Little, Yellow, Different, Thraps
We had a very pleasant soccer season this year! The boys won some and lost some and both boys scored multiple goals and assisted on many more. The weather was generally beautiful and we’re left looking forward to next season. Here are a sampling of the photos I snapped during the games.
“Go State!”
The day has come at last. ALL of my babies have gone off to school. It is an especially momentous occasion in all of our lives because as Elena is starting Kindergarten, Jacob is moving on to Middle School, and I now have the house and the day all to myself. Jacob will now have to take the bus, but it stops right at the school in our backyard so he can still walk with the other kids in the morning. He will be continuing with Band (percussion), and will learn some French and Spanish! Elise will be in 4th grade and she got “the nicest teacher!,” so she’s been told. Cameron is in 3rd, and for the first time since Kindergarten he has some of his best little friends in his class. And Elena spotted several toys at “Meet the Teacher Night” that she is just dying to play with! And today she will eat her first school lunch. Cheese Pizza!
See our meager little garden and our sprawling “pumpcchini?”
I know many of you have been asking what I’ll be doing now that I have all day to myself. So I will tell you that I am not rushing into anything. I’m going to just enjoy it for the first few days, maybe run some errands alone or have lunch with Josh. Then, probably some time next week, I plan to start catching up on the last four years of house cleaning, organization, and repairs that have eluded me. Of course there will always be the laundry and chores, and a little time on the computer. And eventually I hope to get to work on some bigger projects that I’ve been neglecting, like my scrapbooking! Also, I’ve promised some friends that once I’m used to having some time for myself I will try to start reading again, starting with >gasp< the Twilight series. Of course afternoons and evenings will still be full of helping kids with homework and running to and fro for dance and soccer and scouts etc. And I think I’ll really enjoy the holiday breaks with the kids and then in January my sister Sarah is expecting her first little one so perhaps I’ll get to spend some time with “Baby Gaga.” Eventually I may consider going back to school, volunteering, or getting a part-time job, but for right now, I’m kinda treating this as like my accumulated vacation hours from the non-stop job I’ve been working for the last 12 years. And I think I may start walking…
Last year we did a LOT of traveling, so we didn’t have many plans to travel this year–thought we’d chill at home. But this Spring we started talking with some friends who also have four children (all girls!) and got to thinking about the idea of taking a vacation together. We hashed around a lot of fun ideas, DisneyWorld, the coasts, Yellowstone, Branson, etc. Ultimately we decided to try something a bit less expensive and closer to home for our first joint travel venture–St. Louis!
My how the Summer is flying by. We had a very busy 4th of July week and I had intentions to blog more as things were happening this month, but now I can’t believe it’s the 23rd already! So, before I forget everything, here is a post about my little trip to Indiana with my mom and sister and my sister’s friend Colleen. We left on Thursday afternoon, the 8th, and with some traffic delays and stops for gas and dinner we finally made it to Aunt Jan’s in time to unload and settle in before Jan left to work the night shift. In the morning we let Jan sleep until about 10 or 11 and then we went shopping! Jan took us to a favorite little ice cream shop that also serves sandwhiches for lunch–Valpo Velvet.
Valpo Velvet
Then with some food in our tummies we were ready to hit the Goodwill! Colleen was not prepared for what Goodwill shopping can mean in our family, so after about an hour, maybe hour and a half she and Sarah walked around outside for a bit before coming back to hurry the rest of us along. We found some cute things for “Baby Gaga” and Jan got some porch furniture. I found a fun t-shirt that had the flag of Kazakhstan on the front and above the flag it said “Kazakhstan” and below the flag it said “it’s nice” which made me laugh, but it wasn’t a size that would have fit anyone in my family so I did not buy it. Purchases made, the next thing to do was figure out how to fit back in the car along with all of our Goodwill goodies.
Good time @ the Goodwill
After dropping off all our new treasures as well as Sarah and Colleen, Jan, Mom, and I went on to the grocey store to pick up supplies for dinner and breakfast. We had squealers and grilled veggies for dinner and shared some laughs when Mom kept talking about “Mike & Ike’s hard lemonade” and Jan asked for some “ice clubes.” After dinner we played a very long game of Apples to Apples (I won 
) before zoning out to “Say Yes to the Dress.” Saturday morning Jan made her famous stuffed french toast for breakfast complete with fresh blueberries to get us all geared up to go berry picking! 
After breakfast, with buckets and sun protection (and in my case, a solid dose of bug spray) in place we headed off into the fields for some marathon blueberry picking. 
The bushes were pretty full and the buckets seemed to fill quickly at first. (As did some people’s tummies.)
But the sun was awfully hot and we’d left all the water back in the car, so after about three hours I took the first load of full buckets back to the car and had a break. 
Not long after I’d stopped, Sarah and Colleen came out with several more full buckets and it started to rain. After another 10-15 minutes in the rain it became obvious that the mommas were not coming and so Sarah and went back to retrieve them. 
While I waited in the safety of the car a little yellow airplane buzzed just overhead and cropdusted the fields of corn surrounding the blueberry patch. I tried several times to get a good picture but failed. With blueberries picked and sorted and stored we took turns showering and decided that there was still enough time to drive up into Michigan and visit some wineries. Although I remember visiting wineries as a kid on vacation with my family, this was my first experience with the “wine tasting.” The first place we went gave us small samples of 7 wines each of our choice and one vodka made entirely from grapes.
Round Barn & Free Run Wineries Tasting House
The next stop was beer tasting with 6 varieties to choose from. I smelled them but I just think beer is gross so I only tasted the tiniest amount of one which had intrigued me with its name of “Cocoa Stout” but it too was gross so I didn’t bother with any others. Then we drove to another winery which offered not only 6 more wine samples each, but also a sparkling grape juice and chocolates.
Tabor Hill Tasting
On the way back to Jan’s it stormed some more and we discussed what kind of pizza to order from “Country Folk’s.” 
This time we dropped Mom and Jan off to walk the lane while Sarah and Colleen and I picked up the pizza.
After dinner we watched Mama Mia. Despite my meds, all the outdoors and “hairy girls” (Jan’s dogs) were really doing a numer on my nose and eyes. But all was well Sunday morning when Jan made uber yummy cinnamon rolls for brekky. After a leisurly morning of rolls on the porch, watching Colleen go off to run her 7 miles, we divvied up the blueberries and loaded up the car. On the road we listened to the final game of the World Cup between Spain and the Netherlands. The AM radio station that seemed to be the only one broadcasting the game was faint and so we listened for hours through lots of static and just as we pulled into Mom’s driveway and Sarah was about to run into the house to catch the exciting overtime on the tv, Spain scored a goal in the last minutes of overtime and it ended, so we didn’t see any of it.
I haven’t been in the mindset to write much lately, so I apologize for not updating the blog for a few months. We’ve been plenty busy. I still don’t know that I’m all that into writing, but I feel badly for not putting anything up here for so long. So most likely this post will be mostly pictures of some of the things that we’ve been up to this Spring and Summer.
Olivia, Elena, Brylee
For those of you not on Facebook, our plan for Spring Break this year was to follow Josh to work in Omaha and hang out at the hotel pool etc. I asked for many suggestions of things that the kids might enjoy doing in the Omaha area, but for the most part we really did just hang out in the hotel. Although, after weeks of telling the kids we were going to Omaha, as it turns out, the hotel Josh stays at is in Council Bluffs! So we had to give him a bit of a hard time about that one. We did have a nice room though and our tv had spots to plug in our video camera so we spent a lot of time just relaxing and watching old home movies from when the kids were babies and toddlers. Of course the kids enjoyed the pool!
On St. Patrick’s Day of course we all wore green and Josh took part of the afternoon off so we could go shopping and we took the kids out for a fancy fondue dinner at the Melting Pot. They all tried lobster and filet mignon for the first time and mostly enjoyed it! On our last day there we went to the Children’s Museum. The kids of all ages enjoyed the ball room and the construction zone! Then we found some costumes and sat through a puppet show.
On our way home, we made a detour up to Ames to see Percy Jackson and the Olympians the Lightning Theif. We’d been warned it was not great but the kids wanted to see it anyway. Jacob is reading the book. The movie exceeded my expectations, but Jacob agreed that the book is way way better and therefore the movie stunk. LOL Completely unrelated, yesterday we made the kids swap bedrooms. It was quite an undertaking and I don’t have any pictures yet, but I’ll take some when the process is finished. I do have some pictures of what I did today, here, enjoy!
I’m never gonna get through our whole trip at this rate and I can tell that I’m already forgetting some details! Not that I write all the details anyway, but whatever, moving on! So! When I stopped last time we had just visited the school and all the teachers were asking why they never hear from their American friends anymore. We walked home from school and briefly checked in with Tania before heading out again to be picked up by a friend that I hadn’t heard from or been able to contact since 1996! GALA!!! She and her husband Garik picked us up and drove us to a cafe in nearby Essentuki. Her English was still really good and I learned that she had been a teacher for a while but now she runs a children’s shop in Kislovodsk just up the street from the bazaar! Garik didn’t talk much, but he made sure that we experienced all the best that the cafe had to offer! I know I can’t even remember everything that we ate, but I do have pictures of most of it! After lunch, we drove back to K’vodsk very quickly and Gala showed us the places where we used to picnic and Josh got to experience another Narzan site. We had to get back for our evening plans but we arranged to get together again before our departure.
Gala dropped us off back at Tikhonenkos and we were just in time to catch our next ride! We squeezed into Teacher Tanya Azova’s car along with Alla Dremluga and her now tall teenage son and they drove us to the Castle of Love and Betrayal. Tanya regaled Josh with the story behind the name and now he knows why men say “ladies first!” The whole castle area is much more developed as an “attraction” than I remembered it, but we still had our picture taken on the bridge where all the wedding parties go. It was dusk by now and my camera really doesn’t like taking pictures at dusk so many of my pictures from this trip are blurry. We stopped again for more Narzan and then we headed back into town for some ice cream! We ate at a nice little place right behind the grand theatre overlooking the shopping street below.
am I forgetting anything important?
For Christmas this past year, Josh worked really hard to come up with a very thoughtful and original gift for me. A weekend retreat with girlfriends! He made a book to show me everything he’d planned and finally, last weekend, the time had come to party! Unfortunately, due to all kinds of circumstances, the weekend wasn’t quite what Josh had planned, but those of us able to attend still made the most of it and had a good time! Josh had arranged for flowers and sweets in the hotel room, and we had fun looking over the “Pillow menu!” Never did order any pillows! Sarah showed me how to apply false eyelashes which we then both wore out to dinner with the ladies. Mmm Peking! Unfortunately, I completely forgot to take my camera to dinner 
so I don’t have pictures with many of the guests. Then, back at the hotel it really seemed like we were the ONLY guests and we played games and laughed and stayed up singing until around 3 am with our sliding doors to the pool area wide open! The pool unfortunately was closed, so we didn’t get to do any swimming.
In the morning, the trolley picked us up at the hotel and we had a little tour around Muscatine/dance party–80’s tunes blaring! (Courtesy of Danaka’s and then Sarah’s ipod hooked into the trolley stereo system!) We stopped up at the Mark Twain overlook for some pictures–one overlooking the Mississippi River, and one overlooking downtown Muscatine. After a few more errands we stopped at my parents’ home for warm soup, cold sandwiches, and some knitting lessons!
Of course I’m leaving out several of the details, like why Danaka has that awesome blue streak in her hair but what can I say, we like to party!
My previous posts about our trip to Russia this past October only covered about half of our trip, and then I started to get busy with holidays and birthdays and such and kinda just figured “oh well, nobody really cares about seeing all our trip pictures anyway.” And then while we were traveling and visiting families etc over the Christmas break I was really surprised at how many people were commenting on enjoying seeing the pictures and wondering about the rest of the trip. So now that things are kinda starting to slow down–at least during the week a bit, I will try to finish posting about our wonderful time in Russia. First, to give a better idea of where we were, I’ve found some map images online. The first map shows Russia in relation to the rest of Europe, you can see Moscow, and down to the south is the area between the Black and Caspian Seas. The second map is a closer view of that southern area. You can see Min. Vody, where our local flights arrived and departed, Piatigorsk, one of the bigger cities we visited, and Dombai and Mt. Elbrus, the mountains pictured in my “Spot Josh” post. And Kislovodsk (although not shown) is located in that small area of gray just southwest of Piatigorsk between Karachay-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria. Some of the pictures from our travels into the mountains are from these areas.
Ok, so we left home on a Wednesday and I’ve posted up to the next Wednesday which was the day that we went to the school. School No 2 is the sister school of the Muscatine High School, where Josh and I attended. I spent the entire second semester of my sophomore year as an exchange student at School No 2, and I visited again the summer between my junior and senior years, and went back for the entire schoolyear after I graduated 95-96 to help out in the English department at School No 2.
The building hasn’t changed all that much, and many of my teacher friends were still there too!
We just had a moment to meet with Nonna who is now the principal, and then we were taken up to a very large classroom where students of many ages were already gathered and seated and waiting relatively quietly for us. We answered questions for about a half an hour or so and then were swarmed with requests for autographs and short messages in english. We felt kind of like rock stars! When the teachers had finally cleared the room we were taken to another room to have our pictures taken with the senior class, and then we had a small visit in the teachers lounge.
Josh seemed to really enjoy the experience at the school. It was really cool for me just to be back there and to see so many familiar faces, it made me sad that the teachers there–who work so hard for practically nothing, explained that Americans don’t come there anymore and that for most of the students we were the first Americans they’ve ever seen. They are still very interested in all of the friends they’ve met through the years of exchanges with Muscatine, and hope to continue and expand the relationships in the future.
