December 2022/January 2023
Hi Blog!
When Matt, Weina and William moved to Vilnius, Lithuania in July, we immediately made plans to visit them on William's winter break so we could spend Christmas together. To help us remember all the fun we had, we decided to create this blog entry.
On the way to Vilnius, we had to change planes in Copenhagen. We decided to spend a few days prior to our visit with the family touring Copenhagen. If you are curious, those adventures are documented in the prior blog.
We arrived on Friday, December 15th to a very snowy city. William had already started to build a snow fort. We helped make it bigger!
One of our first adventures was a snow walk to the local grocery story. William showed us the way. The second adventure was finding all the ingredients for making Christmas cookies when everything is in Lithuanian! Luckily, we had downloaded the new Google Translate. Just open the app, turn on the camera and point it at the label and see the translation on your phone! We successfully found powdered sugar for the cookie icing and not brown sugar, light brown sugar, coconut sugar or raw sugar.
After the snow, Vilnius enjoyed some beautiful sunny weather. The downside: it was really cold! Pictured below is the view from the best sledding hill in Vilnius.
William was more than happy to push his father down the hill.
We all took our turns before our feet became so numb we had to call it a day.
The weather the next day warmed a bit and Matt and William took us on a walking tour of Old City. The town Christmas tree was decorated like a birthday cake for the City's 700 birthday. The city was founded in 1323. There are 700 candles ringing the tree.
For lunch, we went to a traditional Lithuanian restaurant. The stuffed cabbage reminded us the galumpki Nana used to make.
We watched all the traditional Christmas movies like Home Alone, Muppet Family Christmas, Sound of Music, Mary Poppins and A Muppet Christmas Carol. It wouldn't be Christmas if Marley wasn't dead to begin with. We forged our own chain and wrapped it around the Christmas tree.
In addition to the Danish Butter Cookies we brought from Copenhagen, we made both peanut butter cookies and butter cookie cutouts. With the extra dough, William made YeYe a Ruby cookie. Unfortunately, her head fell off during the icing process. She still tasted divine!
As Christmas approached, we eagerly awaited the arrival of our daughter Katie. On Christmas Eve, Matt fired up the smoker grill and set the pork ribs to a low and slow smoke. There was time for a snowy woods walk to work up our appetites.
When we returned home, Christmas preparation began in earnest. Presents were tucked under the tree and stockings were... worn by William!
The pork smelled so good it was mind blowing!
Our Christmas Feast!
We ended the evening taking turns reading pages from The Night Before Christmas. While William was tucked in bed with visions of sugar plums dancing in his head, we added the final touches.
As you can imagine, Christmas morning was spent opening presents and playing with all the new toys and games. William is testing out his new 3D printing pen.
The day after Christmas, we visited a small, family-friendly ski hill just around the corner from Matt and Weina's house. It has been a couple years since William took a ski lesson, so we were not sure how much he would remember. After a few runs on the bunny slope, he was ready for the big hill.
The next day, Katie flew home to Philly and Matt returned to work. William and Weina still had two more weeks of winter break. The weather turned warm and rainy, so we were not able to go skiing again. We looked around for different indoor activities. We found a really cool bowling alley that had bumpers to keep the ball from going into the gutter. The only problem was that the bumpers only came up when William bowled! While we have no pictures of the actual bowling, William insisted that we document the fact that he beat YeYe!
The rain made the snow heavy and wet. Perfect snow for snowmen and snow angels.
With more rain in the forecast, we had to come up with more indoor ideas. A 1000 piece puzzle entertained us for several days. There were also several rounds of various cards games like Kill the Landlord and Exploding Kittens.
Since moving to Lithuania, William has been playing Minecraft with Dave for an hour or so each weekend. It was fun to see them sitting side by side.
In our continuing effort to keep an 11 year old boy entertained, we discovered that Vilnius had a museum dedicated to illusions.
The museum contains dozens of exhibits where illusions meet scientific inventions and art. Physics and optics are displayed together with mysterious artworks and classical riddles. We had a lot of fun exchanging faces through the looking glass. Is that Dave with spiky hair or Kathy with a beard!
Fun house mirrors are always fun:
To infinity and beyond:
This was our favorite illusion.
The plasma ball was electrifying!
Back at the homestead, the Wallybot construction crew was hard at work.
One of William's Christmas presents was Emeril's There's a Chef in My Family, a great cookbook for kids. It was William's turn to cook dinner. He picked Garlic Lovers Pot Roast, Peas with Mint, and Fiesta Nachos. Here, Chef William is stuffing 15 garlic cloves into the roast.
After several days of rain, we had a chance to get out and explore Vingis Park. The park is a huge forested area in a bend of the Neris River. It is crisscrossed with walking and biking trails. The road leading into the park is lined with some cool old buildings.
After our hike, we went for lunch in one of the downtown neighborhoods. Yetis are very popular here.
Our time in Vilnius seemed to fly by. William kept track of the days with his daily paper airplane calendar. Each day was a new airplane design.
Our trip back to Florida was uneventful. Ruby and Flip were also happy to be home. We are already planning to go back next Christmas!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.