Christmas Music

I have given in! As I was searching for music to listen to as I cleaned off my desk at school and sat down to update the blog, I saw my list of Christmas music. This includes about 50 songs (about 30 of them being my favorite Mannheim Steamroller selections). I hope that I won't quickly be sick of them, but I will try to keep the ones at home and the ones at school separate so that I don't overkill either group of them.

I am actually kind of proud of myself for holding out until post-Thanksgiving to begin, as opposed to the radio stations (and some insane listeners) who started playing/listening to them on Halloween!! One station said they actually start getting requests for Christmas music in August!! Ok, I realize it is never too early to be in the "Christmas Spirit;" that should be kept all year-round, but come on folks!

I was priviledged to hear Adam Sandler's "Thanksgiving Song" once this year and look forward to hearing his "Hannukah" song a few times. Stand-up people like that amaze me with their talent, and I think he does a good job of helping people recognize Hannukah as one of the December "holidays" instead of focusing solely on Christmas, whether you do that secularly or religiously.

Ok, just another rambling in the life of Megan. I will try to get Pret to put a word or two on here sometime, but don't hold your breath...

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and traveled safely wherever you ventured!

Comments Ready

I have hopefully changed it so people can comment, so comment away... Sorry about not having that going the right way before.

A Good Ending

Ok, after reading my cousins' blog, I realized that I need to acknowledge the wonderful things that my husband does as well.

Last week I had parent-teacher conferences which are very draining, emotionally, physically, and socially (basically working 22 hours in 2 days and trying to act happy about talking to all parents and telling them that their child is wonderful, even if they really are NOT! (Although some really are, so that's not really fair to say.)) Anyway, before we started Round 2 on Thursday, the faculty was enjoying a very good lunch when one of the newly-wed teacher's husband walked in with a huge bouquet of flowers and a kiss. Everyone "ohhed and ahhed" over it, including me, but I know that Pret loves me anyway. I did get him to come and eat a free, very good lunch a little later, but only got a few kisses and nice hugs from him with a promise that we would enjoy our morning off the next day. I was really fine with that, so enjoyed what I got.

When I was finally done (about half an hour behind schedule) I went out to my car exhausted and not looking forward to going to the gym and working out, but definitely looking forward to the dinner that my mother-in-law had cooked for Pret and me (Pret having eaten earlier as he had a meeting to go to before I would be home). As I sat down in the car, I was very pleasantly surprised to see a small, beautiful bouquet of three roses. It was accompanied by a sweet note expressing love and appreciation from my husband. I almost started crying as I realized that he truly is in-tune with my needs and emotions. What a great guy! Hopefully I honor him as much as he does me.

Pictures of our Trip

Well, I was told that our blog would be boring without pictures, so I will try to get a few up. They are not really in an order, sorry. I am also not so familiar with working with the pictures, so sorry about the long display and not having the descriptions more like captions.

The top one is a palace called Cervena Lhota, which literally means "Red House;" fitting, don't you think? This was Pret's favorite place.

The next one down is the coolest "new" castle (Hluboka, outside of Ceske Budejovice) we saw--unfortunately is was only from the outside, but it was amazing!

Under that is the view of Prague Castle from the Charles Bridge. Thanks to Tanya for her photography skills in capturing this beautiful picture (I forgot my camera at the Johnson's the day we went out in Prague... :-( )

Next, we have a picture of where the Berlin Wall ran through Berlin. It was pretty impressive to see this, which is their "memorial" to the wall. We followed the path and also visited "Checkpoint Charlie," the boarder checkplace between American-occupied Berlin and the Soviet-occupied portion. A little further down we also saw one of the the few remaining portions of the wall-pretty powerful!!

Below that, Pret and I posed for a picture below the Hrad (Castle) Konopiste. This was one of the places where Archduke Franz Ferdinand lived and had his huge display of hunting trophies. There was a huge lake that it looked over and we thought it was very picturesque (is that spelled right?)

Finally, this is Jeff and Tanya (our friends and traveling partners) with us and Pret's "Czech Grandma," Babicka Jelinkova. We stayed with her for a couple days and she fed us until we were sick and introduced us to apple tea that is amazing!

Anyway, that is just a sample of the 2500 pictures and short video clips we have. If anyone is interested in more, just let us know. Sorry about the descriptions not being "captioned"--I am still learning how to do all this blogging stuff...