Time with the Aunts

Trisha and Stacy took time out their busy schedule to come and visit their nephews while we were all in Graham. Of course a 2 year old is much more exciting to play with than a 2 month old--but Luka was sure giving a lot of smiles and laughs to keep everyone's attention.
Aleks enjoyed having a backyard to play in; searching for bugs and digging holes and best of all making a fire to burn sticks and leaves. Grandpa is busy on the phone, so Aloysha took over to cook our hamburger dinner.

Trisha will be a natural, one day...

Having a nice Graham visit...

Babushka, Aleksandra Tour

Babushka, the only name that sounds right to me to call her, an amazingly strong and beautiful person, passed away on Sunday the 21st of January. Her family is so much bigger than just her three children--Galina, Tamara and Eugene and grandchildren--probably half the town of Sillamae feels like she was their mom or aunt or grandma. Everyone will miss her just as much as they loved her.

Roma will arrive in Sillamae on the 24th and his Aunt Tamara and Uncle Eugene are already there--on Friday they will all get together and remeber the wonderful and sad and exciting and just everyday moments they had with her. I'm sorry I can't be there but I am definitely thinking of the whole family and my own times with Babushka and Romka's stories about sending butter to Donetsk and him riding his bike for the first time down the hill in front of her house and the racing car glasses in her cabinet......and many others.... I love you all, and I am very glad that you are a part of my family.

Связь поколений

В аэропорту Чикаго вот такая картина... причём, это не отец и сын, а совершенно незнакомые люди.

Three weeks...

For the next three weeks we will all be traveling around the world...some of us more than others...some of us for the first time in our lives--but there are great adventures to be had. Romka is going to visit his family in Estonia and then off to Kamchatka to do some important Salmon saving stuff. Jennifer, Aleksei and Lukian are all going to Texas to do some important grandparent play participation (and aunt and granny too).

We will try to take the time to tell about what is going on every now and then--but will be back home (that is, in Portland) just before Valentines day.

I am hoping that the trip, a direct one from Portland to Dallas, will not be too tough--Aleks has his 'multiki' and Luka has his milk--so maybe for 4 hours we will not drive the people sitting around us insane!

New Bed

Well, we put a new bed into our bedroom and offered it to Alyosha to sleep on...he was excited because it had the cool car sheets that he picked out himself and he really wanted to go to bed. An hour later we found him on the floor where the other bed used to be.....and a couple of hours later he was in between Roma and I....But the second night he didn't join us until 7 in the morning!

Well, that was the first two nights…now I think that we have done something that will traumatize him for the rest of his life. Under our bed is a great storage place, so while rearranging the room, we had to move all the stuff stored under the bed. Included in that storage was a pair of Tasmanian devil house shoes, and somehow one got left behind under Alyosha’s new bed. So, this evening he was laying in his bed and then started saying that he was afraid of the scary dog under his bed… and, as usual, I told him that it was just pretend and he should just go to sleep. About 30 minutes later, he comes slinking out of the room like a little caterpillar covering his eyes with his hands ( I can only assume that he was covering his eyes because he thought that he would be hiding from me and I wouldn’t be able to see him if he covered his eyes…I thought the same when I was little) He said that he was afraid of the scary dog…so I went into the room to ‘get rid’ of this pretend scary dog. I asked him where it was and he pointed to the end of the bed…when I looked under there I was frightened! Poor little guy will probably be traumatized for the rest of his life and really think that monsters, or at least scary dogs live under the bed! I guess we will find out in 20 or so years the terrible affects we have scarred our kids with…

January Snow day

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What a great day for people who don't have to drive their cars! We got 3 inches of snow in dowtown portland and it is so cold that it should last for a couple of days! Too bad for all the commuters though; right when it was time for morning traffic to be at its worst is when everyone realized the weather was going to turn all the roads into ice! School wasn't canceled until 15 minutes before it was to begin--so all the kids and their parents were already in the car trying to get there on time. Many people didn't have their chains or anything to help them drive on icey roads so they just abandoned their cars in the middle of the interstate!

Take a look at the video of the crazy drivers and the ride (slide) they took!

Goodbye old year, Hello 2007!

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This year is going to be a great year! Yesterday was New Year on the old Russian calendar, and the final day of the holiday celebrations (we finally took down our tree....and I think that Aleks and Roma have started a new tradition together--see picture proof.)


Peter and Anna (who is about to pop with baby Claudia or Sofia any day now) had us over for dinner and relaxing in front of their fire place. The kids enjoyed the full attention they gave each other, since each mom is sharing attention with the new addition. It's nice that they are at the age that they can entertain themselves a while without causing too much destruction.

We took down the tree and carefully packed up the decorations for the next year...a concept that Aloysha is learning (Christmas and presents and trick-or-treating only come once a year... why?). Roma's idea is that the Christmas tree becomes part of our family for a month and to give a proper goodbye to a tree which accumulated all the family spirit while with us and took all bad feelings of the last year, we needed to burn it in order for those feelings to not come back. So part of it was burned while evading police eyes in the mounds of construction dirt--and the rest was burned to warm our Old New Year celebration at Peter and Anna's house.

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Play Date

We are doing good and staying very busy! But made time for a playgroup for the older kids--From my baby group that we have been going to since Aleks was 6 weeks old--Angela and Heather have each had a second (a little older than Luka--) Ben and Ariel--so the 2 year olds played, the babies had their milk, and the Mamas chatted and enjoyed the kids playing amongst themselves for a while!

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Luka's first month

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