Lydia turned 12 on October 7th while Ellie Beth turned 10 on October 11th. We wanted to do something special for the girls for their first birthday in Croatia. Since the three families we invited could not all come on the same day we divided the celebrations up. On Lydia’s birthday we invited the McCollum’s to Bundek, a great Zagreb park with a huge climbing structure. It is definitely getting cooler here so we did not think the park would be that busy. Boy, were we wrong. We failed to take into account that Lydia’s birthday was the day before Croatia’s Independence Day. Bundek was crowded with people, dogs and tanks. Even finding a parking spot was difficult. 
In the end, the McCollum’s invited us to their house – which is much bigger than our apartment – and we spent the rest of the day with them. We made cinnamon streusel coffee cake for our birthday cake as Betty Crocker cake mixes are not available here!
The next day we took off for a day trip to Austria. The girls wanted to have lunch at Burger King and get a present at the mall in Gratz. Although everything in Croatia was closed for the holiday, there was not a holiday in Austria. Hmmm… let’s think about this some more… We realized we might be in for a longer trip than we had first thought when we got to the first border crossing! We eventually entered Slovenia, only to encounter road construction on the only road connecting Zagreb with Gratz, Austria. About four hours later we arrived in Gratz and pulled into Burger King for lunch. This is the closest Burger King to us and our first BK meal in about a year. It was yummy! We went to two different malls and a Toys R Us store – it was almost like being in America except that everything was in German. We spent the rest of the day exploring and had dinner at Burger King again, then headed home – along with all the other Croatian travelers. It took us about six hours to get home –we spent two hours in start and stop traffic at the border crossing back into Croatia. Next time, we won’t go on a holiday!
This past Wednesday we had the Meeker and Wursburg families over for our last birthday celebration. It was fun to hang out, play Game cube, visit and eat the pavlova that Lydia made and gooey brownies. Although we missed our family birthday get together and the girls missed their friends, we had a great time and learned a lot about what to do and not to do for next year!
