YH FYI

That'd be Yellow Hat For Your Information {because I am a military spouse and we are forced to learn ridiculous amounts of acronyms to function and now it creeps into my everyday habits}.

So, after being in the States for just over 48 hours, we had our annual summertime trip to the E.R.

Factoids: The Boy received a laceration between his eyebrows after a close encounter with the bottom of a Tinker Toy bucket that was catapulted at him by my neice. An hour and half and 2 steri strips later, we returned to my parents'.

Let's hope the rest of our vacation is completely boring!

Birthday Thank Yous from Shutterfly

I know that there are a lot of sites for taking care of your photos online, but I'm thrilled that I discovered Shutterfly years ago. My only regret is that I never explored their albums until after I completed five 300-page books of all our traveling the first time we lived in Ukraine (20 countries!)!

The options for making greeting cards have become one of my favorite features of the company. It allows me to get cute thank you notes out in a timely manner with the stamp and address option.

I was making Baby Girl's cards today and was able to use the code "DADCARD" for five free cards. I loved being able to put up to 6 additional photos in the inside of the card (on each side!) to share more cuteness- because, really, who can get enough of this little imp!? So hop on over and see the myriad of possibilities!!

{I will receive a $10 credit from Shutterfly for posting this.}

5x7 Folded Card

View the entire collection of cards.

P.S Don't forget to visit Sarah- (http://sarahhisprincess.blogspot.com/). She has all her Kyiv posts up and it'd be fun for you to see the city through her eyes!

The Road Home

Ok, folks, nearly a month after our return, I'm wrapping this vacation up!

We {sadly} left Germany and drove through Austria with Bratislava, Slovakia

being our destination for the first day of driving.

Unfortunately, we were delayed

on the highway in Austria due to an accident which backed things up,

well, for most of the way east in the country!

We pulled into town in time for dinner and were

able to walk around the old city for a few hours before hitting the sack.

Waiting for dinner- someone was very tired!

Funny sculpture on the street;

the sign- which I didn't even notice at first-

said "men at work."

Bratislava had a really unique feel to it.

We could tell they very much enjoyed their hockey!

Old town-

we were able to see the old gate

and where the moat used to be around the walls.

This photo, for some reason,

reminded me of Riga, Latvia.

This castle would have been fun to visit had time permitted.

We just caught glimpses as we drove over the bridge, though.

The following day- Mother's Day-

was spent driving through Hungary.

Thanks to their EU membership and euros thrown

their way, the road was glorious throughout the whole country.

And then we got to the southwestern border of Ukraine

and were able to make it through fairly quickly;

a movie in the DVD player for the kids and

diplomatic status is nice to have for events such as these!

We stayed 2 nights in Uzghorod which is in Zacarpathia

/Za'-car-paht-iya/ and literally means

"behind the Carpathians."

We visited this castle in town.

And then we decided that, depending on the road conditions, we'd push

through and try to get back to Kyiv in one day.

Driving through the Carpathians was lovely, and it was

interesting to see the different industry there (forestry was a big one).

The kids were terrific travelers and a lot of fun to be with.

But we were happy to park the van!

We unloaded at the front door in front of the washing machine

and began that chore. My servants were back to work!

Kyiv

Sarah is posting about her stay with us in Kyiv. It's always fun to see something familiar through fresh eyes. She has access to all of my photos as well as many great ones she took, so hop on over to her blog and bookmark it so you can see the city!