Valentine's Day 2016

Sunday, February 14, 2016

We finally made it to church!  Here's the proof:

Vilnius Church Building: 83 Ateities St

Before we left, I prepped the meat for our Valentine's dinner.  It's always scary to try a foreign stove, especially when leaving it for 3 1/2 hours.  At least it is a newer oven, so I had no choice but to trust it.  I don't know how anyone ever traveled without the internet.  I google to translate language, convert temperature, research the area, look up Lithuanian recipes, find pictures... So I was able to look up the temperature I wanted, turn on my convection oven and we came home to a delicious smell.  It's a blessing that at least onions and garlic are universal!

Adam made arrangements for our taxi rides.  It really sets the tone for church to listen to a little top 40 radio on your way.  Everywhere you go, American music is playing.  There seem to be very few Lithuanian artists - I should google that and find out.

It's always a little scary to go to church somewhere new.  But when we walked in we were immediately welcomed by at least 7 sets of missionaries.  I didn't count, but it seems like there were 4 sets of Elders and 2 sets of sisters, and then 1 senior couple.  This was the Lithuanian family branch.  There is also a Russian branch that meets at 2, and they have their own missionaries, though I'm not sure how many.  When missionaries are called to the Baltic mission (covering Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Belarus) they are called to speak either Russian or one of the specific languages for each country.  The Russian speaking missionaries cover the entire mission, where the specific languages stay within that specific country.  In Lithuania, there are only 4 sizable cities, and so the missionaries rotate only within those 4 cities.

There was also smattering of people transplanted here.  Two families - actually, a family around our age and an empty nester couple - are here from America working to do reconstruction on the US Embassy.  For the older couple, she only agreed to come if her husband promised to show her Europe.  Apparently, they travel all the time.  With a little advanced planning, you can travel all over Europe for really cheap.  There is also a newly wed couple who arrived in Lithuania 3 days after they got married so he could come play basketball - a hugely popular sport here.  Another young man is recently arrived from Brazil to play football (soccer).  Then there was a group visiting from the BYU travel abroad group located in Riga, Latvia.  They were here for the weekend to see Vilnius.  Only the 2 families from our group attended this ward.  The others went to the Russian branch as a couple of them speak Russian from their missions.

We were thankful to arrive early enough to get translator headsets.  They had about 15-20 of them and one of the Elders translated the entire meeting for all of the above mentioned English speakers.  The missionaries are relied on heavily for translating.  The Bishop only speaks Lithuanian.  Some of the members, including the YM's President, only speak English.  So the missionaries have to translate in meetings and interviews.  It was a missionary farewell Sunday.  One of their more recent converts is leaving Thursday to serve in Scotland.  He is the only member in his family, who is a little distressed that their son is leaving them for 2 years.  But he was enthusiastic about leaving.

There was an English speaking Sunday school class that was taught by the senior couple, who are here serving the young adults in the area.  With all of the visitors, the class was pretty good sized.  The boys attended their class, which was all of the youth combined into one Sunday school class with a set of Elders there to translate.  They said it was a little chaotic, but such a good experience for them.  Both came away feeling so thankful for our ward.  There were only 2 YM to pass the sacrament and no priests to bless the sacrament, so that's how small their youth program is.  I bet there were only about 5 Lithuanian families and maybe 15 other members there.  They will really need some foreigners to continue to live there until their numbers grow.  The older people in this country are very leery of anything or anyone new.  The youth are all atheists and have very little comprehension of God.  So spreading the gospel here is quite a challenge.

The sisters in Relief Society were all very welcoming.  Thankfully, one of the Sister missionaries translated for us there as well.  At the beginning of RS, they asked if anyone could play the piano.  When no one raised their hand, I felt the pressure and volunteered to play.  Thankfully, music is universal.  And playing kept me from slaughtering the words of the Hymns.  I don't understand their pronunciations of letters at all.  It would be like learning half of the alphabet all over again.  It's still amazing to me how fluent these missionaries get after only a year or so of speaking the language.  Our lesson was a read conference talk by the lady I'm assuming was the RS President.  She mostly just looked flustered.  I had much empathy for her.

The boys enjoyed YMs a little more than Sunday school, as it was all in English.  In fact, for our scripture time tonight, we had everyone share something they had learned today in church and both of them shared what they had learned in YMs.  (Their lesson had been on sustaining your priesthood leaders.)

 The windows on the side are to the chapel and overflow area.  When the 2 spaces are combined, I'm guessing it makes up the cultural hall.  It was a bigger building than I was expecting.

The residential housing surrounding the church was all in the style of this spectacular Russian-style architecture.  It's just depressing looking.  And there was quite a bit of it.  The only businesses we really saw were grocery stores and gas stations.  It really made me feel how hard the Soviet occupation was for the Lithuanian people - and no wonder the population now is all atheist.  This just does not promote a feeling of love.

It was nice to have Adam come home from church with us.  That hasn't happened in years.  We even got to just rest when we got home!  A couple of our dinner guests wanted to bring some traditional foods - a Ukrainian potato salad and a Russian salad - so dinner was pretty easy on my part.  The roast turned out juicy and fell right apart like it was supposed to.  I also made a traditional Lithuanian dish - at least that's what the internet told me.  I boiled potatoes in water with dill (they love dill in this part of the world) and then made several sauces (I did a mushroom, a bacon and a beet sauce) that you use to dip your potato in.  Kendalls provided a cheese platter appetizer and cake for dessert.  We had a Valentine's feast!

No one stayed late as it was a work night.  Shooting begins first thing tomorrow morning!  Call time is 6 am.

Saturday - 

I never wrote about Saturday.  For starters, we woke up to sun shining brightly through our windows.  That's never happened before.  I now know that our kitchen windows face east and that those windows would need blinds if the sun actually came out more often.  It was bright.

The morning was spent doing more laundry and homework.  Tyson chose to stay home the whole day.  He napped and did more homework.  Jacob and I met up with the Kendalls.  We went to the National Museum.  It has been rebuilt in the style of the Grand Duke's palace over the ruins of the site of former palaces of the Grand Duke.  (Apparently, this whole region was one larger country with smaller areas being ruled by a Grand Duke.  Today, Lithuania is its own country with a President and elections.)  In the basement, you could see the old foundation stones from palaces of the past.  On other floors, there were items found in the excavation of the palace and other historical items.

Because it was a Saturday, there were guys in costume reenacting sword fights.

 They had swords and armor for the kids to try out.

 The highlight for the kids was playing a huge game of chess.

You can see the old foundation walls in the background.

 17th Century throne of the Grand Duke.

 Replications of the crowned jewels of various rulers.

Grand Palace courtyard.

Borsch on a Rainy Day

Friday, February 12, 2016

Tyson has decided he wants to work on the show.  I'm not sure when he's going to squeeze in any homework, but since this is what he's interested in doing as a living, it will be good for him to see how it all works.  Today was his first day.  I'm not sure he did a ton, but he fills in where help is needed and will probably do lots of "go for" type errands.  His report on the day was excitement at meeting all of the actors and getting to know the crew members.  This was the first day all of the actors were together, so it was a rehearsal day at the main production office.  Tomorrow will also be a rehearsal day and then the filming will begin on Monday.

Jacob and I were on our own for most of the day.  It was another day of steady rain/sleet.  It's tried to snow, but nothing has really accumulated.  All is does is make the sidewalks really sloshy.  You have to watch your feet the whole time so you don't step in puddles.  Some of them are pretty good sized.  They must spend all of the warm weather time fixing potholes and broken up sidewalks.

The rain took away a lot of our motivation to go out, but by lunchtime we were ready to brave the elements.  There is a pizza place near us called Charlie's Pizza.  We had also seen one in Klaipeda and there is a pretty steady stream of people coming in and out of it, so we figured it was a good place to try.  We were not disappointed.  There must have been 30 pizza choices on the menu - some of them very bizarre like tuna and mayo - but we each found what we wanted and it was delicious!  Jacob said it was even better than Costco pizza.  (And that's saying something for him, though I think lots of things beat Costco's pizza.)  It may be dangerous to know there is a yummy pizza place so close to us.

 Braving the rain to try out Charlie's Pizza.

Jacob is holding up his pizza and it is sagging down - which is proof it is good pizza.  "The stuff they give us at school sticks out straight as a board."

My real motivation for dragging Jacob outdoors was to have his help hauling home groceries - something we seem to do a lot of. But you can only carry so much at a time, especially when you are getting liquids and potatoes.  I decided to start shopping for our Sunday dinner, getting the heavy things close to home.  Then tomorrow I'll walk back up to Maxima to get the more specialty things I need.  Jacob really hates shopping, but he was interested in looking at the different types of snacks.  Yes, I bribed my child to go shopping with me and carry home a bag.

 Looking up our little street.  Right in the middle of the picture above the people walking in the middle 

of the road is the hanging sign for Azia Spa, which marks our courtyard.

 The stairs we have to haul the groceries up when we get home.

I took a picture of the picture that is at the top of our stairs.  I'm kind of in love with it.

We forgot to grab card games to bring from home.  They were on the packing list, but just didn't make it in.  At the time it just wasn't a strong priority.  We broke down and bought some face cards.  The 2 of us spent the afternoon playing Russian Rummy and watching a movie.

Because it is a Friday, several of the crew wanted to go out to dinner.  Marsh Morford served his mission in the Ukraine, and he discovered there was a Ukrainian restaurant not too far away.  I don't know if I would have dared eat there on my own, but going with someone who knew what to order was really fun.  We ate family style, so we got to try a number of things.  Surprisingly, my favorite thing was the Borsch.  We also had a platter of pickled vegetables and raw bacon (I couldn't get myself to try the bacon), traditional potato salad prepared in a few different ways - one with beef and peas, the other with seafood - and we had dumplings, each with different fillings: potato, seafood, beef, spinach and curd, and cherries with a sweet sauce.  On the walk back home, there was lots of mixing and mingling and getting to know others.  The adult conversation was nice.

I need to do better at the picture taking.  Jacob's is the only plate we got a shot of.  It's basically thin pancakes with a fried egg over lots of fried bacon pieces.  There was so much bacon, he only ate about 1/2 of it.  We thought the pig cast iron pan was cute, and that's why this dish got a picture.

My mom informed me that my blog isn't allowing people to post comments.  I'm really sorry about that.  I've tried to fix it, but I can't figure it out.  If you want to comment, you can email or text me.

Our Vilnius Apartment

Thursday, February 11, 2016

Woohoo!  The cleaning lady came today, so I have pictures of our apartment to post.  But first we had to get out of the apartment so she could clean.  That took us to the Kendall's place where we hung out before heading out to the indoor market.  It rains daily here, but it was very steady all day today.  Our $5 Ross umbrellas are all on their last leg, so we were in the market for replacements and whatever else we could find worth having.

The market was a combo between outdoor markets I have been to and a mall.  (I didn't take any pictures. Ooops!)  Mostly there were foods and clothes for sale.  We (the Kendalls and us) are going to host a Valentine's dinner for all of the US people on Sunday, so I was on the hunt for a roast.  I found a place that had what looked like roasts, but no signs were in English.  With the help of google translate I typed in "beef roast" and "15 people" and the nice lady was able to help me.  It was beautiful meat and would have been probably $30-40 at Costco.  I paid 13 Euros (~$15).  Some prices are crazy cheap here.  I felt like I was ripping off the nice lady, but she seemed really happy to have made the sale.  We may be shopping there for meat from now on.  But not on Mondays, of course.

In another booth, I saw a skirt that I really liked.  I pulled it off the rack and was showing it to Christianne, when another sweet little sales lady came right over.  She went through the rack and found the same skirt in my size, so I decided to try it on.  The "dressing room" was a corner of the booth with a curtain I could almost pull shut.  Thankfully, I had my legging jeans on and had decided to leave them on and just pull the skirt over them.  About the time I had the skirt around my hips, my little sales lady came right in and started to help me.  I was trying not to laugh as she tugged and zipped at me while the episode of Everybody Loves Raymond started flashing through my mind - the one where they're in Italy and the Italian mama comes in while Ray is in the tub and starts scrubbing him.  That's how I felt with her right there in my space helping.  At least the skirt fit.  So just because of how funny the moment had been, I had to get the skirt to always remember the experience.

We found umbrellas and made it home dry through the rain, taking a quick detour to visit the All Saints Church.  We walk by it all the time.  The one time we tried to go in, it was just the beginning of 5 o'clock mass so we decided not to go in.  The other times we just haven't.  So today we did.  I actually love the history of this church, which was built in the early 1600s.  During the Nazi occupation, this church was near the gate to the larger of the 2 Jewish ghettos.  A tunnel was built to this church from the ghetto and food was smuggled in to the starving Jewish people.  Some Jews even managed to escape through this route.

All Saints Church (I pulled this picture off the internet, hence the blue sky)

And then we arrived at our beautifully clean home. Ahhh...

The cute little street, Mikalojaus, that we live off of.

The entrance to our courtyard.  We live above the Azia spa.  (Now why haven't I been there yet?)

Our front door and main living area.  Tyson is in the dining area, the red 

couch marks the family room, and to the right is our kitchen.

Just as you walk in, to the immediate left, there is this cute little sitting area with a closet where we can take off and store all of our coats, gloves, scarves, etc.  It's also great to have a place to sit and put on your boots - especially since we aren't to walk around the apartment in our shoes.

Our kitchen.  At the left of the picture is the corner of our fridge.  The Kendalls only have a half fridge, so we feel fortunate ours is a full size.  Jacob is standing between the sink to the left, and the stove top to the right.  There are no upper cabinets, so dishes and everything go in drawers and cupboards.  There is a little bar area behind the stove and drawers (the water bottle is sitting on the bar counter.)

Tyson is sitting in the dining room getting ready to do homework.  The couch doubles as Jacob's bed.  It's much better that the boys aren't trying to share a double bed.  The TV works, but only gets about 5 stations - all in Lithuanian.  All of these windows open and have great rooftop views.

You can see this red wall in the kitchen picture and behind it is the hallway with our guardian angel - although with Valentine's Day this weekend, we may start calling her Cupid.  Either way, she really needs a trumpet in her hands to look complete.

The boy's bedroom is the first door on the right.  Even though Jacob is sleeping on the couch, we have made it very clear that this is still a room that they share.  Usually the floor is covered with their clothes, so this is a good moment for this room.

 On the door to the left is our bathroom.  The toilet is the first thing you see.  Surprisingly, there are no curtains in the bathroom - only in the 2 bedrooms.  But we've looked around carefully and there are actually no windows that face us, so we're pretty sure no one can see in.  If they can... I guess we just take comfort in knowing we'll never see them again after we leave.  Or should I say that they'll never see us again...

Turning into the bathroom, this is what you see.  We love our soaker tub and modern sink.  Some homes have the washing machine in the kitchen, so we're grateful ours is in here.

At the end of the hall is our master bedroom.  It's a good sized room and we are happy with it - except that the bed is really squeaky.  We wake each other up sometimes just by rolling over.  We're tempted to take our bed off of the frame, which wouldn't be a big deal since we're practically on the floor anyways.

The rest of our bedroom - desk and walk-in closet.  The closet is always full of wet clothes with the fan on to dry them, but at least they're out of the way!

And that completes the tour of apartment #14.


Tonight I was really proud of Tyson for attending the joint youth activity of the local branch even though we haven't attended there yet.  This is when it's nice to have another teenager here - he and Braedon gave each other the courage to go.  It was supposed to be a Valentine activity with nachos and a dance.  Only 5 other youth showed up, so no dance.  Instead they talked about dating.  But Tyson still came home happy saying it had felt good to be at church and be around things that felt good and familiar.  He actually said the words, "I've missed church." !!!  Those are words a mom wants to hear!  I am so thankful he is building his own testimony and that he is feeling how the gospel makes a difference in a really great way in our lives.  Yes! Yes! Yes!

Muziejus Atviras

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

We woke up to rain and none of us felt anxious to go out in it.  Instead, Tyson and Jacob got some homework done.  I did another load of laundry and took a long bath in our beautiful soaker tub.  We had talked about going out if the rain let up and were just making some lunch when our doorbell rang.  Jacob ran down to answer it and it was the Kendalls.  Their cleaning lady comes on Wednesdays, so they were finding things to do while they had to be out of their apartment.  They waited while we finished our lunch and got changed.

We took a side road as we left on our adventures so we could walk along Literatu Street.  Art - pictures and words - is embedded in the wall along this cute road depicting anyone and anything that has contributed to Lithuanian literature over the centuries.  The people here really are proud of their heritage and culture.  It was really beautiful.

Literatu Street

At the end of this beautiful tribute road, is the 1500 Gothic-style church, St Anne, with the St Bernadine church behind it - built by the Bernadine monks about 15 years after St Anne.  I'm not sure why they were built so close together, but St Anne's is quite small.

St Anne and St Bernadine churches

Our grand destination for the day was the Toy Museum.  I don't know how to pronounce them, but I now recognize "muziejus" as museum and "atviras" as open.  Well, the muziejus was not atviras.  And it's not Monday!  So I googled it and learned it didn't open until 2.  We had about 30 minutes to kill, and being as it was still drizzling, we headed to our nearby favorite treat spot - Soprano.  You just can't ever have too much gelato.

Soprano on Pilies Street

We made it back to the Toy Museum, which would have been more appropriately titled as a little kids play place.  The teens were not impressed.  Once again, we split up so Ari could stay and play.  Jacob really wanted to take Braedon and Maya to the Energy and Transportation Museum.  Hey, at this point, what's another mile of walking -- away from the direction of home.  But we had the place to ourselves almost the whole time we were there.  The kids spent most of the time "blowing up the world" one country at a time in the room now affectionately known by all as the "Batman Cave."  (This reference is to the 1960s TV Batman series with Adam West.  To Jacob, this room looked like that Batcave.)  At least I had games on my phone to entertain me for the 2 hours we were there.  I was also able to clean out my purse, which is now garbage free and very organized.

 "The Batcave"

The temperature had noticeably dropped when we left for home.  There is snow in the forecast - on and off over the next several days.  Since they need snow for Monday's shoot and don't want to have to "make snow", we pray the forecast is right!

Happy 17th Birthday, Tyson!

Tuesday, February 9, 2016

My baby boy is 17!  Not sure how it happened, but it feels like he's really changed physically in the past few months and is so much more manly.  Adam started growing a beard the day we left.  They have several outdoor filming days, so the beard is to help keep his face warm.  With so much weight loss, he's having a hard time staying warm.  So Tyson decided to join him and I'm impressed with how much his has really grown.  I'm not sure it like this feeling that he's going to be grown and gone soon.  I love the stages my boys are in right now - it's easy to go do things, they can actually be useful when they choose to be and we can have real conversations and laughter together.  There are days when I want to freeze time, and our more simple days spent together here have increased that feeling.

But enough of the sentimental.  We literally celebrated the entire day.  At the last minute of packing to come, it occurred to me that even with our house torn apart with the remodel, I actually knew where some streamers were.  There wasn't much left, but I tucked what we had away in my suitcase.  Last night after Tyson went to bed, Jacob and I hung them in the family room.  That totally surprised Tyson when he woke up this morning.

On our grocery shopping outing yesterday, I let also let Tyson choose our breakfast.  I should have known better.  We had lots and lots of meat.  

I also made everyone eat some fruit.

Because we had our cleaning lady come last week on Tuesday and we were late to get out of the apartment, we scurried off on time today.  The Kendalls youngest (Ari, 5) was in no mood to walk all around town, so just the 2 oldest came with us.  Tyson thought his birthday would be more interesting if other teenagers were a part of the day.  I feel like I spent the whole day trying to keep up with teens.  I kept getting distracted with what I was seeing and then I'd have to walk real fast to catch up again - a lot of it on cobblestone sidewalks.  I am pretty sure that everyone in the 1500s walked around with sprained ankles.  They had to!  That stuff is just plain hard to walk on.

We began our outing buying tickets for the afternoon English tour of the Vilnius Cathedral Crypt, which need to be bought early in the busy season, so we could have perhaps skipped that step because there aren't a lot of tourists around in February.  But at least we knew we had our spots in the group.  Our next destination took us past the Presidential Palace (their version of the White House) 

on the way to Vilnius University - which was about the size of AF High School and took all of 10 minutes to see.  

A courtyard at Vilnius University

The highlight, that was a must see according to all of the tour books, was the bookstore, which is in the oldest building on the campus and had the ceilings painted.  They were lovely - if you like naked people, which made the boys uncomfortable and they ended up walking through the bookstore looking only at the books, which were mostly in Lithuanian.  Hmmm.  But we didn't let the campus flop deter us.

Bookstore door.  And my reflection.

We had seen an Italian restaurant and headed in that direction.  Yummily, but unfortunately, they only sold dessert.  We would end up back there later in the day.  

Italian shop called Soprano.  Tyson's into Italian mafia right now,

so the reference was funny.

But we were on the hunt for real food.  We knew there was a good restaurant several blocks away that the dads had had on one of their work days, so we wanted to try it, too.  We got all the way there and found it was closed.  It wasn't even a Monday!  We tried the Indian restaurant next door.  It was also closed.  So we walked further and found another Italian place.  It wasn't open, but the waitress was standing in front of it smoking and informed us it was opening and let us in.  The restaurant was in the basement with really cool low ceilings and a steady stream of American 70s music playing in the background.

Two side notes: 1) There aren't really many restaurants that serve actual, authentic Lithuanian food.  They are mostly like what you would find in the states - pizza, sandwich shops, Italian, Asian, Mexican, and so on.  One local crew member said that when they go out, they want something different than what they would make at home - like us.  2) Most of the older people you meet speak little to no English, they don't smile at you and they act like they really don't trust us.  On the other hand, most 20-somethings and younger know enough English to be able to converse with us and they are very outgoing and friendly.  Our waitress at the Italian place today spoke very well and told us she learned mostly from watching TV as a kid.  She even knew slang phrases and had less of an accent than others I've heard.  The difference seems to be the Soviet occupation that lasted until 1991.  The older generation knows Russian and the younger English.  I'm sure the older generation also has memories of loved ones lost who were deported, imprisoned, etc during the occupation.  There is definitely a feeling of hope and energy that exudes from the rising generation of Lithuanians.

Our lunch was delicious - as has been everything we've eaten here.  I guess I have a 3rd side note.  The food feels more organic and fresh here.  We've been told that they are really fighting the food industry to keep GMO foods out of Lithuania.  You can taste the difference.  The food is just better.

I made everyone use the W/C, as restrooms are labeled here, before leaving.  We've learned that you use one when it's available because there just aren't many around otherwise.  We still had time before our crypt tour and we were now back by the Vilnius Cathedral, so we decided to tour the old castle that stands above it on a hill.  That hadn't been in our plans because Maya had already been there, but we had time.  This castle hasn't been rebuilt the way Trakai Castle has, but there is a tower you can tour where they had real 15th century armor and weapons on display.  

Tower of the Vilnius Castle

And, of course, there were lots and lots of stairs.  We walked around the castle top and enjoyed the views of both old and new Vilnius.

 New Vilnius

Panorama of Old Town Vilnius

On the hilltop next to the castle was the Hill of Three Crosses, so that became our next destination.  

We crossed the river and started on the road up to the crosses when Tyson decided to detour and take the scenic, muddy, steep route instead - and apparently, we weren't allowed to argue because he was the birthday boy.  After slipping and sliding and huffing and puffing, I made it to the top just a little behind the young, energetic teenagers.  (Remember, we've been walking for about 21/2 hours by now.)  They had found sticks along the way that were now acting as swords and were all well into their make-believe Lord of the Rings world.  

I made them stop and walk around the crosses once, just to make sure they actually saw what we had climbed up to see.  

They wanted to take the 4-wheel drive route back down the hill when they were done with their battle scene.  I told them I'd meet them at the bottom, but was taking the trail.  The joke was on me.  I took the path around the corner and was met by hundreds of stairs, some of which were missing.  My knees were very unhappy with me by the time I reached the bottom of the hill.

By this time, Ari was ready to be out in the world, so he and Christianne joined us.  (Christianne has a local cell phone from the production office that she was given because she's the Kaleidoscope Accountant and sometimes their office accountant needs to talk to her.  Thanks to the Corbridges, we also have 2 phones, and the production office gave us SIM cards for them, so we can all communicate with each other.  And the husbands each have one, also from the production company, so our communication here with each other is great!)  

Our hiking had brought back our appetites, so we knew it was time for the Italian dessert shop - where most of us proceeded to ordered crepes.  But they took some time to cook, so we also shared several scoops of gelato while we were waiting. 

It was finally time for our crypt tour.  We were taken into the basement of the Vilnius Cathedral where they have been excavating dead people.  They actually don't know who most of the people are that they find.  Between floods washing things away and the loss of information during the Soviet occupation, there is little left to give them details.  But it was a great tour with a cute college aged girl as our guide, and so interesting just to see what it was like under the church.

One of the famous people they do know is buried here - 

Queen Barboros, translated into English: Barbara.

Yes sister, your name is popular here!

By this time we had walked at least 5 miles, so it was time to head home.  We stopped at our favorite dessert shop and bought a birthday cake for Tyson's birthday party that evening.  We were ready to be home.  And walked in to discover that the cleaning lady hadn't come.  I was so sad!  We learned that it was a holiday today - a pagan holiday celebrating the end of winter where people dress up in costumes.  We had seen some college students walking around in costumes and had wondered what they were doing (we thought the holiday had been on Saturday).  We wonder if that's why some of the restaurants were closed and the cleaning lady didn't come.  We'll try to resolve the cleaning situation in the morning.  It wouldn't matter, except that we don't have a broom and our floor desperately needs one.

Adam came home about 30 minutes later and we headed out to dinner.  We always eat in because it's so tiring for Adam to go out at night, but we made the exception for Tyson's birthday.  He wanted to go to a yummy burger place we liked called Le Butcher.  It was closed.  We've now walked at least 6 or 7 miles today and we were all exhausted.  But we had no dinner, so we walked back to the main road and much to Jacob's dismay, found a sushi place.  But it's Tyson's day, so his choice.  Jacob had a Coke for dinner.  I had soup and a little of their sushi - it was actually quite good.

We were in our own private little booth - renamed by us: The Birthday Booth.

But because of the delay from the change in restaurants, we now had to hurry back to our apartment for Tyson's birthday party.  We had invited the Kendalls and the 3 other guys who are here from home for the filming - Marsh Morford (another producer from Kaleidoscope), Travis C (cameraman), and Gerald Hartley (sound man) - to come over for cake.  We had used google translate at the shop and hoped it was really hazelnut.  It was.  I felt worried for a moment that it would end up being mocha and we'd have to throw it all away and there would be no birthday cake.  But my relief was short-lived when Ari's lips started to puff up.  We all learned tonight that Ari is allergic to hazelnuts.  Thankfully, they had Benadryl and live just down the alley.  Still, Tyson felt very celebrated to have everyone come and sing and eat. (Unfortunately, the pictures from the party are on Adam's phone.  I may never see them.)

The night ended with a facetime call with grandma.  She always makes Tyson feel loved.  He went to bed feeling like he'd had a very good day.

And now I am exhausted.  However, I think I will need to stretch out before I go to bed.  My leg muscles are tightening up and I don't think I'll be able to sleep until I pay some attention to them.  Sorry for such a long post.  It was a long day.