Poland...nice.

We decided to take a last-minute trip to Poland to visit Erin and her family before they left the wide, pot-holed world of Eastern Europe for the beauty and rain of of the Pacific NW. Seattle, to be exact. I'm soooooo glad we went! It had just never panned out in the 11-months we've been overlapping, what with time deciding to speed up and all. Of course, we had to take 8-million pictures of Maeve and Aoife, but don't worry, I cut it WAY down for the blog. Up above they're wearing matching outfits!! Do people ever get tired of dressing babies/little kids in matching clothes and then sitting around admiring them? I think not.

Another matching outfit, but you can't see the jeans. From Sister Dunn! Adorable.

Okay, not matching, but still cute. Look how huge they are! They're smashed into Aoife's little bassinet. The next pic in this series shows Maeve wailing her head off and Aoife with a very long-suffering expression. I didn't put it on the blog because I figured 30-ish pictures was already pushing it. Though, on the other hand, with that many up, what's one more? Good stuff.

Here we're at an amphitheatre in a park that all the kids were running around and jumping off of. I just liked this shot, catching Nuala in mid-air. Hmmm...she really should bend her knees for the landing. We'll work on that.

Handsome boys, Bran and Liam. We got there Friday afternoon and left Tuesday morning. Saturday we headed to a nearby castle for much running around and climbing of towers. It was great!

They loved walking along the low wall. Back and forth...back and forth...

Erin and Aoife atop a tower.

Beautiful!

Also beautiful! Nuala and Brigit were so excited to reunite. We could all feel the pink-girliness factor multiply by about 215. Weird how that happens...

Saturday afternoon we went to Old Town Warsaw. Wow! SOOOO not what I was expecting. It was like being in Western Europe. Actually all of Poland far surpassed my expectations. I thought that road-wise, service-wise, cleanliness-wise, etc., it would be more like Bulgaria, since they're both "eastern" European. And, it's not. Also, Poland is not a dull and bleak country! At least in the summer ;) "Poland" just sounds like "polar" to me, and even though logically I know there's no connection, and I've seen beautiful pictures of it, I still subconsciously make that association. No more! It has lovely green parks and land, and is really beautiful! Though apparently it's greener than usual because they got flood-quantity rain recently. Anyway. I'll say it again: Wow! Poland is quite lovely. While I'm glad we live in Bulgaria, and I love the mountains and the vibrant greens and the wildness of the country outside of Sofia, Warsaw is definitely a much nicer city than Sofia.

Yummy bread necklaces the kids (and their parents) liked a lot. The lady selling these shafted Z, but since Polish isn't one of the languages in his repertoire, not much to be done. I mean, Rob was around somewhere, but for a buck-fifty we let it slide.

In front of a sword-wielding mermaid statue in one of the squares. This square was the site of much, much pigeon-chasing. At one point, I saw Nuala and Colin taking a break from chasing to feed the pigeons crumbs from their bread. I mentioned to Zac how cute it was, and he enlightened me to the real reason they were doing it. They were gathering the birds into a nice clump so they could rush them again. Smart kids.

Seriously, everywhere we went, the five of them would just start racing around chasing each other. L-R, Liam, Bran, Colin, Brigit, Nuala. Aoife and Maeve were content to watch. For now.

Rob was nice enough to drive us through the area where the Warsaw ghetto was located during WWII. I really wanted to go there, even though there's not really anything left from that time. It was nice and, as always, sobering to see the memorial to those people who suffered and fought. I am a huge Leon Uris fan. Huge. He is definitely one of my very favorite authors. He writes amazingly gripping historical fiction. Once I discovered him in high school I was absolutely hooked. In fact, one of his books tipped me towards deciding to go into journalism at BYU. But anyway, one of his captivating, exhausting, informative, and super suck-you-in-y novels is Mila 18, about the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto and their brave and ill-fated uprising. I totally want to read it again, now. You should all read it. And pretty much most of his other books. Especially Trinity, The Haj, and Exodus. Okay, back to the regularly scheduled blog.

Sunday after church we went to Lazienki Park. During the summer on Sunday afternoons they put on a Chopin concert. Chopin, of course, was Polish. As we crossed the street to enter the park, we heard the last lovely strains of the piano... and then it was over. Oh well! It was still very pretty to hear. And the area was beautiful! Above you see the statue of Chopin, and the pianist sits right there to the right of it. There's a little pond in front, and then on the other 3 sides of the pond and little stage are plots of gorgeous roses and benches. It was so restful feeling. The whole park was pretty amazing. We had a great time walking through it.

Kinda felt Narnia-esque...

The summer palace of King Stanislaw August Poniatowski. The park was actually part of his hunting grounds. Behind his summer home, were....

Peacocks!

This guy was putting on quite the show for the female nearby. Then the American kids thought it would be cool to all try to touch its feathers, and while he was distracted his lady-friend made her escape. She hid in the bushes.

Monday morning we went to the Warsaw zoo. Took the zoo to the zoo! haha. The otter was pretty awesome. It was a nice zoo, especially because of ...

the WAFFLES! Yummmm. I kept thinking, "these are huge, I'll definitely have mine AND the rest of Nuala's or Bran's... awesome." But, no. The kids took good care of those things. I did get to slurp all of Nuala's cream off the top, lucky me!

This zoo had one of the best play areas I've seen at a zoo. Lotsa fun!

Monday afternoon, we walked to Erin and Rob's neighborhood palace. Yeah, cool, huh? This big bell was outside the lovely church next to it, and all the kids kept trying to ring it. Not too successfully, but it was fun trying!

Wilanow Palace. (The "W"s are pronounced like "v".) It was gorgeous. Well, you can see it. Gorgeous! Lots of running around space, lots of beautiful statues and artwork. We didn't go in, just walked around it and then on the grounds behind it. This is immediately after Liam and Nuala got married. While the grown-ups were all admiring the palace, a double wedding was apparently taking place on the lawn. Bran and Brigit tied the knot, too. While marrying your cousin is not exactly ideal, or legal in most places, it's slightly better than marrying your brother, so we consider this a move in the right direction.

See the statues lining the top of the palace? At one point as we were strolling underneath, we noticed two naked guys (yes, I mean statues), lounging atop, in perfect position to be, um... relieving themselves on the poor saps below. It was pretty funny looking... And, I know this comes as a shock, but I did take a pic. I just thought I'd spare you all the sight. Let your imagination run with it instead.

Awww... cute little swan family! Yeah, right. Vicious little suckers! Nuala was excited to see them, because I've been telling her the Children of Lir story quite a bit, with a princess named Fionnuala, just like her, who is turned into a swan with her brothers. So she was feeling all buddy-buddy with them, when apparently one of the big swans felt like she was too close -- even though THEY were the ones advancing -- and hissed sooo loudly at her! Oh, it was funny, poor panicked Nuala! Shoulda seen her swift yet bumbly retreat. The grounds of the palace were beautiful and the kids loved rolling down the hills around it. The mosquitoes, though... oh, the mosquitoes!

Here's Bran's bite. It got huge. BUT, that's nothing compared to little Colin's bites. One morning he had one eye almost swollen shut. The next morning the other eye! But luckily the first one had gone down. And he had several more gigantically swollen bites on his face and head. Rob was calling him Quasimodo.

We're so glad we went, we had such a great time! The trip was quick and went really well. The kiddos are good travellers, especially since they're 3-1/2 now, and Maeve... well, not only is she usually well-behaved, but she's ONE baby, so that in and of itself is easier. We went through Prague, and they have a terrific play area. A big double-decker maze, with a slide and all sorts of fun little things to do. So perfect. The most difficult part of the trip, actually, was struggling for at least half an hour with the lame and semi-ancient car seats we got from the car rental place for Nuala and Bran. We got ones for 3-yr olds, but we keep forgetting how huge our 3-yr olds are. Those poor tykes were overflowing them mightily. Anyway, we had a wonderful time! It was so fun hanging out with Erin and Rob and seeing Poland. And we had Thai food AND Mexican food while we were there! Heaven.