been fun to watch him learning these things and exploring new places with his teachers and friends.

Above you can see their first field-trip of the year to our city center (Jakub is at the very top in the grey jacket).  They walked around the town hall, several important fountains and statues, and were even given a tour of the main center memorial statue of the great black plague and all of those who perished from it in Europe and in our region.  They learned some of our local history and some basic information about Olomouc.  Jakub was so excited when he shared it with me at the end of the day.

Learning about some of our local fountains.   I believe Olomouc is known for having the most historical fountains of any central European city.  It could be just of our entire country. :)  Either way we have very many beautiful fountains in this city.

Here they are learning from a guest speaker about Asia.

Jakub sitting with his desk mates at school.  So far they have studied about Europe and the Czech Republic, Asia, Africa, and Australia.  He says they are going to study America next.

He's been doing well at school so far and occasionally tells me excitedly that he has earned some "1's" and stars at school.  In the grading system here you earn grades from 1 to 4 I believe, and a 5 means you failed and must repeat the class.  A mark of 1 is the best and Jakub seems very proud to have earned a few.  I'm sure the teachers are helping to prepare them for this marking system which will begin to take place in the first grade for him next year.



Here's a picture of Jakub from his first ceramics class he attends at school after the learning day is over on Wednesday afternoons.  He loves it and seems to really enjoy creating with his hands.  They have been working on making plates, one bowl, and some kind of creature face/head. :)  I can't wait until they have their end-of-the-year display day and we can see everything he has been working so hard on making.

I also am thankful for our healthiest start to school yet.  It's been almost 2 months of school and Jakub hasn't missed one day for illness.  He also has a great attitude about going to school and seems to enjoy being with his class and friends very much.  I'm extremely thankful, especially as we look to the future of Sofia attending this same school starting next February.  We recently received notice that she's been accepted and will be a part of the new class of "mice."  She is thrilled and keeps asking how long it will be until she can attend with Jakub. :)  It's very sweet and breaks my heart a little at the same time.

Kindergarten here we come!

I just realized I didn't write about Jakub starting his kindergarten year and being back in school as of September 1st.  Better late than never. :)

These pictures are from our family vacation to the tatra mountains in Slovakia- just before school started again.  And this boy.  He has so much personality and energy.  The first picture is one I made him take, as you can tell. The second is his version and the pose he gives us most often now.  I'm not sure where he learned it, but I would bet it's from school. ;)

He was very happy to go back to school and see his friends and spend time with them and his teachers.  He has always loved school (except for those occasional mornings he's too tired to get up) and always enjoyed being there with his friends.  He's also had the same two main teachers for the past 2.5 years.  I love that the system here is such as this.  It will be similar in the next phase of schooling as he moves to elementary school next year.  He'll have many of the same teachers and be grouped with the same classmates for several years to come (if we're living here in Olomouc that long).  I've been with enough students now over the years to see how it can make for some great memories and friendships in their lives.  It's also been good for me to see and know the same mothers and fathers over the past few years with Jakub in preschool.

Here are a few things I want to remember about Jakub right now:

- He's 122 cm tall ( around or just over 4 feet)
- He is skinny with long legs and big feet.  His pants are always falling off of his waist now, but never long enough in the legs and often above his ankles.  Super stylish. :)
- He is still very confident in himself and continues to want to be first, be the fastest, be the smartest, do everything first.  He'll often try a new task, word, or food with confidence and lack of fear.  He does, however, get shy if a large group of people are around and they are not familiar to him.
- He speaks Czech very well now, like a native child would.  He has even interpreted for me on a couple of occasions when I didn't know the word(s) other children were saying to me.
- He LOVES candy and asks for it every day. He prefers it over chocolate or other sweets.  Suckers are his favorite thing.
- He's active and energetic and can go all day.  It often surprises others how much he can do or wants to do and still seems full of energy straight through to bedtime. :)  We recently went away for a church retreat weekend with our local church community and on that Saturday we went for a 6 hour hike up and back down a nearby hillside.  Except for a rare and short piggy-back ride he walked the entire time with us.  He was of course very tired at the end, but still happy and capable of doing it all.  I was so proud of him!
- Some of his favorite ways to play are with legos, cars and tracks, doing puzzles, reading books with me and trying to sound out and spell words now, and playing hide-and-seek.
- He and Sofia can play very sweetly together, but they can also fight horribly.  He loves to hide and scare her, which she doesn't always like.
- He's very much looking forward to turning 6 and often asks how many days until his birthday.
- He still loves to sing and whistle and is almost always humming a tune of some kind and appears to sing very well.  He can't not make music of some kind while he works or plays.  I'm curious how his teachers deal with this at school, but I don't want to ask. :)

That's all for now.  Hopefully I'll have more swimming pictures or videos coming soon.

Swimming Lessons

Jake and some of his classmates who are taking swimming lessons together on Mondays.  He's almost in the very middle of the group and is the pale one in the blue cap. :)

Learning to put their heads in the water and blow bubbles...


This school year, Jakub's kindergarten year, we found out they were offering swimming lessons through the school's cooperation with a nearby aqua center.  We were thankful for the opportunity to try this and of course Jakub was thrilled to sign up for lessons.  Every Monday morning he arrives at school by 8 and has his swimming bag ready to go.  They leave at 845 and walk about 20 minutes to the aqua center in our area of the city.  They have lessons for about one hour and then walk back to school in time for a lesson or two, some playing outside if it's nice, and lunch.  I'm sure he takes a good nap after lunch before I pick him up.  He is enjoying the lessons and showing me each week what he has learned from the swim coach.  His best, and funniest, remarks were after the first week's lessons when he said "mom, next time we go swimming together you just throw me in the pool.   I know what to do."  He has such confidence. :)  We're really happy he's enjoying it so much and hopefully he'll continue.  I look forward to swimming with him sometime soon so I can see what all he is learning. :)