Heh-heh. Well, Ack has a sabbatical that he has to use up, as well as a lot of vacation time. The boys don't have school to worry about right now, and Lisa doesn't have a competing job, so the timing worked out for this vacation. Plus, we're dying to see Baby Anna, Jim and Debbie's latest kid, who's in BudaPest.
We bought a little foldable, zippered tent for him, and have been letting him sleep in it for the last few weeks. He's quite taken with it, actually, since now his pacifiers can't go far, and we like the peace of mind knowing right where he is.
When we meet such people, we'll let you know. :-)
We've got a heavy-duty child carrier backpack for the little guy, and the other one has been trained for months now to hoof it. If he gets really tired, we can put him in the backpack and carry Skyler.
Ack is definitely yearning to go back to Switzerland. The place calls to him. Lisa is excited about just about everywhere. Loren wants to see the dinosaur bones in London's Natural History Museum, and to go hiking. Skyler hasn't stated a preference, but we expect he'll perk up more now that his latest ear infection is better.
That was very hard! We'll be schlepping everything ourselves, plus the kids, so we had to keep it as small and light as possible. The car seats are the biggest pain. We probably could have survived without them through the first half of the trip, since that will be primarily train travel, but we didn't want to take the chance. As for clothes, we only packed three days' worth. Toys, diapers, shoes and books are few. One of the totes is pretty much devoted to all the electronic equipment. We'll be doing very little shopping, Still, we had to pack for both city and country, warm and cold, for four people. The weight and bulk added up quickly!
We brought along 3 toys which allow us to keep the site up to date:
- Nikon Coolpix 990 digital camera (3.34 megapixel)
- Sony DSC-PC100 digital video camera (can also do megapixel stills)
- Apple PowerBook
Each day we take pictures with the two cameras (mostly with the Nikon). Each night (or every few nights, as needed), we download the pictures from the cameras to the PowerBook. The originals from the Nikon are 1MB each. We then save them as lower-res JPEG files that are quicker to download from the web: a smaller one (about 22K) to put on the page with the narrative, and a larger one (about 55K) accessed by clicking on the smaller one, for people who want to see a more detailed picture.
Because we don't have time for anything else. Writing letters and postcards is almost impossible when we have to watch the kids too. Even personal emails are hard, because we're so constrained for time. So we're trying to do the best job we can with the site (which is also our personal diary) so our friends and family don't think we've forgotten them. We haven't! We miss you!