Let's see, what's today? Oh yeah, Friday. Ha. Well, we still haven't quite got a handle on this time change thing. Besides Emma being on a normal schedule (sleeps through the night), we all either go to bed after 1am or wake up at 2am and go back to bed at 4am and we all are sleeping until noon. It's crazy. Tomorrow, I am determined to wake everyone up at 10am and have breakfast waiting so we can actually eat breakfast during breakfast hours! Wow!
Wednesday was our first morning together as a family. What did we need? FOOD! I have no idea if we ate between the time we woke up (1pm?) and when we went out for groceries and had pictures for Andris' Visa made, but somehow we made it out of the apartment. We stopped at the first place called Foto to get the pictures taken. They don't take pictures. What they do sell are a lot of coloring books, paint books, and some other items we could buy if we get bored or need to stock up for the plane ride home. Okedoke. We left and went to another store called Kodak. Yay! They take pictures. The lady motioned for us to follow her to the back and had Andris sit down. We were all staring at him saying "smile!" and the lady said "no, no smile!" So we all went "oh." Then Jack said "why can't he smile? Why are you smiling Andris? Stop smiling!" Believe it or not, Andris was having a hard time not smiling. So, we moved to the front of the store. Pictures taken. "Come back morning, after 9, k?" You betcha! Off we went to storm the local grocery store called Maxima, like a herd of cattle. We touched everything we could. Especially the food in bins. Boy were those hard to not open and close! Good grief. I could hear Andris saying "no, no, no!" Scott and I are trying to be good Americans but the kids are blowing it for us! LOL. After what seemed like forever to find our items (we couldn't get too much, we had to carry it all home!) we checked out and walked home. I have no idea what we did then. Maybe I should blog daily. I know we had dinner, oh yeah! I made spaghetti and sausage. We just hung out around the apartment and went to bed. I'm sure Annie and Leah were up in the middle of the night and Scott and I probably did scissor paper rock to see who's turn it was. I'm not very good at that game!
Thursday we woke up at noon and got out of the house by 2pm and went to Riga Zoo. It was nice but some sections should have been closed due to renovations. Also, they should take down the signs that point to animals that are no longer at the zoo. Like the lion, tiger and bears, oh my! It was cute to see a baby monkey with it's mother. Since the sign had 3 languages (Latvian, Russian, and English), all we knew was it was a monkey. Maybe a chimpanzee? You be the judge.
Andris really wanted to see the snakes. And we saw 2. But, there was a really cool park with a large climbing pyramid, so that made up for everything! And, kids really don't care about the facilities or the cages and habitats the animals are in so we enjoyed being there just like at home.
Today we were all up by 11:30am! We ate breakfast at the apartment, did a bunch of cleaning and then noticed it was raining. We were going to call a taxi to take us to the tourist info center and then to see a movie, but by the time we got dressed and outside (3pm), it stopped raining. We thought we'd make it fun and ride an electric tram to the various stops. But, by the time we walked to the tram stop, the sun was out and we decided to walk. On our way to the visitor center, we realized that we were going slower than anticipated (shocker) and decided to skip the visitor center and have dinner and go to the movies. We were walking past a McDonald's when Andris exclaimed "oh, I like!" So to McDonald's we went for dinner. It was the first time I didn't hear one peep during dinner. Everyone was eating. They liked what they had and it tastes exactly like our at home. Emma said the BBQ sauce was different. :)
After dinner, we walked to the Cinemas and we were all so excited to see Madagaskara 3 in English with Latvian subtitles. I told the kids we couldn't see the movie in 3D because I get motion sick and Jack and Andris were like "awwwww!" (sing songy) Sorry guys. Stinks for me too. Up to the ticket booth we go when BAM! the teller said the animations are in Latvian and Russian only and the other movies are in English with Latvian subtitles. Dang. All the wind went out of our sails and we felt defeated. We all sat down on the bench by the window and pouted. Fine. Let's go tour Old Riga.
Old Riga ended up being pretty cool. The streets are cobbled stoned and the buildings are pretty and amazing. We walked through some really nice parks, saw the Freedom Monument, got hot chocolate (yes, people it's only 19 here! Celsius, that is. It's about 65F) It turned out to be a really fun time. One of the streets we walked down had a street band playing music. Guess what they were playing? The Final Countdown by Europe! Scott and I had that song playing at our wedding when they announced us at the reception! Awesome, I know. Also, I have no idea why the street band were wearing the outfits they were. Made for a good show. :)
We came home by 9pm and the kids were in bed by 11pm. But not before the boys polished off all the leftovers from the last few nights of dinner. Back to Maxima tomorrow!
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