Týna is having her arms full.

Czech weather was as nasty as expected, but kids must get out under all conditions.

I assume it is not necessary to explain that our express train system continued for the next month. I don't know if I would ever manage to catch up with my journals and remember all the things that rushed past me at such pace that I could not always register them.

I needed to deal with some official paperwork in Czech Republic; generally things that could be possibly resolved at a distance, but when more of them had piled up and I reckoned how much time it would cost me to trip among decentralized offices in California, plus notary certificates and so on, it seemed to me more economic to just fly to Prague, take care of it locally and in person (e.g. — despite me being officially resident elsewhere, a fixed phone line had remained in my name, which could not be changed without my signature and consent), while the whole sorry affair could be made more pleasant by staying with my family and relatives.

For a while we wondered whether I should take the children along, but eventually we decided against it — and I was glad of it in the end. To endure jet lag with two juniors in a situation when sun does not come out for days in a row, when there's no place outside to go on account of being horribly cold and muddy, and all possible playmates are at school? It would be quite a nightmare.

For lack of access to own children, I could pay attention to my nieces, and I was glad of that as well. Finally I had multiple days to get to know Týna's girls, who have been in a great phase, when they already walk and talk, but they don't rebel yet like my kids began to now. Then I had much fun putting the kids to all their heavy jackets and gloves, and figuring out what to do. It surprised me how expensive were various indoor play places. For the price to enter Kulíšek in Kotva, I would get my kids in California to visit a three-story Children's Museum, with the opportunities to crawl through and handle various displays, play with water, sand and bubbles; paint, make electricity, run a (toy) pizzeria, and so forth. Their equivalent of a Community Center is financially more merciful, but still it was quite shocking for me to discover how much easier life with two small children had been for me.

Indoor play places tend to get expensive.

Thanks to heaps of soft snow, the kids could try out the famous Wall.

Besides family, I tried to squeeze my friends into my program. Zuzka was on vacation, but Kočička and Péťa had found time for me — I have to say that I had counted to leave the pub by ten o'clock, but then I found myself catching the last bus for Písnice, and it surprised me. It made me awfully happy that Pepe came all the way from Vienna just to see me; we got fried cheese in Adria, chatted at a tea house, and almost did not make it (Pepe, that is) in time back to the train for Břeclav. Somehow the mere six hours we had could not cover those five or six years since we last met.

I also fit in one climbing session, this time I ventured to Free Solo at Chodov, to check out that its owner was indeed Raďous. We remembered good old times, when we used to be young and beautiful, and used to climb at Brumlovka, and every Thursday found out there who would go where during the weekends, and attach ourselves to the expeditions according to our preferences. Free Solo had slightly hurt my ego, for Lukášek (who's naturally no longer the Lukášek who used to play with our children in our pool, but an effete teenager) was easily out-climbing me. Free Solo serves food and beer, and we could send Luky home and have a couple with Radim, and chat a bit.

Those five days had sped past like whitewater, and soon I was flying back home. The children and my Hippo looked sane, and nothing indicated that they would have suffered by my absence — that is, not counting Lisa's mysterious illness before my departure, and Tom's intensive demanding of presents right after my arrival.

We could check out new terrains.

Lisa's sliding off of a spot where her mother no longer dares to go.

Lots of snow fell in the meantime at Kirkwood, and so only three days after returning from Europe, I was headed for the mountains. The kids were joyful and threw themselves happily in the white powder heaps, although controlling your skis in such stuff was pretty hard. Martin and I had concluded that this was the right weekend for The Wall. This double black diamond slope is normally rather dangerous, you can enter only via a narrow ditch that is typically worn out and icy (or alternatively jump over a cornice, but I certainly don't intend to to that with the kids), and if you fall, you can find yourself sliding down for several hundreds of yards and stop only by means of hitting the trees below. Yet, with the current snow condition, when it was a bigger problem to not let the kids drown in the snow, we could risk a little bit of adventure. Naturally we did not take the main run, but waded through various gullies and wooded shortcuts.

We wanted to leave a tad earlier on Sunday (to get the kids soon enough to beds and prepare for the next week of school), but Lisa let Vendulka talk her into some more interesting skiing. Eventually she got to places that I was cowardly avoiding — simply put, our children had reached a completely different level than we, their boring, old parents.

Weather began to get wormer at the end of March, and we rediscovered our bicycles. I got a bike computer with a GPS for my birthday, and I would be able to measure how far I have been going. Tom was issued a holder for (the same) computer and he can borrow it from me, which motivates him when we ride. And since I had such a good gadget, I took it up to Kirkwood to measure my cross-country track. The meadow is approaching its advertised three miles, but I had no time to check the tracks beyond the highway. Snow had been leaving us at a brisk pace. We probably can't really complain, as the season had started early, and we had skied by the end of November, and got really snowed in by Christmas, which usually happens in January, and so nature had made up for it on the other end. Perhaps we are headed into a hot summer, like four years ago.