Making our Neighborhood beautiful

Today was an Oregon state wide day organized to clean up the neighborhoods. We live in a great neighborhood with wonderful maintenance workers who sweep the curbs every day-so luckily there wasn't too much to clean up. But the kids spotted every cigarette butt or stray gum wrapper and picked it up with their extended arms. Here is the group-Luka didn't want to wear the orange safety vest-OR his sun hat. He was a true pirate.

Luka is helping his brother make his Bobo feel better. Alyosha got a big scratch on his chin-you will see in future pictures how we decorated it with Zelonkia.

We also planted wild flowers in the field in front of our bridge. Hopefully they will all sprout-it will be beautiful.

I (Jen) carried Niki most of the time because Roma was carrying the big trash bag, but in the end I was releived by Roma and the Baby Bjorn--Niki isn't really supposed to face forward yet, but he likes to see the world.

In the afternoon we trecked over to Wallace Park beside the elementary school Alyosha will go to in September-It was a beautiful day. You can see where the scratch is hidden by the green paint.

Luka is a monkey robot. For some reason, he decided to talk like a robot all afternoon.

Alyosha thinks he never goes to sleep because he just lays down and then the sun comes up-like the night is only a minute long. When he got into bed he said that this was a really great day and he wanted to do it all again tomorrow!

The Pirate without a ship

There was a pirate. This pirate didn't have a ship but he really wanted one. So, since he didn't have his own ship he decided to build one for himself. So far he had one board and that was what he was sailing on.


Yes, he was in the middle of the ocean hanging on to one board and he was as happy as could be because that was the beginning of his ship. So, along came a shark. And the shark was so surprised to see a pirate just floating in the middle of the ocean-all alone and without a ship. (the shark didn't know that the board was the pirates 'ship')

The shark was so surprised that he stopped in the middle of his swimming to ask the Pirate what was going on. "PIRATE! Are you crazy? You are out here floating in the middle of the ocean with no pirate ship! A shark could come up and eat you any time he wanted."


The pirate replied, "First, I do have a ship. It is here, this board is the first board of the ship I am going to build for myself. Second, a shark could not eat me! If one even tries I will take my board and bop him on the head and he will swim away as fast as he can."


The shark was amazed that this pirate was so strong that he is going to build an entire pirate ship himself and so brave that he would float in the middle of the ocean just hanging onto one board. He was trying to decide whether or not he should just eat up that pirate or become his friend...so he decided to become his friend.


The pirate was pretty excited to get a shark as a friend. So the two of them swam around for a while, then the shark remembered that he was actually hungry. He looked at the pirate but remembered that he shouldn't eat his friends so he said, "Pirate, I'm hungry but I don't want to eat you. Do you have something I could eat?"


The pirate said "the only thing I have is this one board. If you would like to eat it I will give it to you."


The shark thanked him and opened his mouth wide to fit the entire board in his mouth. Then, the board got stuck and he could not get it out at all. The pirate tried to help but it wasn't budging! So, there the shark was with a big stick stuck in his mouth and the pirate didn't have is board to float on anymore.


The two of them made a deal...the pirate would sit on the back of the shark to get around and the shark would just keep that stick in his mouth forever.


After a while the head of the shark started stretching and stretching--and then the pirate noticed "Ha, ha, ha shark!! Your head looks like it is shaped like a hammer!! You are a hammerhead!!!"


The shark didn't mind being a hammerhead, actually he kind of liked it. Later he met a beautiful girl shark and they got married and had lots of baby sharks--and they were all little baby hammerhead sharks! And that is how there are hammerhead sharks in the world.


And, about the pirate...When the hammerhead shark got married he finally dropped the pirate off on a little island in the Caribbean Sea. There, the pirate built a ship so big that it couldn't even sail on the ocean. So it is just sitting there like a house and you can go visit it if you dare.

Pirates, sharks and Bananas

There was a homeless man in the park today, sleeping by a stump. He was snoring and the kids thought he was a bear—but he turned out to be a man instead. I guess that really made an impression on Alyosha because he mentions it every time you ask him a question about what he learned about in nature school today… He asked why the man was homeless, and that is a hard question to answer…but I told him one reason might be because the man doesn’t know that he has any skills so he doesn’t know what job to do. That is why we are helping you learn lots of skills like reading and writing and about bugs and nature and bike riding…

He said that if he could read he would read lots of books about pirates and learn everything about pirates that he could learn about—and I told him that if he learned the skill of writing then he could think up of his own story and write it down and share it with grandma and grandpa and all his friends. This is the story he helped tell and when it was finished he told me to go write it down because it was soooo funny and he wanted to show his friends….let’s see if I remember it!

There was a pirate on his pirate ship. The pirate was standing on the very top of the mast of his ship looking out to make sure there were no sharks around. Especially one shark—a shark as big as the pirate ship who could eat up that ship in one gulp. He was looking and looking but didn’t see anything, yet he kept looking out.

All of a sudden he saw THE shark. He yelled down to all the other pirates “the shark is coming, the shark is coming” All the other pirates started running around figuring out what to do. The pirate yelled again “THE SHARK IS COMING” He yelled so loud that the pirates ears popped off their head and then popped back on.

They couldn’t decide whether or not to jump off the ship and swim or just try to go as fast as they could. So they saw an island and started sailing towards the island. The propeller on the ship was spinning as fast as it could and the pirates had paddles helping the ship go even faster.

The ship was going so fast that when it got to the beach of the island the whole ship just popped up on the land! And it was a good thing it did, because if it stayed in the water the shark surly would have gulped it up.

The pirates jumped out of the ship to have a look at the shark in the water. He was so upset because he wanted to eat the ship up. The pirates were laughing and laughing because they got away. They saw some banana trees on the beach and pulled down all the bananas and threw them to the shark. They said “Shark, you should be a monkey because we can give you bananas but we won’t let you eat us!”

And that is Alyosha’s story (mostly his…)

Ну и неделька!

Ну и неделька. Завалилась в гости Тришка, сестра-в-законе из солнечного Техаса. Наивно полагая, что с двумя бабами в доме наступит порядок, покой и благодать, я начал было мечтать о том, как совершенно безоглядно смогу окунуться с головой во что-нибудь эдакое экзотичное, например поваляться в выходной на диване с пивом, книжкой или кино. Ха! Лох. Всё было как и без Тришки, но только раза в 2 интенсивнее. Сегодня она улетела назад в Даллас.

У Алёшки поехала крыша на теме про пиратов, после просмотра мультика Остров сокровищ, да да, того самого, где между главами поют всякие наставления группа настоящих немультяшных музыкантов. Целый день после этого он ходил одетый как пират, надыбал в моей комнате трубку, и посасывая её обращался ко мне не иначе, как "Эй, старший пират!". Мы с ним закидывали лассо на стулья, простите -драконов, брали Луку, то есть вражескую флотилию на абордаж и искали сокровища. Он до сих пор обижается если я назову его Алешей, вместо "Младший пират".

Завтра мой день рождения, но почему-то большинство родных и друзей поздравило меня сегодня. Спасибо огромное! А завтра всё равно целый день буду занят до самого вечера, на работе очередной ежегодный сбор совета директоров. Впрочем, это стало уже традицией на мой день рождения делать либо сбор директоров либо экзамены в институте.

Рози и Стив прислали открытку со смешными тирольскими песнями и наши уставшие за день детки, "читали" её во время ужина. Отдельное видео здесь.