~One More Day... One More Time~

So in case you didn't know, my blog title today is a Phil Vasser song that I felt appropriate for the day. That's all I'll say about that.

Today started for me around 4:50am. It was just SO pretty outside and I was EXTREMELY excited to get going on the day.

These are the last views from our windows that you'll get from me for awhile... I'm sure you're tired of seeing these same views, but I guess I'm just trying to capture just how beautiful it is. So I had a few productive hours this morning then Maddix woke up early and I think he had a bad dream. Funny enough, his first request of the morning was for his "cool guy hat." Then he asked for Winnie the Pooh

Then he helped me pack ( do you remember the pictures of him helping me pack to come here?)

They looked JUST like these! 

We thoroughly enjoyed the day. Travis was BURNED out and didn't study a bit for his big big final tomorrow......... yikes, but just couldn't do it, so we went to go get some lunch and then tonight we had some people over for branch FHE/Watch the soccer game:)

After everyone left, I looked around the apartment and realized I still had tons to do and I didn't want to do it:) So now we're watching a movie and going to bed! End of story...... but you know we'll be back up around 4:30am to get the rest all finished.
Oh and here's a pictures of what a snack pile looks like when you're prepping for a 15hr flight and your husband has a say in the snacks:

...Our Final Sunday...

Well it came, we loved it, and now it's almost gone; only 49mins left to be exact. I am speaking of our last Sunday here in Lublin with the American Families and our beloved Elders. We have grown so attached to them and I'm sad to think they wont be here when we return.

So we started our day around 4:00am, and not because the sun was up, but because our SON was up. Maddix did not sleep well last night and as a result neither did we. But it was cute, this morning Maddix ran into bed with Travis and had to lay the same way he was, and then he pretended to snore and sleep:)

Once we were officially up for the day we prepared for church and I left the boys at home and went to Church early to practice my song I sang in sacrament: I know That My Redeemer Lives

Church was pretty enjoyable. We had Seena come and listen to me sing (she is such a wonderful and sweet person) and the Elders had a visitor with them who was very nice. So besides Maddix's worst showing at church to date, it was good. I don't know if Travis would give the same report seeing as he was the one to take Maddix "out" and listened to him scream until he passed out :D Then he slept the rest of the time and right through our branch council meeting; thank goodness.

Then there was lunch using left overs in the fridge:

I'm not going to lie, I wish we'd had this meal more while we were here! So tasty

Afterward we began to sort our apartment into three categories: 1) what belongs to the apartment 2)What we're leaving here in our friend's apartment and 3) What we're taking back to Utah with us. So once again we destroyed the apartment in an effort to clean it up. While we were packing Travis undug a paper that he and Maddix had used to Protest me one day. We can't remember WHY they made this sign, but the image of Travis and Maddix pacing back and forth singing, "Strike! Strike! Mean mommy! Mean mommy!" danced through our heads:

It had us laughing (click on it and you'll see the sign says "mean mom"). I think I was putting off dinner one night so they picketed the kitchen!

Well then there was the best/hardest part of the day: Our farewell dinner with the Elders :(

We will forever love these Valiant Young Men (oh and the sword was a gift from Elder Kennedy and Elder Mikolyski, and the AMAZING juice was from him and Elder Hancock. Such sweethearts)

Yeah... this is just how we are when we get together!

Well, thank goodness tomorrow we're hosting the branch fhe at our house. Everyone (who ever ends up coming) is going to bring a snack and come over to watch the next Euro Cup soccer game. So we'll get another chance to say some goodbye's to the Elders and the Taiwanese students since they were gone today.

Goodbye Lublin, for now. Hello Utah!

June 9, 2012

Today it felt like June. A very humid June. I never did dry off from the shower this morning, and I'm still laying here in bed feeling clammy, yuck.

But today was fun, despite Maddix waking up in the wrong side of the bed.
While he napped we had Seena come over and study/babysit while Travis took me out for a quick surprise: He took me down to the farmer's markets where it wreaked of herbs and old people musk, then we made our way down to the mall. While there he told me he was purchasing me a "thanks for putting up with my studies and moving to Poland" present, no arguments:) Do I have the best hubby or what.

So we walked into this elegant Polish dress shop and the lady didn't speak English so when I pointed to the size on the dress to try and ask if it looked like my size she shook her head and lead me to the changing room... and then brought me every dress in the store that had that size! She continued to dress me, take my dresses as I finished, and tell me if she thought it was "too long" ha ha. So here's the first dress we got. We specifically picked it because it's so European and I love it:

And then she put so much effort into us and the dress was on sale... we HAD to get this second dress we found:) Again, I love you Travis:

I LOVED how elegant and fun this dress was. So after we got these two completely different dresses we had to find some shoes and accessories, but I refused to get two pairs of shoes, which left us with a very narrow variety (thank goodness every other store in the mall was a shoes store:), but we found those purple ones you can see.. and then we dawned the dresses with a matching purple necklace.

To make it all that much better we price matched everything when we got home and all of would come to $300 at home, and I got two high quality dresses, hight end heals, and a necklace for $170! So that spared me any buyers remorse and now I get to wear my new dress to church tomorrow.

Then tonight I snapped a few more views from our windows because... either it's just getting that much prettier, or I'm realizing I'm going to miss this view more and more.

Today Maddix and I also took some mommy-maddix time in between rainstorms and walked up to the REAL or our LAST grocery trip here. On the way home it started to rain again so we said a quick prayer and have you know it, it must have been a GOOD prayer because I'll have you know it it stopped right then and never started back up! And that was our day

~Everything Under the Sun~

Today. Was. Awesome. Or "Swietnie (Sh-vet-knee-ya)" as we say these days. 

The day was beautiful, although it was the most humid day we've experienced thus far, but it was nice to have the sun back! 

So Maddix and I did our work outs and it's fun because at the end he always claps, gives me a high five, and then flexes his muscles like they do on the video, and then sometimes we end it with him giving me rocks:) He and I then persisted to Clean, Clean, Clean! But you'd never guess we did. We hit that stage where you have to make the whole house dirty first to then get it all back in order (you mom's know what I mean: When everything is in the wrong place so you essentially put EVERYTHING in one pile in one room and then work from there to put it all away?). Unfortunately we just never finished with the cleaning... and I was really unmotivated because I knew I would just be re-deap cleaning tomorrow night to prepare for our last dinner with the Elders and Pawel. 

Anyway, I knocked out some laundry and my language lesson while Maddix napped and afterward we prepared to play outside. Travis ended up fed up with studying before we left so we changed our plans and headed down to Old Town before going to clean up the Church (It was our rotation this week to clean our little  flat we meet at for church); and I'm so glad we did. When we got to Old Town Pedestrian Zone there were large T.V.'s EVERYWHERE, Polish flags on EVERYTHING, and red and white painted on EVERYONE; Maddix even became a little Polish fan when some people on the street decorated him up: 

He didn't hold very still so it's a bit smeared, but that's the Polish Flag

After we had dinner (which was only $10 for all of us... man I'm going to miss the prices here!) we finished our walk down to the church house where we met the Elders who had the keys and enjoyed a little chat with them while they finished up some work. Then we all left together and noticed the streets starting to clear out: The Game was About to Start Poland vs. Greece, first game of the Euro Cup which is currently being played here in Warsaw before it finishes in Ukraine. 

This was us partying on our balcony listening to the masses of people shouting for miles and miles every time Poland did something good or bad. It was pretty loud! It's still winding down right now:) So we watched the game and enjoyed it as much as we could for how much the reception was skipping around ha ha. 

To end the night Maddix took a huge bubble bath which was needed... then he had reading time with daddy before going to bed late... again. I guess I just shouldn't call it late anymore.

And then these were some pictures I just took tonight because I'm going to miss the view from our windows

And now as I'm finishing posting these I just watched a lightening bolt strike across the sky through the pitch black.. oh I wish I could have caught that on camera. I guess I should also prepare to walk around in some rain tomorrow...

Well I think that was our day

*Our Farewells*

Well today we said our goodbye's go the Mecham Family... that's not true, Becky wouldn't let us say goodbye:) She doesn't like goodbye's so she said she'll just see us in Utah in a few weeks and for now that's that! So today we spent the day at the Mecham's helping them wrap up all their preparations for their flight tomorrow morning, playing games, and just enjoying each other's company. 

Thank you Mecham's for everything you've done for us and the branch out here. "We'll see you in a few weeks :)" Oh, and that being said, we DO still have Pres. Mecham here for a few more weeks before we find out who will be the new branch Pres. So we're so happy to know he's still around! 

So here was our day in pictures, but it can't express just how great the day really was: 

Maddix saw Daddy laying down and had to be like him with his blanket as well

Coloring through all the scratch paper they had to get through

Just impressed we could all fit in these jelly baskets

Hugs Goodbye

Umm, we just wanted to play with the colorful hangers

We wanted to see how far we could stretch them 

Raspberries

Cole noticed the tub was dirty so he simply meant to clean it when Maddix saw him and said, "Showie. Me? Pans, off peaze." Then continued by pulling down his pants... so we HAD to give him a bath.

Pres. Mecham just can't get enough of our little guy

wrapped in their robes he looked just like a jedi said the boys:)

So they dawned him with weapons. The bow was his weapon of choice

A little dinner

Even Negra came over to say goodbye. Maddix said, "Bye Nay Nay!"

We thoroughly enjoyed the last 5months with these wonderful folks. We love you guys! 

Then on a side note this morning when we woke up I was saying something to Travis when I said, "Oh my..." and I cut off and Maddix finished my sentence by saying, "fweak" HAHAHAHA. So Travis begins to give me a hard time over Maddix mocking me and I said, "Whatever what about the day you were saying 'What the heck?" and Maddix comes and says, "Whata Heck" AH! He did it to me twice.... to top it off a third time I said "Dang it," and you can guess what Maddix continued to say to me:) Brother, it's a good thing we don't say anything TRULY appalling because have officially hit that mocking bird stage!! 

~A great day to kick off our last week count down~

To start off, Travis just took his Biophysics final today and I'm happy to report that he scored top in the class! Only one (Asian) student from another group scored higher than him! Once again we're so proud of you Trav!

Then today we finally had a break from the rain during the afternoon so we hopped a bus over to the Plaza Mall and walked around and picked up a few goodies to take home to people. Once we got home Maddix and I took LONG naps! :)

Then tonight we had our first ever Relief Society Activity, hosted by our lovely Marlena at her apartment. It was also revealed to a few of the women that Becky and the kids weren't going to be at church this Sunday... or ever because they leave day after tomorrow.

After the Get-To-Together I went to the store with Becky and Bailey because tomorrow is a Holiday and nothing will be open... well there was almost NOTHING in the store. Picture Walmart with almost all their shelves EMPTY, and that's what we had tonight:) But we got enough. So yeah, that was the day. Oh and here are those pictures from our trip to the castle and church with the Mecham's a little while ago.

This is us in the Museum, in the Lublin Castle

This was the personal church to the royal family who lived in the castle

~Some Rainy Days~

Well I'd apologize for not blogging lately, but I'm truthfully not sorry:) For a few days there I thought I was going to rip every last hair out of my head, chip every tooth in my mouth, and break my New Year's Resolution to NOT say a single swearword in the year 2012 (not that I have a problem. I only said one last year... ONE! In Dec even. I ALMOST made it the whole stinkin' year!). Let's just put this out there, If anyone want to take Maddix for the summer: He's on loan-out! I am justified though; to sum it up
... The other morning Maddix decided NOT to wake us up when he got up at 5:30am and for some reason his door was open, so he went playing in the kitchen. Now let me back up and also say that the day before that our kitchen flooded TWICE. So that night I'd left a bucket full of dirty water in the kitchen. So Maddix went into the kitchen and decided to help by doing some of mommy's chores. He turned the oven on to the highest setting, swept the floor then tried to "sterilize" the broom by shoving it in the oven! OH, then he mopped the floor by dumping the bucket of dirty water back all over the floor. So when I found the kitchen I about dropped some bad words. That day he and I also broke out in weird bumps. His were hives and mine looked like bug bites. So on benadryl I went, and covered in cream went Maddix. Then I got loopy... so Becky Mecham took pity on Maddix and I and took him for the day to play with the kids. I napped and laid around barely coherent.
So many of our days have just been too unenjoyable for me to want to remember:) But the last few days have been better. Sunday he was wonderful at Church and we even had many American visitors who were here seeing their finished product so it was AWESOME.. although with the project wrapping up Becky and the Mecham family are leaving sooner....... this coming Friday. All I have to say is I panicked when I first heard this, but I'm happy for them.

So good news, as Travis has left us on our own again so that he can study every hour every day he went and took his anatomy final and scored 38/40! He said he feels like he over studied for it quite a bit:) So now he's down to 4 finals and we'll be leaving to Warsaw a week from tomorrow!

Hmm, what else, today Maddix has been extremely fun. We've had a lot of rainy days lately (partly why he's been out of control due to being stuck inside) so we've just tried to make the most of it, but we did discover a NEW favorite movie. Tonight he made himself a bed on the couch and I turned on BOLT. Once it was done he ever so politely BEGGED for it again.... he hasn't done that for a movie in awhile. So I think this one tops the list for the moment.

Cheese Tortellini with Sundried Tomatoes

Spinach Lasagna

Travis decided to slick back his hair the Italian way

"Do you like my hair oh ho ho!"

Seriously bored

Yelling, "I-stuck, I-stuck!"

A Bugs Bunny cartoon as we woke up from naptime

Fruity French toast anyone?

"Why yes, I think I will."

Why do all his meals end this way these days?!

And that's how our last few days have been.