Paragliding in Bulgaria

Fiona is folding laundry, so I'm going to sneak a post in... One of our many favorite things to do in Bulgaria was to paraglide. Living up on Vitosha mountain behind Sofia gave us ready access to a great flying area. We will put up a more detailed post soon with pictures and stories but for now we wanted to share some videos. The first video I made and it shows our last flights from two of our favorite spots. Nuala is sad because she didn't make the last video as she did not get a last chance to fly due to bad weather, though both of them fly in the second video. The second video is one made by my cousin Ben when he came out to Bulgaria in October 2010:
 
2012 (June) Last Flights in Bulgaria from Fiona Rollins on Vimeo.

Paragliding in Sopot, Bulgaria from Ben Ford on Vimeo.

The final Rila-ing

We went to Rila Monastery again.  Most likely for our last time... sigh... It's honestly one of our favorite places to go here, and we've been quite a few times.  Only 2 hours away... free... AWESOME frescoes and colors... beautiful mountain and nearby hike... fun and historic cave that Saint Ivan lived in to squish ourselves through... yummy honey to buy along the road... Anyway, we'll miss it.

This was actually in April, and I'm sure the mountain behind the monastery would be a lot greener now. It's lovely out!  

We got the trademark Rila Monastery doughnuts before we went in.  They were out of water buffalo yogurt (again).  The sheep yogurt is not as tasty.  I was trying to take a pic of the rascals on this wobby bench, and said, "Bran, don't let Maeve fall off!"  She latched on to that, and in this shot is saying, with great accusation in her voice, "Bran!! NOT let me fall off!"

She did not fall off, luckily for Bran. I'm pretty sure he would have been in big trouble with her had he "allowed" that to happen.

Until now, none of the three have ever been perturbed by the somewhat graphic depictions of souls being led away down to hell...  Finally, one of them showed a little bit of feeling! Maeve seemed slightly uncomfortable by the little demons sticking pitchforks in these poor guys' backs. Then she moved on.  Petted a cat... drank some water from the ladle that everyone else uses at the fountains... stuff like that...

Here is one of the fountains.  First she threw a mini-fit about the coins in there. She really wanted to fish out some stotinki...

Had to make do with water, poor child.

Here she is playing an awkward game of peek-a-boo with some fellow.  I don't know. Maybe neither he nor Zac found it awkward.  If I happened to catch the attention of a small child whose head then kept popping out from some stranger's backside to grin at me, I'd feel kinda weird.  Maybe that's just me.

Sittin' on the little chairs that line the outside of the monastery.  I need to lower my picture-taking expectations.  I had the cutest shot in mind, but after about 27 where one or two of the three kept NOT doing what I asked, I gave up. They're still cute. I'll keep 'em!

Maeve's  chomping a big ol' piece of Nuala gum here.  Nuala is big-time into gum.  Maeve is following in her sister's footsteps.  (In more ways than one, but this is not a post about whining.)

Bran found, and then stashed to pick up on our way back out, this huge stick on our way into the monastery.  You see, it has a little thick twig protruding from it that makes it very machine gun-like. 

It came home with us.  So did a few others.

My big, wonderful five-year olds! Also, they are exactly the same height.  Nuala tends to lean into her bro for these pics.   I can't believe the first time we came here, they were only 2-1/2. Well, okay... 2.75.  Man, time flies.   

Oh, oh, oh!! I almost forgot, and this is totally worth NOT forgetting. On the way back to the car, a teeny tiny yapper dog came running out of SOMEWHERE and totally surprised Nuala, who began screaming at the top of her lungs and took off running like a madwoman, the dog a-yappin' and a-nippin' at her heels.  Everyone in the vicinity just stopped and stared. The dog was tiny.  The girl was crazy.  Poor Nuala. It was hilarious.  We calmed her down and showed her how he was just playing, doing that, but he never did win her trust.  You had to be there. It was so funny. She is a LOUD screamer when she's playing, but add in some sheer terror for her life and, wow! Good times.

interesting sights: Kukeri Festival and SecState

Well, it's that time of the year again. Or it was, in January. Time for the Kukeri Festival!

If you don't recall from last year's post, the Kukeri Festivals date back to the ancient Thracian times when young men would dress in animal skins with tall headresses and wooden masks, and hang big bells around their waists to scare away evil spirits and help pave the way for health and fertility in the coming year.

We got there earlier in the day this year, and man! It was FREEZING! We did not stay long.... just long enough to watch a bit and eat some kebabche, cotton candy, and donuts. Then we booked it home. We didn't see some of the wackier stuff from last year, like an entire goat on someone's headdress, but hey, we remember it from last year! And have pictures.

This person does NOT have an entire goat on his/her head. Just the head of the goat. Underachiever.

Cute, cold boys.

Mmmm... kebabche! Sausage-shaped meatballs. As I was ordering, I knocked over the whole container of plastic forks into the snow. Bulgarians can be lovely and friendly, and they can be grumpy. This lady was grumpy. Luckily I was holding Maeve, so I could tell she was swallowing the majority of her grumpiness. I did pick them up. And apologized. In Bulgarian.

Donuts! Or "doneechkee." I like that better. The cotton candy was as huge as last year, and this time we only bought one. It was horrible, because everyone was eating it and licking their sticky fingers and it was below freezing out. There was unhappiness.

A village on the drive home.

At the beginning of February, the Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, came to visit us. We figured we should go. We were waiting for about 2 hours, but the kiddos ran around and played with their friends, so we all survived.

Posing at the podium.

Maeve and her friend, Emily.

Maeve, Emily, and Emily's twin brother, Jakob. They're a fun little bunch. Here they were trying to all jump off together, but it didn't turn out well because, as you can see, Jakob is not on the same step as the girls. Maeve didn't let go of his hand and ended up face-planting at the bottom. The Maeve-Emily link snapped, luckily for Emily!

Then Secretary Clinton arrived and shooed the kids off the stand. Okay, not really. The Secret Service guys did. All right, all right! Really someone saw that they were coming and we all just grabbed them. It sounds way better if the Secretary of State kicked them off, though... However it happened, they were contained and Maeve was not impressed.

Secretary Clinton gave a fine little speech, though I was too busy grabbing kids and arranging them to pay too much attention. Haha. No, I listened.

Then she came to shake hands. She shook all the kids' hands by us, but my camera is annoying and won't always obey me when I push the button. Here is Maeve shaking hands. Quite seriously. Secretary Clinton said to Zac, "You have beautiful children!" And since we all know politicians NEVER say what the people want to hear, only the bare-naked truth, our suspicions have been confirmed. We do, indeed, have beautiful children.

Summer Flashback: Rose Oil and Pancharevo

Yeah. I know. It's February. As I was looking back through our pics, I came across a bunch from the summer that I never posted... and DAGNABIT! It's my blog and I want them in here! Besides, now I can see some lovely weather... (our snow melted a TON on Saturday and we were all thrilled -- grass! We could see our grass! -- but then it snowed another couple of inches today. Sigh.)

Sometime during the summer... I think it was in July. Maybe June.... the embassy organized a little tour of a Rose Oil factory. Now, Bulgaria is a very rose-y country. It produces about 70% of all the rose oil in the world. Yay, Bulgaria! So, even though it was during a period when Z was out of town, and it was about 2 hours away, I was super excited to go on this tour. There was a small bus (there were fewer than 20 of us, I think), but I drove our little gang, because of all the carseats, and I wasn't sure I could guarantee good behavior for 4 hours in a bus-full of other people. In fact, I was sure I could NOT. Anyway, above, the lady is showing us how they used to extract the rose oil, back in the olden days.

Here are the present-day extractors. And that's that. After seeing both these methods, we all bought some ice cream and watched the children watch ducks. It was a really, really, really short tour. The lady from the factory had told us that our tour would be before the last harvesting of the roses.

It wasn't. That's okay, it was a gorgeous day, and a gorgeous drive.

We stopped at a little dairy outlet place, and some people bought cheese. Maeve liked this huge motorcycle that blessedly did not fall and crush her. Bran, Nuala, and Alex liked poking a dead, flat toad in the parking lot.

The "adults" liked snickering at this sign. For those of you not familiar with Bulgarian, you will now know a very important phrase. The words in red, beside the demure dairy maid, read "Too-k eh Mlyakoto". That means, "here is the milk." Ahhh, Bulgaria!

THEN, we stopped at a restaurant with its very own fish farm behind it. That was super fun for the kids, of course. Here we have Bran, Maeve, Nuala, and Alex, their little friend who happened to be there, too, much to their delight. It was a fun outing! I'll just imagine roses on the bushes.

And now... Pancharevo! Pancharevo, the somewhat-local-hot-springs-turned-big-pool-with-slides-and-a-big-tunnel-thing has made it onto the blog before. I think when Grandma Buttons was here in November... but it's lots of fun in the summertime. And more crowded.

We went a few times, and once was with our good friends from church, who live down in the city. Here are Ivy and Maeve. Super cute. Ivesters is four months younger than Maeve, and they really like each other.

Mia, Ivy's big sis, in the easy-to-miss orange life jacket, and Nuala and Bran, in the shallow end. This was the summer that Nuala saw her friend (actually, Alex, from the Rose Oil tour above) swimming around without her life jacket and declared she was going to do that, too. And she did. She was able to keep herself up and flounder her way around the "deep" end awesomely (and of course with me right there)! Then Bran had to do it, too. They were really good! Now they're in official swim lessons, which they love.

Susan, Mia and Ivy's mom, and the little ones, munching away.

The big rascals, also munching away, but on ICE CREAM! Yeah! Oh, summer...

Christmas 2011

Merry Christmas! A tad late. This is Nuala's drawing of the Nativity for this year.

Now, my lameness has reached new heights, because I took ZERO pictures of my children in their Christmas outfits. Not that they had special, matchy outfits, but it's kinda the thing to do, and I forgot about it until after church on Christmas day, when 2 of the 3 had already changed. The thought flitted across my mind that I should re-dress them for a family photo, but common sense quickly shoved it away. Nuala and Maeve do have cute little matchy dresses that they wore at other times during December... like above! See? Cute and matchy.

And Santa Claus. Dyado Koleda, in Bulgarian. This is the fellow from the embassy party. Again, I didn't even think to dress my kiddos Christmas-y. Nuala did it on her own. Then, as usual, there were so many cute children there, all in their special outfits! Sigh. I have other strengths. Maeve was not a bit disturbed by the big guy. Well, okay... she was a bit wary, but not enough to keep her from tromping up there after Nuala and Bran. I did think she might not want to go up by herself, but it totally seemed to me that she was just steeling herself, watching her big bro and sis, and then headed right up as Bran slid off Santa's lap. She didn't pretend to enjoy it, but she put up with it to get her goodies.

Nuala drew Santa a picture. There've been a lot of Christmas pictures popping up around the house. I like this one of Daddy and Nuala. He has cool gloves on, AND his name is mirror-image. I think it's so funny when she does this! It doesn't happen often, but when it does she's always paranoid for a few days: "Mommy, did I write it backwards?"

Top: Bran's Santa, Nuala's tree, Nuala's picture of Baby Jesus. These are mini-drawings. Bottom: Nuala's Santa, etc.

Bran and Nuala versions of elves...

And some reindeer.

Z and I took Bran and Nuala to The Nutcracker. That's them, in their seats, and the statues memorializing the "liberation" of Bulgaria by the Soviet Army. They looked pretty cool on our way downtown.

So, yes. Their very first ballet. It would be great if I could say we all loved it, but... I can't. It was lovely, but also somewhat boring. The dancing was beautiful and mostly fun to watch, the costumes were nice...but it was long. And poor Nuala, who loves ballet and beautiful things, had it in her head that the Swan Princess was going to make an appearance... I'm not sure who put it in her head, but it might have been me. I honestly don't remember. All I know, is she kept asking, "when does the Swan Princess show up?" and I said, "I don't really know... soon probably..." And then I thought, "hmmm... I'm pretty sure there's no Swan Princess in the Nutcracker..." Yes, I know, I should know the story better. I've never been before, though that's not really an excuse. I did get invited once, at BYU, but luckily I was already going to be on my way home, because the guy was strange and I'd already "broken up" with him, as much as you can do that when you're not even officially going out, but I probably would have gone just to see the performance, and that's not fair. (So, obviously, it wasn't Zac. I know the "strange" bit had you convinced for a moment.)

Gingerbread-ish men. And Ikea gingerbread houses! Next time we're hot gluing them together, like our friends did.

Annnnd... sugar cookies! Wait, no. These are actually salt dough ornaments. Still fun, just not (so) edible. We had a lot of fun this year cranking out the ornaments. Lots of watercolors and lots of glitter. Oh my... LOTS of glitter. Also, I had the grand idea that the Primary kids (I'm Primary president now, but we only have 8 or 9 kids, plus 3 or 4 little nursery-goers, but a small, sometimes-bilingual Primary is a challenge all in itself) should make ornaments for all the branch members. So, two Sundays before Christmas I brought 60 ornaments and the kiddos painted them. And glittered them. Then I mod-podged pictures of the Savior on them. We had plenty for the branch. THEN we found out on Christmas Eve (don't even get me started on the "miscommunication" that led to this) that our branch and the other branch here in Sofia were meeting together the next morning, so I had to make MORE. Late on Christmas Eve. It was okay, though, just kinda wished I'd known beforehand.

We took the kiddos downtown to the German Christmas Market that was set up by the Nevski Cathedral. It was fun, and pretty authentic!

The kiddos liked the big Christmas tree roaming around. The little one is not Maeve. Just a random child. Actually, Maeve did NOT like the Christmas tree. She saw there were no goody bags involved, so no need to cozy up to it. They all liked riding the Bulgarian merry-go-round. They seem to just attach any sort of toy car or little bike or whatever. Great fun!

We also ran into a bunch of missionaries, out on P-day! It's always fun seeing these guys.

We've had a fair amount of snow, so of course we've been sledding! Just at the end of our street (2 houses down) is a great little driveway-ish slope. The kids love it, and we pretty much always have it to ourselves. Maeve's lucky that Bran likes to pull her around. Actually, that makes me pretty lucky, too.

Christmas Eve we had six missionaries, two families from church, and our friend, Maria, over for a late lunch. That's when we did the turkey and ham and all the fixin's. It was a lot of fun. The kids all ran wild ("kids" includes the missionaries ;) and had a blast. Elder Wheat is a good sport and gives lots of shoulder rides. They all do. I did pull Nuala off the poor guy so he could eat, though...

Here's Maria with Maeve. She's our friend/babysitter/photographer. The kids love her!

The whole gang -- minus Ivy, Maeve's little buddy, who was sleeping, and me. Because someone had to take the picture.

It was a fun Christmas Eve, but despite starting the get-together intentionally quite early (2pm), it still went long. We didn't get to have a nice, slow night with the kiddos, like we had planned to. They were pooped from playing so much, there were no taxis out so Z needed to drop off some friends, and the kids DIDN'T EVEN put out cookies for Santa. Sigh. Luckily Zac and I did, and it was good enough for Santa! We all got some lovely things. And, as seems to be the case with little ones, the smaller presents were the biggest hits. Know what had earned "favorite" status by Christmas night when I asked them? For Nuala, her harmonica. Bran? A small Clone Wars figure and a Playmobil catapult from Ebay.

After opening the first gift, which is the picture of the Saviour and the story of His birth from Luke, it was time for other presents. It is so much fun having Christmas with little kids. Seriously, the best. Here's one of the two pics of Maeve from Christmas.

The one pic of Bran-man. With his Wicket backpack.

And Nuala. Tired after church. It was nice, actually, having church on Christmas. We heard two lovely talks about Christ, and sang lots of Christmas songs. Bulgarian or English, Christmas songs are beautiful. So, Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year to you all! Vesela Koleda i Chestita Nova Godina :) May we remember the special gift that is our Saviour all year long.