Images of December

Moon over Finnish Gulf

I'm always amazed when driving home by the cruise ship parked along the street. Just a little reminder that we live by the sea, and in a tourist destination!

Every year I long for snow. This year we finally got some in late November. But it quickly turned to dirty slush. I took this picture to admit to my friends who dislike snow that they are right--sometimes it makes things uglier. 

Now, I understand why people come to St Pete as tourists. But when a caravan of RVs showed up in late November, in the slushy snow, I was surprised. They set up a cooking tent in our courtyard, complete with a generator. But it seemed most of their time they spent inside... understandably!

It was very disappointing that our snow only lasted a few weeks. But despite the mess and grayness, it also revealed beauty. Here is the  on the way home from the office. 'Reflections' has been a theme of my art this year, because I've been amazed at the beauty I can see in the dirty puddles.

Our team has been studying the letter to the Hebrews this year, and I've found a lot of parallels between these ugly puddles and suffering. If we focus on what they allow us to see, even the hardest things can show beauty.

Beauty in ice.

Ella and Tima enjoying breaking ice. The river stayed frozen for a week after the snow melted, and created some amazing ice structures!

Six inches of latticed ice crystals, impossible to display in photograph, but fun to crunch!

Attempt at capturing the beautiful crystal structure.

Driving home from picking me up at the airport on Christmas Eve... if you look closely, you can see the famous beauty of the Winter Palace as we cross the bridge.

Fall 2013, on Vasilevskiy Island

For the first two months of the school year, we gathered every Saturday morning with our Bulgarian, American, Taiwanese, Korean and Kyrgyz friends to play family style baseball. It was strangely sunny, even when it was cold. Ella was even convinced to play by the last few weeks.

On days without sports after school, we always walk a block to Shkiperskiy Park, where we meet our friends for some playground and social time.  Here, Ella and Tima with a fourth-grade friend.

Our courtyard this week.
Ella is perched on the lovely fenced-in basketball/soccer court, where we love to play.
We live in the red-faced building... if you could see to the sixth floor, the boys' window overlooks this wooded courtyard.

We walk over this bridge each day to get to the metro stop. It's delightful to live so close, so we don't have to take a bus to get there. Our apartment overlooks this river (in this photo, our building is tucked between the last two buildings on the left). We love watching the water in both the Finnish Gulf and this river.

Reflections have become one of my main themes. The reflection  in a puddle -- a glimpse of beauty in what is ugly or uncomfortable ... 

I thought I would miss our wooded park  a lot. But the largest green spot of our island is less than 10 minutes walk away--an old cemetery. I love both the abundant nature and the old gravestones. 

In the old cemetery, there are countless scenes like these. Here, the red (plastic) flowers aer in an old grave. And the tree roots have grown up around it, pushing it over...before the tree was cut.

tree rising out of grave.

more beautiful details of the old city

From the east side of our island, the iconic Peter and Paul Fortress is visible. I like to tramp the back alleys and watch the sun come up.

I, like my dad, am enamored with brick patterns on the old streets. We are only two metro stops from Nevskiy Prospect, and there are many bricked-alleys on our island as well.

Many of the old churches are renovated as tourist attractions or acting houses of worship. This one is tucked in an industrial zone near the kids' school. It is in severe disrepair, but beautiful in a unique way.

back-alley tramping.

Crossing the bridge onto our island--probably after a long drive home from baseball practice--we were awed by this sunset over the Neva.

Images of Colorado

Summer Stories

Ella enjoyed her first Rockies game. Mostly the cotton candy. We loved going with the Almontes and Messers and all our kids!

Tima's birthday! Our first ever 'rec-center' sponsored birthday, at the Erie climbing wall. He  invited the friends he'd made at sports camp, even his teenage coach who dropped by and brought great joy to all the boys!

Since Danya is going by D.J., Tima has wanted to be called T.J. all summer.  But his initials are T.B. (Yes, we did realize this when we named him, but decided to do it anyway.) I was delighted to find that all the construction cones in our current town are labeled with Tima's initials!

The neighborhood kids where we house-sat for a month play in the central park every evening. Good old-fashioned  Free Range Kids. It was hard to leave them, so we came back a week later to visit. So wonderful to become part of a community in a short time. And so hard to leave, again.

Cousins walking.

We had the blessing of three full days with the Huddleston boys  this week, while their parents are working at a conference in Denver.  They had a great time playing at home, but we did get out to have a little fun!

Danya attempted to steal home. And was tagged, and stepped on.

Danya's last at bat.

Danya, (oh, sorry, D.J., or was it just Dan?) completed his first American little league season. It was hard to play with a volunteer coach, on a team without much experience. And anti-climactic,  and sad,  to say good-bye and walk away. 

Christmas and Winter Solstice Events

I just can't resist the sunrise photos. We have been blessed with sunny or 'high cloud' days for more than a week now. I don't mind having less than six hours of daylight as long as it's SUNLIGHT!

A few poor quality images of our church's Christmas play. Danya (as Joseph) is tallest, Tima (as wise man) is next. Ella is the little lamb with ears.

Danya as Joseph and Monica as Mary.

Ella as the little lamb, and Aglaya as ?

Danya has learned to play "Joy to the World" on the piano. The kids had a good attempt of singing the first verse.

Our sunrise is right after 11am these days. And it's amazing!

Ella's Dance Recital

Today, Ella enjoyed dancing on the stage! Although she has missed almost all of the last month of practice, her teacher let her join in the 'concert'.  She even got to stand in the front, and her teacher said she did very well.

Here is a very amateur video of the first 30 seconds, from the back of the auditorium. Turn your volume low before you start--the audio quality is as bad as the video!

Ella is the child under the moon, wearing a pink hat and orange outfit:

Milestones

Ella had an exciting month.

She started kindergarten.


She learned to ride a bike.




And, she grew her first adult tooth.
 (We'll refrain from the over-exposed mouth shot. But note that sadly, this event was not preceded by first losing a baby tooth. It seems that there are orthodontics in her future.)


Our little one is growing up fast. We are very aware of being in the season of life when time flies. It helps that we haven't moved in more than three years... they start to blend together, when you live in the same country, city, and even apartment.

First Week of (Home) School!

Monday morning, Tima was feverish, vomiting and complaining that his feet 'didn't work right'. Not a great beginning.  I was so thankful to not have to deal with the big problem of a child missing the first day of 'real' school. Instead, he stayed home, slept, and even got a few subjects done in his better hours.

By Tuesday, Tima was feeling better, but Danya and Ella both developed fevers and sore throats. However, it didn't stop them from getting their work done. In fact, I think it was easier for me than when they are all healthy and full of energy!

By Thursday, Tima was back to 100% and Danya and Ella dragging with high fevers and voluminous tonsils. We even had an impromptu health/biochemistry lesson when we pulled out the rapid-strep kit! I let Tima do everything except actually swab Danya's throat. (He was begging to do that too, but I wasn't sure Danya would appreciated it.) To everyone's disappointment, the tests were negative. (The kit is 10 years old, so who knows if it's still accurate. The control line still works. But, with such a short duration of fever, I would have been a little surprised to see a positive result.)

Today, everyone is feeling better. We finished our schoolwork in record time. After lunch and playtime, they are doing their Friday chores. 

Overall, I've been surprised at how easy homeschooling is. There are a number of factors that help. 

1) We did summer school three days a week for the months that we were home, so the kids are already 3-5 weeks into most subjects. I think the staggered start helps a lot in the "What do I do here?" factor. 

2) We have always done English and history homeschool after the morning of Russian school. So now, we have 4 extra hours, and all we're adding is math, Bible study, and a little more history/geography and science.

3) Not everything has started yet. Baseball practice is supposed to be four days a week... and the boys are in separate groups! But so far, Tima's together with the older team, and we only went once due to everyone's sickness. That will put time pressure on our days, as we'll have to finish by lunch to make it to practice. Ella will start dance two days a week, and we will have Russian lessons (with homework) to add to our schedule. Of course, I'd love to add piano, swimming, theatre... well, I've realized my desires are a bit unrealistic!

4) It really is easier, when everyone has a fever! Today, I've dealt with a lot more of the kids pestering each other, bouncing tennis balls off the walls, and just driving me crazy.

And speaking of which, we have to get outside!

A view of our lives in [a type of] 3D

View Larger Map

I just found the 3D function on google maps for directions. So you can see how we'll drive to the coffee shop tomorrow on the way to our friendly ex-pat baseball gathering. The buildings are all flattened, but it's pretty weird to see our city reproduced. Now, if only our car can zoom along without traffic jams like the little blue dot on the map!

(I can't get the blue dot zooming along on the embedded map. If you want to pretend you're driving with us, try this link, and click on the 3D button on the left-side menu.

or this one?