New House

 In January we moved into a new house. The first house we lived in was okay, but on our first visit to Krakow Mike and I only had one day to look at houses so we sort of settled for the best one we found. It was big and had a nice yard, but to be honest we never really loved it and once I started spending so much time in the kitchen the dark wood in there really got to me after a while.  I wasn't too keen on the idea of packing up and moving all over again, but after about 2 years we decided to just look around and see what else was out there. We found a house that was just being built and had all new and modern appliances, including an American sized fridge with a water and ice dispenser in the door! This was huge bonus considering my ice addiction. It also had air conditioning (in some of the rooms) and a central vacuum system which included this neat little vent on the baseboard in the kitchen where you could sweep the crumbs into. I think I wanted to move into the house mostly because of this! The landlord even said he would put a garbage disposal in the sink when I asked about it after seeing some in the other houses we had looked at. The new house isn't too far away from our other house, and it's a little closer to the highway which means about an 8 minute shorter ride to school (it's also on a street that is much easier to pronounce!). The only downside is it doesn't have as big of a backyard, but there still is enough room to kick around a soccer ball (although I think our neighbors are getting tired of all the balls that get kicked into their yards). It also is extremely bright, which really is only a problem on the weekends when we are trying to sleep in. Our new neighborhood is really quiet, so no more annoying chirping birds waking us at 4 am, and no more annoying dogs who bark from 7 am until 11pm every.single.day. The new house is also right across from Las Wolski forest, which we ventured into nervously a few times, it is huge and trails are marked but we never knew where any of them led to so we usually just stuck to the paved road around the zoo and walked around that and back. Finally I was able to track down a trail map and since then we have discovered a bunch of good hikes, one to a man-made mound which has a great view of Krakow, another to a monastery where they don't allow women inside to visit except on certain days of the year, and another to a Castle/restaurant on a cliff overlooking southern Krakow where there is good Polish and Kurdish food and coffee and Mike tells me it's where the Nazi commandant lived while they were overtaking Krakow. Now we look forward to venturing inside the forest every weekend (okay, so the kids don't really look forward to it at all), and I have been going every Friday with some friends - one of whom is very excited to rent snow shoes and do it in the winter. That should be interesting! Here are some photos:

This is our old house before we moved into it (so not our terrible furniture or cluttered bathroom):

Back yard

Front of house

Living room

Ava's old room

Our old room

Our bathroom

Downstairs bathroom with a shower that was never used

Back of house

Very brown kitchen

 New house:

Living room looking into kitchen

Upstairs room that we are using as the play room (complete with ping pong table!)

 The kids each have their own bathrooms which is nice but I think it's a complete waste of space - they are directly across the hall from each other, so their doors can't be open at the same time. One has a shower and one has a bath tub, really they should have just combined that and used the extra space for another closet or something. But, Ava LOVES having her privacy.

Ava's bathroom

Jack's bathroom

Ava's room

Our bathroom

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 Our bathroom is nice, but the tub is in the floor which makes it very difficult to get into and out of (not to mention a little dangerous if we are ever sleepwalking or have had too much to drink!). I am not really a bath taker anyway, but sometimes Jack likes to use it but it's so hard to bend over to help clean him!

 We even have a sauna in our bathroom! I tried it once but after 5 minutes I was asking myself what I was doing in there because I hate being too hot...

Some pictures from our forest hikes:

With Colleen and Heidi, two American friends, at the monastery - apparently it's called the Hermit Monastery. We were afraid to get too close!

The view of Przegorzaly Castle and the "Bastion" from the road near the river

One of the mounds, and the view from the top

Jack taking in the view from the restaurant at the Castle