To Health and Independence

Has it really been Friday since I've posted?  Sorry.  But getting over sickness means things were pretty boring for a few days.  Adam, Sarah and Jacob took off on Saturday, leaving me home to sleep.  They showed Sarah the KGB Museum, shopped and ate.  Sarah found a really cute pair of boots.

Sunday, Adam tried to go to church, but the taxi company couldn't process his credit card, so he couldn't go.  The rest of us have all been fighting colds, so it was a stay inside day.  That and the fact that it was really cold still.  We brought games with us, so those have kept us quite entertained.  One of our favorite games is a marble game, but it has a big, heavy board.  Jacob and I copied the board onto a piece of poster board, then brought legos as our game pieces.  We have nightly tournaments and it gets quite heated.

Our homemade version of the marble game.

Monday is a quiet day in Vilnius.  Almost all tourist places are closed.  We have decided that will be our cleaning, working, catching up day.

We finally left the house on Tuesday!  And the week has been much more interesting since then.  Our first task was to take Sarah to the Vilnius Winter Thaw locations.  Jacob and I were equally excited to see them again.  But first we needed some food.  We ended up back at Jacob's favorite place, Charlie's Pizza.  However, since Sarah and I discovered the most amazing salad there, it's now one of our favorite places as well.

 We love the interior of Charlie's.  Red velvet benches, red chandeliers over each booth and then the brown, tufted velvet in each booth. Oh yeah!

 His smiles have become more of a smolder lately.

This is after half of the salad has been scooped onto another plate, but it's pears, baked beets, beet greens, pumpkin seeds and the creamiest Feta on the planet topped with an Asian dressing.  I'm drooling just looking at the picture!

This is the beautiful Philharmonic building we passed on the way.

This is the entrance to the courtyard where the cobbler shop exterior was shot.  It used to be the entrance to a monastery.

The door to the cobbler shop.  It looks so bare and lonely without the awning and railing that was built for the shoot. 

The street was a sheet of ice from the melting snow of the day. 

Jacob at the cobbler shop door.  In reality, it's the door to a storage shed. 

From the cobbler shop courtyard, we walked through the Gates of Dawn, along the old city wall, to this cute alley: 

The alley the cobbler walks down to get to the market street. 

The market street looks so sad without stalls of merchandise and lots of extras in amazing Russian outfits moving around.

This is the little Rimi market we usually stop at to shop. 

 We walk through this archway from Town Hall to enter our courtyard.  The dark brown door on the pink building it the one we use to enter our stairwell.  There is a 3 button code we have to push to gain access through the door.

This is what our courtyard looks from the archway.  There is a park to the right of the trees and a little further on are our garbage dumpsters.  We have to stop there almost daily. 

This is the produce we brought home from the store.  And this is why "organic" bothers me in the States.  Real non-chemical grown vegetables are all different shapes and sizes like these.  And these carrots have so much flavor that they are truly delicious!

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

After almost 4 hours of work and an hour or so with home school, we made it out the door for an outing with some of the Kendalls.  It's fun to take different routes to the same locations.  To get to the Vilnius Cathedral today, we passed the Presidential Palace.  This sign in front means #freedom.

 #freedom

 Presidential Palace

 The lighting on the Vilnius Cathedral today was stunning.  Look at the blue sky!!!  We even found an open door, so Sarah was finally able to see the beautiful interior.

 The Vilnius Cathedral Bell Tower

Cathedral interior

 The Gedimino Castle tower seen just past the Cathedral.  Unfortunately, it is closed until April 20th for renovation work.  We leave the 17th.  Sad...

The exterior of the New Arsenal Museum.  This was once a part of the Grand Duke's Palace.  It now houses artifacts that have been found around Lithuania.  Some of the items were thousands of years old!  There was also a display of modern folk art.

 Perhaps my most favorite spot in all of old town.  I love this shot up Pilies Street (Castle Street).  The cobblestone street, the amazing brick building to the left and the church up on the right.  It's the perfect European street!

This beautiful side street is just around the corner from our apartment.  It is another favorite of mine and was one of the streets of the small Jewish ghetto of WWII.

Thursday, February 16, 2017 - Independence Day!

We were here for this holiday last year, but didn't know it was a holiday until the day was almost over and Jacob and I stumbled on a parade.  So today we googled it to find out what events were happening so we wouldn't miss out.  There was some activity out in front of Town Hall, but the real events were in the evening.

 This little truck and grill were in front of Town Hall this afternoon, then moved to the courtyard next to the Cathedral for the evening events.

 Setting up for the evening concert next to the Cathedral.

 This is Gedemino Street.  The Vilnius Cathedral is at the end of it.  The road was blocked off to cars tonight and 16 bonfires were set up all down the street and lit at 6 pm.

 Looking up Gedimino Street.

 The lights have come on and a guy is dousing each bonfire stack in lighter fluid.

 A man with a torch came by to light each fire.

 Vilnius Cathedral's Square is ready for the concert to begin.  The lights are in the flag colors: green, red and yellow.

Let the concert begin.  Unfortunately for us, we couldn't understand a word of it, so we didn't stay long out in the cold.

Today marks Lithuania gaining its independence in 1918, making it a free state from all around it.  This independence would soon be interrupted by WWII and the invasion of Russian forces.  But it is the state they came back to when Russia finally left in 1992.  Now we must pray for beautiful Lithuania to be able to continue to stay out of the hands of the Russians.

Birute and Viktoras Save the Day

Friday, February 10, 2017

I am definitely sick.  I did not sleep well and had a hard time getting up.  But we had promised Tyson a birthday FaceTime call.  It was 10 pm at the end of his birthday (7am Friday morning for us) and we wanted the scoop on how his big day went.  His friends were good to him, bringing him treats and gifts.  My mom spoiled him with Texas Roadhouse for dinner.  But the best news was that he had his Board of Review and he is now officially an Eagle Scout!!!  It was quite the successful 18th birthday!

I have been feeling so bad that I've been such a horrible host for Sarah.  We have done absolutely nothing except grocery shop - lame!  But boy did I feel the blessing of having her here today.  I went back to bed after our call with Tyson.  And she took over for me.  She made sure everyone had breakfast and then worked with Jacob to clean the flat.  We don't have the luxury of a weekly cleaning lady this year, and so she just took over and got it all done, getting Jacob to do his part.  Then on top of that she made me lunch.  Wow!  I love having another female around!  Now I really need to get her out there and show her the town!  Next week promises to be warmer - in the 30s, so we will finally be able to go out and play.  But for today, I am thankful that she was here inside and so helpful.  She has worked to get to know Jacob and he is becoming more comfortable with her.  They tease and joke with each other which is just so fun to watch!

Jacob was sad that I had enough rest to do some home school today.  We have been seeing the Vilnius wolf everywhere, but neither of us could remember the story, so we looked it up:

One day Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas went for a hunt ten miles away from his then capital Trakai.

Hunting was successful – the Duke came upon a huge beast, taurus, and killed it.

As it was too late to go back to Trakai, Grand Duke Gediminas stopped at Šventaragis valley and took a night’s sleep there. Then, during his sleep, he had a dream that on the mountain a large iron wolf was standing and it was howling so loud as if it were hundreds of wolves howling inside him.

Gediminas woke up from his sleep and said to his priest Lizdeika: „I have dreamt a strange dream“ and described everything that had happened in his dream. Lizdeika was the chief pagan priest. He said: „Grand Duke, iron wolf means that the great capital will be located here and a howling of the wolf means that the sound of this capital will be heard all over the world“.

Next day, Grand Duke Gediminas, immediately sent people and founded one castle in Šventaragis valley another – on a high mountain nearby. And for those castles he gave a name of Vilnius.

Birute kindly scheduled me a doctor's appointment for this afternoon at an American Clinic on the outskirts of town and arranged for Viktoras, the driver who speaks English, to drive me there.  Everyone at the doctor's office was still Lithuanian, so I don't really understand the whole "American" part of it, but there were plenty of people there who spoke English and the forms they gave me to fill out were in English, so it worked.  It was a basic doctor's office, nothing fancy, but in a newer building.  I saw a female doctor who was very kind and helpful.  

She began by taking my temperature and told me I was 38 degrees - which meant nothing to me as I don't know how to convert that to fahrenheit. So after a few moments of silence I finally had to ask her if that meant I had a fever.  I think she was trying not to giggle at that, but just said I had a slight one.  I looked it up later - it was about 100 degrees.  But one look in my right ear confirmed I do have a pretty good ear infection.  I get them once in a while, but it's been many years.  I can't help but think the travel, dehydration and jet leg were all contributors.  She prescribed me an antibiotic and another pill that helps with the stuffy sinuses and told me I could fill them at any Pharmacy.  I was nervous what that might entail, but thanked her and left.  I stopped at the reception desk on my way out and asked how much I owed.  She looked surprised and said, "No cost."  I double checked.  No charge.  I hope I don't get a huge bill in the mail later, but I think I just saw the benefit of socialized medicine.  So I kindly thank the citizens of Lithuania who all pay 45% income tax for the "free" visit to the doctor today.

Viktoras knew where a pharmacy was near our flat, so that is where he dropped me off.  Thankfully, the pharmacist knew enough English for us to figure things out.  She took my two prescriptions, opened 2 drawers behind the counter and pulled out the boxes I needed, gave me the instructions and rang up my total - 18 Euros, which is less than $20.  Cool for me.  And how great to have no drug store hassle!  In and out in less than 5 minutes!  Unheard of at home.

I knew I didn't want to have to go out again, so I stopped at the little Rimi market and bought a few groceries for the weekend - including a bunch of juice since I've been drinking so much lately for my cough and I'm getting very tired of water. (Although I have also very much been enjoying herbal tea that has felt so good on my throat.)   I snapped this quick shot of our building along the way.

We are on the 5th floor with the dormer windows.  The 2 on the left are on our side of the flat; the one on the right is on Sarah's side. Although, in the end we share the whole flat.

This is one of 9 staircases we climb to our flat, plus a few extra out front.  Normally it's not a big deal, but today with my groceries and cold I had to stop several times to stop my head from spinning.  I guess the advice from the doctor to rest is a good idea.

In the spirit of trying to rest, I didn't make dinner tonight.  Adam got home a little early, and after a FaceTime call, he took Sarah and Jacob out for dinner at a nearby steakhouse. 

I've dozed throughout the day, but I'm having a hard time sleeping tonight.  I like to sleep on my right side, which is the side with the infection and my ear hurts enough for me to not be able to sleep on it right now, therefore I can't really get comfortable.  So it's now 1 in the morning and I've only had a few cat naps.  But it has allowed me one observation.  Lithuanians, like most Europeans, are very quiet and respectful.  They often think us Americans are quite loud.  But it's Friday night and the bars are open - and the people outside are very loud when they get alcohol in them.  It's like there is a different group of people out there from earlier today.  Time to turn on my white noise app and try to get some more sleep.

Our Arrival in Vilnius

Thursday, February 9, 2017 - Happy 18th Birthday, Tyson!!!

I have had several people ask what we have been doing since arriving in Vilnius - everyone wants a post.  But that's just the problem.  We haven't done anything.  It was 11 degrees when we landed Monday afternoon.  We were met at the airport by a driver - I didn't catch his name and he didn't know any English, and unfortunately, I only know 1 word of Lithuanian - and also by Birute (By-root-ah), the assistant production coordinator who takes very good care of us while we're here.  You'll see just how well in a minute.

We were lucky to be met because both of them helped us carry our suitcases up the 5 stories of stairs.  Each story has 18 steps, plus a few stairs to get to the building.  We figure there are over 90 stairs up to our apartment.  But it is so worth it when you get up here!

This is the view looking out of our family room window!!!

The black dome is the top of St Casimir Cathedral.  The white building with the black roof is Town Hall, the center of Old Town Vilnius.  There are 2 more churches in the background.  I have yet to identify which ones they are.  The dark buildings just behind Town Hall with orange on the top half are where our little market, Rimi, is located.  This location is truly amazing!

These bars are just across the bottom of the window, but by looking through them you get a better view of Town Hall.

This is the north view out of a window on Sarah's side of the apartment.  You can see more church tops and right under the crane is an orange turret from the Gedimino castle.  To the right, just before the tall church steeple, are the three white crosses.

 They light up Town Hall all night, so just before bed, we have to close the blinds or it's too bright to sleep.  But it's so beautiful and makes a great night light!

This was the view when I opened the blinds this morning!

Sarah and I walked around a little on Monday, wanting to get out and stretch our legs.  We walked to the Vilnius Cathedral, only to learn that it is closed on Mondays.  So we hurried back as it is just freezing out there!  For weeks Jacob has been talking about eating at Charlie's Pizza, just below our flat along the German Street.  That's where Sarah and I met Adam and Jacob for dinner.  The pizza is pretty good, but their salads are amazing!  I ordered a pear and beet salad with feta and a vinaigrette dressing.  I shared because it was about the most delicious thing I've ever had!!!  Sarah and I are already plotting when to go back and order it again!  I LOVE European cheese!  And Lithuanian beets are so different from what we get back home.

Family night was spent doing a little shopping at our market, Rimi, and playing some of the card games we thought to bring with us this time.

Unfortunately, there is not much more to report.  It is just still SO cold outside!  Tuesday we unpacked, did laundry, made a shopping list of supplies we needed and watched a few episodes of The Crown.  We reinstated Tuesday night Taco night, which some how they are just better with European cheese on them.  Wednesday, we set out to grab a few more groceries, thinking we'd go see a few sights on the way, only to get outside and head straight for the market and straight back home.  It's SO COLD!  But we got in a few more episodes of The Crown.

Today, we arranged for a driver, our friend from last year, Viktor, to take us females to a bigger grocery store.  He took us - Christianne, Maya (her daughter), Sarah and I, to a new market that just opened up in the fall that is right next to the Ikea.  Our apartment doesn't have a regular frying pan and spatula, so we stopped there first to grab some cheap kitchen gadgets.  It felt like walking into the one at home - only there was no English to be found on any signs.  But we still managed.

Ikea looking like Ikea.

It was so much more fun to shop with a girl with me, even if we were mostly just grocery shopping!  We could share ideas on what to get and new things we didn't recognize to try.  My boys just hate to shop - so much so that we left all of the boys behind to hang out together.

Thankfully, they were around to help us haul everything up our stairs - because I almost didn't make it up this time.  My body has decided to get sick.  I had a cold in the weeks before we left and it was getting better when we finally left.  But is has come back with a vengeance.  Birute, our lovely friend who I said takes care of us while we are here, scheduled me a doctor's appointment for tomorrow.  I am pretty sure I have an ear infection and maybe the flu.  I started getting body aches at the store and had to rest twice coming up the stairs from getting too light headed.  The cold medicines I brought are doing little to ease the symptoms, so it seemed time to do something about it before it gets worse.  So fun...

In the mean time, I'm hoping to get some anti-biotics tomorrow and let them kick in while the weather is still so miserable.  It is supposed to be warmer next week, so then I will be feeling great to go out and play, right?  I hope so because I really want to go play!  At least Jacob's not complaining.  We did no school today and he got to play with friends.  I think he hopes I'll be sick the whole time!

We just got to wish Tyson a happy birthday for the first time today - he's just heading off to school.  We are going to chat later when it's his tonight and our good morning to get the scoop on how his birthday celebrations went.  He has his Eagle Board of Review tonight that my mom is going to with him.  He also had his Stake President interview on Sunday, so his mission papers are turned in!  And he just got his Patriarchal Blessing right before we left.  So there are BIG things happening in this kid's life right now and we are SO proud of him!!!

London 2017 - Day 2

Sunday, February 5, 2017

Thanks to the jet lag and an early bedtime, getting ready on time for 9 am church was easy.  We were all awake by 3 am, so even after showers and a breakfast of protein bars, trail mix and water we were out the door by 8 to begin making our way to the Hyde Park Chapel.  With the closures on the underground line to our hotel and with being a little disoriented about what direction we were facing when we got off of the subway, it took us the full 60 minutes to get to Church.

Father and son on a Sunday morning.

The green District Line.  It's so peaceful on the trains so early on a Sunday morning.

Our lovely stop at South Kensington station.

Testimony meeting was so beautiful with a variety of experiences shared mostly by converts.  But as Jacob said, "It just feels like home no matter which of our buildings you're in."  The missionaries showed us several of the displays to watch in their Visitor Center area and then we took advantage of our selfie stick again before heading off on the rest of the day's adventures.

This is the screen shot of the map showing our route for the day.  We started at the blue dot, the church, and ended at Big Ben before making our way over to St Paul's Cathedral.  Here's what we saw along the way:

The Royal Albert Music Hall - someday we really need to see an event there.

Various water fowl on the Serpentine in Hyde Park

and gardens that were still remarkably green

We walked until we reached the south tip of the park at Hyde Park Corner - where President Hinckley, along with probably hundreds of others, preached as a missionary.

We then followed the crowds under the Wellington Arch

and through Green Park down Constitution Hill until we stumbled upon

Buckingham Palace

where Jacob finally discovered the joy of mom's silly selfie stick.  (And yes, he did wear his bowtie from church all day!)

We took a peak down The Mall, but opted to take Birdcage Walk to help us reach

Westminster Abbey.

We took a break at this point and finally stopped for some food.  We found a fun pub with London style food and had a hearty lunch, arriving back at Westminster just in time to attend their Evensong.  It was a mass-type service with organ, choir, scriptures and prayer. It's the cheaters way of getting to see inside the Abbey without having to pay for the tour.  We got to pass Sir Isaac Newton's tomb on the way out, so it was worth the hour long service.

We stopped to admire Big Ben and spent some time on the bridge, ending our walking tour of the heart of London - and good thing because it was getting really cold at this point.

We had to make some creative underground changes to reach St Paul's, but it was an item at the top of Sarah's Bucket List so it was a must to get her there.  It was just starting to get dark when we arrived, which gave us a beautiful, bright blue sky for a backdrop.

As we headed back to the subway station, we decided to do a little detour since we were so close to the Millennial Bridge and knew the skyline would be beautiful at night.

It took at least an hour to get back home with the underground closures, so going to sleep was no problem for us - and helped us to be ready on time for our 6:30 am flight to Vilnius via Warsaw, Poland.

London 2017 - Day 1

Friday, February 3 - Saturday, February 4, 2017

We are absolutely pinching ourselves!  It is just unreal that we are taking our family back on another adventure in Lithuania!  Kaleidoscope Pictures will be shooting another Christmas movie for BYUtv - Instrument of War.  The story takes place in a German POW camp.  However, it is too expensive to shoot in Germany and Utah doesn't look a thing like Germany, so the decision was made to go back to Lithuania where both problems are solved.  And since we loved our time there so much last year, there was just no hesitation to come back.  

So here we are at 8:30 in the morning, loaded up in an airport shuttle on our way to spend 2 days in London and then fly on to Lithuania.  Of course, our whole family isn't in this picture.  And that's because we aren't all going just yet.  Since this is Tyson's senior year and he has graduation coming up, he could only miss 2 months of school.  We will be gone 2 months and 3 weeks, so if you factor in the week of Spring break, he can only be gone 2 months and 1 week.  So we made the decision to leave him behind and have him join us after finishing 2 more weeks of school.  He wasn't nearly as sad to see us leave as we were to leave without him.  But to make up for him not being with us, we brought Adam's sister, Sarah, along with us instead.  This trip was the break she needed in her life right now and we are super excited to have her along with us!

Our flight to Philadelphia was a typical flight.  We watched movies and endured the tight seating.  However, our leg to London was a dream come true!

Here is the view from my seat to Jacob's seat.  Yes, the flight was not very full and almost every passenger had their own row!  We each took a sleeping pill and snuggled down into our row with blankets and pillows.  Jacob struggled to sleep, but I know I got at least 3-4 hours straight.  Unheard of!  It sure made the flight feel like it went by pretty quickly.

However, that didn't necessarily make London easier.  We still felt the pull of jet lag as we found our way onto the underground, minding the gap, of course, then dragging our suitcases to our hotel.  Thankfully, they had a room open for us even though we were early, so we could drop off our bags and freshen up.  We all so desperately wanted to lay down and sleep, but fought the temptation and headed back to the subway and the Tower of London.

Our hotel underground stop - Stamford Brook

Jet lag on the underground

I worked really hard in planning this trip to find a hotel near a subway line from the airport and into town so we could get around quickly and easily.  We got on to hear the announcement that the line that was supposed to take us out to the Tower of London was closed for the weekend for maintenance work.  Grrr.  We ended having to do a little extra walking - about 3/4 mile to get there.

At least we got to walk across the London Bridge and get a great shot of Tower Bridge in the background.  (Although, this shot shows that we haven't quite mastered the art of the selfie stick yet, as the bridge is almost not in the shot.  Yes, I caved and got a selfie stick for this trip.)

We got an even better shot of Tower Bridge from the Tower of London.

An almost smile from jet lagged Jacob at the Tower.

The White Tower

Catching the Changing of the Guard

Since there was no close subway, we attempted a bus.  We luckily found bus #15 that took us to Trafalgar Square, a place on our list of things to see.

I took this picture back in July when we were in London for the music recording of Winter Thaw, but I didn't take a picture this time.  There was an India festival going on here in July.

This is one of my favorite Van Gogh's.  My mom did a cross stitch of this back in the 70's and it hung in our house for years.  Jacob was annoyed I made him look at the art, but since I am his home-school teacher now, I insisted he look at something educational while we were there.  He also had to look at Seurat and Monet.  Poor, picked on kid!

Back in July, we ate at an Indian restaurant that we really liked, so our next stop was the Covent Garden section of town and Punjabs.  We loved the food, but probably would have enjoyed the meal more if we hadn't all been tempted to make a pillow out of the rice bowl to rest our jet lagged heads.

We were in luck finding a working subway line that got us back to our hotel. I bet we were all sound asleep by 8.