The truth about transatlantic travelling with 2 toddlers is that

at some point you can find yourself carrying a suitcase and a bad and fighting with a (nearly) 3 year old who wants to pull a carryon suitcase his weight and almost his size. Or - carrying 3 bags and having an exhausted 1 y.o. passing out in your arms, so you have to carry him as well because the airline insisted on checking in the stroller at the same time as the rest of the baggage and not by the gate.

The flight to Reykjavik thus did not go too well: chinchillas were exhausted, angry, throwing tentrums in the plane and completely unable to sleep and unwilling to play. The flight in Reykjavik was delayed and we got some extra time to enjoy overcrowded space with overfilled trash bins from which chinchillas constantly tried to pull something out and either put in their mouths or pretend to do so to see parents' reaction(always negative).

Coming back to my town-base is always great: I get transportation flexibility and (relative) freedom of movement within the town, the variety of food that works for us and ability to get it any time, and this year I absolutely appreciate my kids sleeping in a house where an A/C can go on on a hot night, and going back to my gym again! Yep, the little joys of  middle class :)
The weather is still very nice, the tomatoes are ripening and the outdoor pool is still open to kids' fun and enjoyment!

Slovenia of this year is hot, beautiful and delicious

Although energy and time consuming at times too - this being vacations with 2 toddlers and 2 parents. The Bled lake is beautiful and absolutely unchanged in the past 2 years; Chinchilla Sr went into his bell-loving phase, identifying every church on our way as "Kolokol! Bom-bom!". Chinchilla Jr is running around fearlessly (all the fear having being transferred to his mother who is trying to catch him by the collar before he dives into the lake), falling down and trying to snack on something dirty - the dirtier the yummier! Both kiddos are happy with the routine of walks, swimming pool, playgrounds and good food. Besides, the need taught them how to share the Bob stroller and a waffle ice-cream cone. And I realized how un-used I got to playgrounds with pieces of broken glass, cigarette butts and shiny candy bar and ice-cream wraps. And yes, apparently no one considers bringing toys to playground either :)

The Lake Bled holidays reminded me of typical European fests with... a bunch of everything and a crowd of people on top of that :)  Found a new great restaurant near the lake. Managed to use local buses to get back to the village from the lake: if you're alone with 2 little kids, either a bright smile to the driver or looking worn out by two kids will qualify you for driver's full help with loading and unloading the stroller.

Got some weird unidentifiable stomach virus, which led me to involvement with Slovenian healthcare system, having my passport taken from the ER room by mistake (!) by some US boy (!!) that the ER personnel had no contact info with (!!!). Got  the best medical advice form the doctor on duty: "Enjoy life and be happy!". I wonder if it bears a connection with my physician conclusion that I do not rest enough and should absolutely start sleeping more?..

All in all - a very interesting experience - spending over a month abroad, and that's over 10% of the year. Where will it go from here?

Streets of Ljubljana.

Graz was on our travel list for quite some time,

So we were glad we could finally make it there.

Having spent a day in Graz (+ all the driving time to Austria and back) we did not make it to absolutely all sights and museums we wanted to visit, however managed to fit it quite a bit: climbed up all the way to Schlossberg, wandered along the shady alleys tried to find US & Canada on the plastic shields on the top of the castle pointing to various cities, but could not and concluded the directions were depicted in the 13th century before Americas were discovered.
Took pictures of the Clock (Glock) tower from different angles from the top, walked downhill and took pictures from different angles from the bottom of the hill. Then caught a group of pleasant German-speaking ladies and asked them to take some more pictures of the Clock-tower with all four of us.
Scared a café waiter (as well as the rest of our group) by my German. Scared myself with the thought that although the waiter did ultimately understand me, I had just uttered an Americanism in German, for "Wir sind fertig fur die Rechnung" say the Germans not.
Cooled down in Mausoleum and climbed up vintage stairs to yet another Tower with bells. I could not help taking pictures of BOMMM! for Chinchilla Sr, he's going through his bell phase.
Dropped by a pharmacy, left with a bag of sleep, cold and immune support remedies.

 

 

Dropped by Hoffbackerei  Edegger-Tax, left two strudels.

Rushed to the Glockenspiel to see the figures dance. Left thinking each one of us could do better dancing after such a huge stein of beer.

Found on the map Toys R Us (!!!) just 7 minutes away from the Graz center, rushed there, came back within an hour with half a dozen of toys, sidewalk chalk, toddler bottle and a teether. I was greatly impressed by their inventory, and not as impressed by their prices...

Had time left to have another 0.5 l beer.

On the whole Graz gives an impression of  a typical town that used to be pretty well-off to have its center done in beautiful architectural style, and with quality good enough to last hundreds of years. While the parts remote from the center might not be that interesting, the proximity to the center does reveal the contrast of the streets and squares being more spacious, and the houses - more interesting in ornaments and brighter in colours.

Udine is completely full of tourists

 and does look like a good mix of Rome and Venize (just as tourists guides warned us!). In fact, as you cross the border (hm, absolutely no one at the border on Saturday morning) you can tell you are in a different country.

The city center is clean, hot and hosts a nice flee market. We walk around glancing at some interesting items: some Russian china and tableware, souvenir mock Faberge eggs, binoculars and flasks with Nazi cross?.. I do wonder who would buy such things even in this part of the world.

The stores are packed with people. We end up stocking up clothes (while time permits) in large stores carrying both men's and women's clothing - to get our tax free paperwork completed :)

A granny in the coffee shop we got our first shot of double espresso/cappuccino in seems to understand my Italian and gives me a sweet smile. The owner of a little basement-type café in a little street just steps away from the shops barely understands English and does not speak a word of it, so with some help of our limited Italian and improvised sign language we end up with great wine and a simple but delicious mortadella sandwich. By the way, you could kill somebody with that  huge stick of motradella...

Gelatto is yummy, just like Slovenian. Sprits in the little café above a creek we have our light lunch at - are a killer. Literally, whatever they add to it that looks like soda and not proseco - is not soda at all. I realize it when we start talking about a couple of German cyclists that join the rest of their group late, I suggest that's because they got lost driving around a krožišče  and I totally lose it.

On the way back home I keep thinking that it's a shame we won't make it to Florence this time.

Jurmala turned out to be a very interesting place:

although much as to what I was expecting from just seeing videos and pictures of the town, the actual town spirit was an interesting mix of late 90-s early 2000-s of the post-Soviet area and modern Eastern Europe. The beach is Sochi-long, but unlike Sochi is a sand beach (hot sand!) and is followed by a stripe of pine forest along the shore. I do not think I have ever swum in a sea while enjoying strong pine smell floating above water. By the number of ice-cream booths and stands Jurmala can compete with Venice and its gelato stores at this time of year. People are nice. The hospitality of our hosts is beyond description.

A long conversation with people of our generation about jobs and unemployment, government and politics, local view or EU vs Russia and high expectations of the Land of Great Opportunities is very informative and extremely thought provoking. A long conversation with people of slightly older generation about the economics, politics, doing business in EU and globally is, well, very informative too!

Riga is a little cute gingerbread town to be crissed-crossed for a day, especially with a great guide such as one we had. Looking back it is it hard to believe how much we managed to stuff into this one day: from the main city attractions to driving through the Moscow Vorstadt (all sprinkled generously with historic information, gossip, anecdotes and jokes), to the Riga Central Market (beer with cannabis, anyone?), to real Uzbek food (never thought chebureki could be that delicious. How do they manage to pour broth inside??).  A separate highlight of the trip to the market was that the gift to us - a "dream of an immigrant" bag filled with "taste of nostalgia" fish products worth of 8kg - safely made it to Slovenia.

One extremely stupid thing to do

Is to schedule blood donation following a morning appointment with a pediatrician, and before an elaborate tour of errands and a 5K run. Especially if you accidentally forget to schedule time to eat and forget to replenish lost fluids along the way as well.

I haven't felt so dizzy in a long time; while I've been feeling lightheaded for the past 6 months, finding myself in a state of nearly losing consciousness in gym's shower today without a soul around to ask for help - was particularly bad. Apparently my next step would be setting reminders to have a snack or some water during the day...

On the bright side, I witnessed an amazing thing at Bonfils today. While doing the questionnaire I noticed a lot of walk ins with no appointments, in fact, so many Bonfils could not accommodate them all! Typically, it's just me waiting and a couple of mid-aged men or women with an appointment; today people walking in were pretty diverse. Having asked a staff member about the reason for such a high number of walk ins, I was told it was all due to the Orlando shooting. Turns out Bonfils's announcement about the need for more blood for the shooting victims brought in quite a few volunteers who wanted to help those in serious condition - instantaneously!
Truly remarkable and amazing.

If there's only one good thing about being a witness to a nasty online fight

between a group of... women who howl about all the difficulties of being a women in the modern world and a group of women and men who push back with "oh, why being so negative?" and "let me just tell you about all the problems men have" respectively - it's the happy realization on how lucky I am not to think in such terms and not to live in a world where there is always some fat bully above me just waiting for the next chance to ruin my life.

Not that I live in the perfect world of sunshine, rainbows, puppies, zero gender pay gap and adequate maternity support - I have had my experience with job loss following having a child, being pushed around by male colleagues and managers who did not know what was going on in the department close to how well I knew it (parce que c'est il qui "porte le cravate" (c) ), was approached with random offers of sex by random men and was denied a bank account opening and apartment rental... no, wait, the last two actually occurred due to my origin, not gender :)  But I absolutely can not understand how bashing men online for something they screwed up years ago can help improve somebody's life. And having a thread of dozens of comments where anyone is trying to out-misery everybody else with her own miserable experience indicates there's clearly something more than mere venting going on. Men can never understand us because they don't get pregnant, give birth or "even bleed every month" <sic>. Right. How much more can this fact ruin your life?

I can handle the feeling of "life is not fair" coming around every couple of months and always being replaced by the feeling of  "I'ma show you how great I am"(c), but I can't possibly imagine living 24/7,  year after year feeling insignificant, misunderstood, ignored, abused, used... Growing this feeling inside me, nurturing it, giving in to it...  I wouldn't be able to.

5 am. Dinning room.

It's chilly in the house and the entire dining table is covered with kinetic sand and molds, colouring books and pencils. The birds outside are just starting to go crazy, and I have a huge mug of coffee and hope I won't wake anybody  up  with the sound of keystrokes.

I have - again - hit the "no time to do it all" wall. Every so often I start to realize at the back of my head I start to run out of resources - time and energy. It obviously is cyclical although not periodical or proportional to the amount of work complete - so hard  to predict when it will happen next, and at what point exactly and what projects will affect.

The last exam is coming up - and this time I'm glad I allocated 1 week more for preparation, than for REG. I'm half way through the section and not only I can't memorize all the rules and regulations for every single audit situation for Issuers and Non-issuers... I can't even always soak up the logic behind this and constructively organize the principles in my mind, or draw the pictures to enhance mnemonics (by now I've used Castro doing a presentation for a group of retirees, Snowden abandoning his citizenship, the monuments of Washington DC, terrorists targeting a group of Japanese tourists in Paris... but I feel I'll have to get really creative with the AUD section!), or -bad enough - even understand the meaning of a homework question sometimes!

Every morning starts with a 5K followed by abs exercises. Every morning as I step on the treadmill I keep telling I have to be super careful today not to have an accident by losing balance and falling down on treadmill, or falling asleep behind the wheel, or poisoning myself on caffeine, or smashing into something while trying to attend to both demanding boys at the same time, or just giving up and falling my face down into a frying pan while cooking dinner.

And then there's a deadline for 2 articles coming up. And so many things to be completed and arranged before mid-June. Just in case I ever feel nostalgic about this time in my life: I know long and hard period of growth always precedes a big growth spurt, and judging by all I'm into right now... well, I can't wait to see what the next level I'll get to will be like!

Adding a stack of those to my wishlist

 

April. Year 2016.

Not enough time. Days are crumpled, rushed, turned inside out and at the same time each following day is the perfect copy of the preceding one.
I will soon start to recognize all bums between Capitol Hill and Colorado Secretary of State's Office. Next time I come to notarize another document I will be at risk of being hit in the heat with the Notary's stamp.
BEC section is not that challenging when you look at the content, but not that easy when you look at the amount of random information to memorize. It does give an impression of a less complicated FAR part.

Grandma N. died. Just between me typing in guilt, panic and anger to my cousin, trying to explain that I can't enter the country now, and me trying to find a way to get some sort of an expedited emergency visa as an exception - she did not make it. It can probably be called one of those cases when death is more of a mercy than being sustained in such sick and miserable condition for much longer, but I still can't cope with the thought. It was not fair she ended up in such a mental and physical state to begin with; and it was not right I couldn't have done more.
Thoughts come and go: I'll never be able to take Chinchillas to see her, I'll never buy her a bag of her favourite cottage cheese pastries and salted red fish ever again, I have never told her I have read Martin Eden - she was always too exhausted to talk about something other than day-to-day stuff and by the end could barely hear and understand me - and I'll never be able to discuss this book with her.

Granny, I do hope that in your next life, at the same age as now when you've ended up in bed for weeks, you'll be able to put on a beige hat with tiny forget-me-nots on the side, put on bright lipstick, get into your red Renault Clio with two of your best girlfriends and drive away from... Utrecht towards Barcelona, laughing and singing with the windows rolled down all the way.

The extreme will and inner strength defined.

1. Meeting a woman at a playground who says her family is with the Church of Mormons, introducing her to my... gypsy past and hearing "Oh! My cousin was just sent on a mission to this city in Russia... Vla-di-vos-tok!". 
2. And upon hearing this - forbidding myself to make Uganda jokes.
3. Walking away from the playground without making a single Uganda joke or reference.

The 3-4 exam hours are always the most exhausting ones.

While at the computer I never feel tired (except for my eyes that dry and hurt), but once I'm out of the test center I'm ready to collapse. What's funny is that despite how many times I've been to this test center location, I always use navigator. The first time I came here was in 2008, and even now every single time I come here I can't remember the trip to the center or back.

Meanwhile... it was time to think what to do with the remaining time, and as NASBA seems to have extended this testing window by 10 days, I thought it was a sign and scheduled 2 exams back to back. So me.
Now I've 1 month (less actually) to study for the next exam, and a few days more than 1 month - to study for the last one. One final stretch...

Apart from that, I managed to make another donation with Bonfils (Oh, God of Taxation and Litigation, take my blood sacrifice!...)  and even replace jeans before the fabrics became so worn down near the seams they would fall off me. By the way, Bonfils included new questions about Zika virus in their questionnaire. Big deal it is. Scary shit.

Now, taking a deep breath and... getting through the next 2 months to live happily ever after.

March. Year 2016.

Night. The 9 month old wakes up at 1 in the morning. Then at 3. Then around 4.30 and refuses to go back to bed on his own. He's teething and miserable and the only way he calms down and snoozes is if I hold him tight and close to my body, with his head slightly elevated. Von Zobel needs some sleep- it's tax season and he works on Saturdays - so I swirl myself into a pretzel-asana in the chair, manage to fix the iPad on the chair arm with my right knee, so I can flip through it with my left hand, so I can hold the baby on my right shoulder-elbow-side, and lean in such a way so that in the next two hours I do not accidentally fall asleep myself and wake him up.

Morning. Following a large breakfast of fried eggs (aka OVAL! - Chinchilla Sr) with onion and turkey breast, bread and fruit,  and weekly call-around for grandparents and grand-grannies chinchillas demand entertainment. We walk to the remote playground, the Vice-president of our house riding in a sport stroller, the president - walking along upset for not being allowed to take his bicycle, tricycle or a van with him. I really hope that on the playground I can exhaust both of them and get some study time during their long nap.

Afternoon. The long walk brought Chinchillas some very good appetite, but - alas! - no sleepiness. Chinchilla Jr. skipped the morning nap altogether, and is now misanthropic and miserable. I spend another 30 minutes with him in my arms before he finally falls asleep, still jerking in sleep from my slightest movement while I try to put him in bed. Meanwhile Chinchilla Sr has already sung all his lullabies to himself, dropped out all his books from the bed and is now standing in bed demanding bathroom break. Ok, looks like he needed one. I put him back in bed hoping he can nap now. Go back to my bedroom as he continues to mumble and whine. Before I complete my first testlet though I hear him scream at the top of his lungs, rush to his room and find him on the floor by his bed. That's the first time ever he fell out of his bed. His screaming wakes up Chill Jr.

Evening. Chinchillas are exhausted, feeding or bathing them becomes a challenge. Junior gets a portion of Tylenol, I keep my fingers crossed that it works for him better than last night (when nothing worked at all). Takes some time to put him to sleep. Takes some time to put Chill Senior to bed - he can't go on, but is upset on the actual fact of being put to bed; however he seems to have passed out a minute after I closed the door of his room behind me.
I can come back to my testlet now.

Night. Sometime between passing out as soon as my head touches the pillow and Chinchilla senior waking me up at 5 again for a drink of milk, I find myself at a strange place. More like an ugly huge arena with an ugly outdated amusement park inside, and grey tall ugly Soviet-style houses with dark windows behind its walls. I'm with a group of people, knowing I need to get out of this place, because I need to get to my exam, but no one has any idea where the exit is. As we wander around the non-working rides, old garages and some other weird constructions an announcement is made that there're terrorists inside with us, getting ready to blow up this whole place very soon. Of course, I have to make it to the exam and other have some.. plans for the rest of their lives, so we divide ourselves and start running and searching for terrorists trying to catch them.
El sueño de la razón produce monstrous (c). Again :)

Love the exam multiple-choice questions that are available on... different sources:

 

That would be a challenging question on the exam. Reasonably foreseeable, huh?

 

 

 

And this sounds somewhat outdated :) I wonder when the questions were last updated...