More from Prague

To add to your Olympic DVD collection, the water park slide event...

What are they teaching in school these days?

Today, Maddie had her class presentation for a unit on "Kings, Queens and Castles."

Maddie had not been very excited about this unit until she realized that she could present on Japanese castles. Japanese castles, it turns out, are much cooler than the proletariat fare here in Europe. The castle she picked, Osaka castle in Japan, had a solid gold tea room and gold dolphins and tigers on the exterior. Very cool.

More importantly, it was attacked many times by ninjas.

Below is a photo of Maddie with the special guest she located for the presentation. Any similarity between said guest and members of 5fordhams LLC is purely coincidental.


Maddie did an awesome job. The class was fairly... *energetic*. By the end of the 20 minute presentation, I was ready to throw down with anybody who doesn't think that teachers deserve summers off.

Saturday Update

Life continues. Last weekend, I spent roughly 35 hours in planes and airports while heading home to see my parents. It was awesome seeing my parents but I've decided that I'd rather rather visit the dentist than fly Delta airlines transatlantic. I need to find a pusher who can get me a subscription for Ambien... or switch to Lufthansa.

This weekend, we're hanging out here. The girls had a sleepover with their Japanese friends last night. They were all quite giggly as they settled into Grandma's feather bed.

There they are--4 girls and Maddie's assorted stuffed marine life. Speaking of which, Maddie has a new stuffed Dolphin named Nietsche. Nietsche, it turns out, is Japanese for rainbow. Possibly you'll notice that I've taken some liberties with the spelling but the pronunciation is the same. (Late Entry: The family linguists have now pointed out that the pronunciation isn't exactly the same but it's close enough for my American ears).

I quite like their friends. They're teaching Tess and Maddie to make beautiful origami and do Japanese calligraphy. Our kids are teaching them to make loud noises and play cops and robbers. All in all, an even trade I think.

Career Development

Maddie has made great progress in her career goals in the past few weeks. I blame this movie.

Now she wants to be a ninja. This week, she started working on her next school presentation on Osaka castle, apparently motivated by the fact that the castle was once attacked by ninjas. Tonight after dinner, we made grappling hooks for said presentation. Several unlucky coat hangers were euthanized during construction operations.

Anybody know where I can find her some black pajamas (please, no throwing stars).

What do you want to be when you grow up...

Running the kids to their church group tonight. The theme tonight is to dress in the costume of what you want to be when you grow up.

Tess chose to dress up as a policemen.

Maddie picked a dolphin trainer.

Micah decided to dress up as Barack Obama.

Hmmm. Care to place bets on which goes over best at our Baptist church.

Tulip Photos

Sadly, no windmills were harmed during the making of these photos ... sorry Alison.

Click the flower for slideshow.

Quote of the Day

Tess: "Good night daddy. Thank you so much for not crashing the car into a tree while it was dark and rainy and you were driving with everybody asleep."

Ummm. I suppose it's good to know that they don't take the little things for granted.

This is, obviously, my oblique way of saying that we just arrived home safely. Given the mess on the floor, I suspect pictures are a few days away.

UPDATE: For those of you who submitted votes. The windmills lost but we did see plenty of tulips.