Rigalicious

Here are a few of Mudzuks and Vecais favourite sights and delights from their holiday-home-town... Bonus points to readers who can name the locales!

Mudzuks and her shadow (no, not Vecais)

The Doors.

Bean-picking in Beberbeki (okay, so we gave the place away that time...)

Riga rooftops

Singing in the Rain

A Room with a View

The Musicians of Bremen


Wait for it...


... its a Bouncy Boat, duh!

Would you like Freedom Fries with that?

Catch me if you can...

draugi.lv (aka "friendster" Latvian style)

It's been a crazy week of seeing more friends and acquaintances than we do in most years. (Hence Mamuks says she has a good excuse for not faithfully logging all of our pivotal life experiences in Latvia more often & diligently- well, that and the various Latvian beverages we seem to see her downing her fair share of, which tend to leave her rather 'tired' in the morning... And there are also those frequent trips to Kaspars, the masseur, she seems to keep taking. Hmmm.) Anyways, welcome to our virtual Riga autograph book, signed by our smaller friends and some of their tag-alongs:

Krusa, Meta and Kaiva

Zane & Sarma

Ivan, Sarma, Zane, Hugo, Dace, Sofia, Kim, Krusa (some less reluctant than others to be photographed!)

Emilija, Krusa & Markus

Livija & Otis

Kriss

Egons, Ginta and Sarlota

Johnnie & Krusa

Rasta

the pagalma cat, ol' one-eye

These Little Piggies Go To Market...

So we finally made it to Latvia and first (or almost first stop): Matisa tirgus. Mudzuks inspected the carrots while Vecais oohed and aahed over the chanterelles - not only were these high grade funghi, but at about $3 per litre, your once-thought-fancy portabellos can eat their hearts out. Is your mouth watering yet?

Rabbit Heaven.

The market is our oyster.

Local apricots (sweet!)

Berry Tasting.

Chanterelles ("gailenes" ) and boretus (" baravikas"). Yum.


Weighing in on some blueberries and chanterelles, both fresh from the forest.


Market flower-power.

Brined or pickled?


The makings of chanterelle sauce, Latvian style

Family Portrait

No good family holiday is complete without a good family portrait. The fact that we managed one with all eyes and no flies open is no small feat (welcome to the digital era of 50 snaps to get a good one). But we're not going to show you that one. Here are rather a couple that show more of our personalities, taken just before most of us took off for our brief Latvian sojourn last weekend....

Adventures Abroad

So Mudzuks and Vecais have been spending their summer holidays in the British Midlands, showing off all their recently acquired tricks to Oma & Opis. Tanta Stinky, Onkuls Gaga, Tomasins and Baby Annika arrived last week too, so there's really no more room at the inn. (Any additional grandchildren have to be the kind that come with one of those rollaway beds, which sounds none too pleasant from the perspective of the woman on the delivery table). Let's check in with the youngest generation to hear the latest verdicts :

Mudzuks:"Good parks. Good crop fields with tractor-thingies. My cousins are very fun to chillax with - you know, Clara the Cow and Gruffalo sort of thing. I finally get this 'footie' thing. Good hot chocolate. Um, aren't I supposed to get a passport out of this deal?"

Vecais: "This place is great. So great I've in fact decided to crawl. And stand up on my own with no hands for a few seconds (yes, I'm brilliant, I know). But if you want to see any more of that action, you'd better keep the morning papers and lattes coming. And hire a decent sommelier - I'm tired of being carded!"

Mudzuks and Baby Annika

What really goes on after the kids go to bed.

V: Woo hooooo! M: Speaking of that inheritance...

I rock.

Grab hold to what you can.

Mamuks, Tomass & Gaga

Meet the Krumins

Vecais & Oma

The Demise of the Toothless Wonder

It must be something in the British water. Despite their complete ineptitude at all things plumbing, it seems the those Limey Poms have managed to coax not only one, but two teeth (count 'em - two) out of our little toothless wonder (only the one in evidence here). His bite may just have become as bad as his bark.

A Cunning Plan

Papuks recently forwarded the latest *proof of life* from the Tollerton Dales, naively thinking Mamuks would not see the truth lurking therein. An outsider looking at these pictures would think "What lovely photos taken in the grandparents' yard!" A more skeptical viewer might think, "There's Papuks trying to mold Hugo in his own architect-image ." But only Mamuks saw through Papuks' cunning and thinly-veiled plan: As the pressure begins to mount, Papuks is training Hugo to do his thesis.

Papuks: "Today, permanence, often unfortunately associated with immutability, is a term that does not often occur in the architectural discourse. Instead we must seek out the robust identity and enduring presence of a building that can adapt to an urban context in flux. Blah, formalization, blah, blah, flexibility, blah, design, blah blah blah ..."

Papuks: "Now consider the context and the suggestion of barrier in this captured outdoor space."

Meanwhile Lara had her own plans for Muduks: While Lenin's great experiment may have failed, the destiny of the post-Soviet Traktoriste lives on.

1000 Days

Papuks (being the Clever Daddy that he is) figured out that on August 4th Mudzuks turned 1000 days old. That's amazing. (That's, like, millions!) Good thing we started counting in years; who can count that high? (Obviously not mamuks.)

Mudzuks, circa 45

Terminal 1

To borrow a line from Krusa, "Es ir sad."

Mamuks deposited Vecais and Mudzuks, along with their chaperone, butler and personal sherpa (Papuks) at Pearson's Terminal 1 yesterday as they embarked upon their first overseas adventure together to visit Oma and Opis in Tollerton. They might have sensed that things were getting off to a rocky start when, after waiting in the really, really long line ("gars un gars") to check in, the two adults, two children and multifarious pushie, pully, hoisty and draggie appendages saddled up to the check in counter, and the check-in attendant's reasonably pained look changed to !shock-shock-horror-horror! when Mamuks declared "Oh, I'm not travelling with them."

We mean, how on earth were a two year old and a baby ever going to be able to look after Papuks, all by themselves, for the duration of an overseas flight? We know that Krusa is an old hand at flying, but Papuks is, like, needy. We mean, what if he has to pee?

Meanwhile Kaka Poo Mansions feel very, very quiet.

Have food, will fly.

Bye bye babies.