Our Guardians Angels are working overtime!

So, I'm driving home from Pizza Night at our good friends', the Brobergs, home. I am following Steve because we had to take two cars.

Here in Russia we have round-abouts often where, in America, you would have a simple intersection and a street light. So, as I was entering one of these round-abouts, a semi decided that he owned the road and kept squeezing me off of it. As a result, I ran along the curb which consequently slashed both of my tires on the left side.

I pulled over just as soon as I could after getting out of the round-about and sat parked (in the Honda minivan) off the road in front of a car wash and called Steve for help.

He turned around and came to my rescue (in the Toyota Land Cruiser). Parking directly behind me about 10 feet, he helped me get the spare and started to remove the lug nuts.

Just then, a security guard in a Lada (a tin can of a Russian made car) slammed into the back of our Toyota. This is what it looked like.

Now, let me give you a little bit of background information. These cars belong to our organization. The Honda was given to us to use and the Toyota is in our keeping while it is being sold. After all this, we are pretty convinced that we would rather own the Toyota than the minivan. This is the second time the Lord has used it to stop the crazy drivers from hurting us. Though Steve and I were standing only feet from the accident and we each had two kids in our cars,

no Hayes was hurt!

The driver and his passenger went off in the Skora Pamotch (Ambulance). Do you see where the hood is piercing the windshield? It also pierced the passenger's nose. The driver hit his chest on the steering wheel at full force.

The perils of driving drunk...

By the way, Skora Pamotch means "help soon", but our friend, Jen, made it to us before they did and took our kids home with her. It took the medical professionals about 20 minutes.

This is where I was standing at impact... except just before the accident I had the Honda right beside me. You see, when the Lada hit the Toyota, it lurched 10 feet and hit the Honda which also lurched 10 feet. The road the Lada should have been on is actually not seen to the right of this photo. It is amazing that he hit the car and not me or Steve. Though, only 5 minutes before, we were between the cars and Steve was in a precarious position trying to remove the spare tire which could have resulted in serious injury, even death when our two cars hit each other. The scenarios are endless and we are just so grateful to be safe.

The first person Steve called was our pastor, Marat (in the red jacket). Considering this happened at 1am, we were so grateful that he immediately came and even brought a friend. We could not have done all that we had to do in the next 4 hours without them.

The police showed up after about 30 minutes, looked over everything and then started to leave. We asked them where they were going and they said that a pedestrian had been hit and killed and they were the only police for our region and that time of night.

So, after about an hour, they returned and we measured everything and answered their questions until about 3:30am. Then they left and told us to meet them at their office.

We then proceeded to try to remove the offending car from our Toyota bumper, which proved to be a little harder than expected. He had really driven it up under there!

The whole ordeal finally concluded around 5:30am, though in reality, it is just the beginning! Now we deal with insurance companies and mechanics, though I will take that over doctors and hospitals any day!

Harvest Party at KIS

KIS (Krasnodar International School) had a Harvest Party just before breaking for Thanksgiving holiday. The Elementary kids were the Indians...

... and the Middle School kids were the pilgrims. Our good friend, Mark Broberg, came as Squanto and taught everyone the ways of the Indians.

This is how it is done...

...like father like son...

... and Cady had her own style, though not quite as effective.

He also taught the kids how to make fire with a flint stone and some soft blowing.

Haillie was good at starting her fire...

... maybe a little TOO good!

Brookie got in on the fun, too. She rode the bus to go visit a friend with Yana.

No stage fright here!

Churches in Russia celebrate Thanksgiving just like we do, only they do it in September or October and call it "Zhadva" or "Harvest".

Oddly enough, all the children in our church are Americans, but they were troopers and sang a song in Russian.

Madi even sang a solo... in Russian! She did such a great job. I wish you all could have been there.

The next week our church celebrated its 5th anniversary.

The kids really enjoyed the food.




I don't know what I was saying, but as you can see, everyone was very interested!


This is a Russian family sent from our church to live in Dagastan and help with a new church there. Dagastan is located just above Chechnya and is predominately Muslim. Life there is very hard for Russian christians. As Americans, we cannot live there and can hardly even visit. They are a very precious family.

Jewelry Class

Our kids have been attending the New International School here in Krasnodar and I had the happy opportunity to teach an enrichment class for their first quarter.

It somehow got around that I knew how to make jewelry and I was asked to teach the middle school girls what I know.

Since what I know about jewelry making takes all of one hour to teach, and yet I was supposed to fill 45 minutes two days a week for about nine weeks, it was a learning experience for all of us!

Getting middle school girls to take a simple picture was almost more challenging than teaching the class!!!

After making the basic necklace, we made Macramé bracelets. Then we moved on to earrings and phone charms.

Our biggest project was beaded insects and animals that we used to decorate frames.

It was a lot of fun and though I am happy to have more time for other things, I will miss hanging out with those wacky girls!

Engaged!!

Our Yana is getting married!!! We have mixed emotions...

We think he is very lucky and he seems really sweet, but...

We really don't want them to do anything about it until we get back from the States next summer! We just CAN'T miss the wedding! I want to make her promise to wait, but I'm thinking that might be a little selfish on my part...

Aubrie is Seven!

During my vacation from blogging, Aubrie turned 7!

It is so hard to believe that she is old enough to go to school and grow new front teeth.

If I could keep any of them little forever, it would be her, though Brooklyn is running a close second!

She asked for cheesecake for her actual birthday

and a cake with a deer on it for her party...




I couldn't figure out how to make a deer,

so I compromised with a rendition of India, our dog.

Aubrie has been so generous with the American Girl she got for her last birthday letting her little sister, Brooklyn, play with her to the point of permanent "bad hair day"!
So, we decided to pass Josephina on for good and let Aubrie have a new one.
For her party she wanted to make crowns
and sock puppets.


Cady & her horse

Aubrie & her pig

Silas Broberg

& his creature

This is Megan.

She was Aubrie's BEST present this year. Aubrie hasn't usually had girls her age in the different places that we have lived. Since birth Cassidy & Gabby, her cousins, have been her only close friends. While they are STILL her BESTEST friends (she misses you guys!) she now has Megan. Megan's family has moved to our city to work... not just for language school. That means we may have her around for more than 2 years (all of this does NOT mean that she has forgotten the boy who was her age and only here for language school... she misses you, too, Micah!).

Wouldn't you know...

I don't know whether you would attribute it toMurphy's Lawor the desire to prove someone wrongor just crazy coincidence...
But just as soon as I pushed "post" on my last installment, my camera and computer came to some kind of agreement and I got all my pictures back!
So, I will share them as they come to me, but don't expect things to be chronological.That would be asking WAY too much!



Imagine this coming at you at 60mph!

Okay, not quite "u-shaped" but DEFINITELY un-Useable!

Cady was in the very back seat, but after the initial shock, we found only a tiny little scratch on her leg.

Brace Yourself...

I know you have been waiting...

I have been waiting, too!

Waiting for my photography/computer saavy husband to put some pictures on my computer so that you all don't just have to read all that is floating through my head these days.

But, alas, all the "saavy-ness" in the world cannot undo what a Russian semi did back in August as we drove the 17 hours from the Moscow Airport to our home in Krasnodar.

We had just come down a hill 8 hours into our trip when we were forced to come to a dead stop because of "prohp-kah". (Russian word for "traffic" literally translated "cork")

After sitting for a few minutes, Steve, the ever-cautious driver, looked in his rearview mirror and seeing nothing, went to change the song on the MP3 player when...

--- BAM ---

the semi rear-ended us and pushed us off the road.

Now, before you get excited... we were in a Toyota SUV with a tire on the back and all of our kids were restrained properly (which is really something considering it is not the law here and our kids were REALLY tired of being restrained!). No one got hurt, just real shook up.

The worst part is what we discovered after we got out to survey the damage...

When the driver (who offered no explanation as to why he rammed us when traffic was clearly at a standstill and he had plenty of time to stop and even admits that he did not try to slow down) hit us he broke out our back window and consequently crushed our roof (we had quite a few boxes stacked on top as we had just come from America).

That is still not the worst part...

While walking around the semi to look for skidmarks, Steve discovered his laptop bag behind the semi... Yes, it had fallen out of our back window and the semi ran over it, not once, but twice!!! I had the greatest picture of our "u" shaped computer, but since it also demolished our flash card and card reader, I cannot show it to you no matter what my photography/computer saavy husband tries.

And here we are again... you're stuck reading my ramblings.

So, to whoever is still listening... I will try to give you updates during the holidays and try to steal pictures from others and if you just hang in there, it should all be remedied by February... or maybe March...

To the faithful few... I'm sorry!

It has come to my attention that those who faithfully check my blog are tired of seeing bikes day after day. Being a "regular-blog-checker" myself, I understand the frustration (I'm talking to you, Rick Greene!).
I have been wanting to update with pictures, but I am stateside right now typing on a laptop and am not computer saavy enough to provide you with them... so you will just have to wait a few more weeks.
We came to Texas last month to renew passports and visas and are stuck 3/4th of the way through the process right now, so we are just enjoying all the family around us.


Lucky you! I found a picture. It is from the bike trip, but doesn't contain a bike, so that is something. Can you imagine being able to bike in those beautiful mountains?! You can, too! Come on over and join us next time!

Bike Team!

For those of you who have been checking out our "Coming Events" at the botton of this page, you will be pleased to see some of these photos! The Bike Team from Texas has arrived!


This is Johnny. He is the leader of the pack. A gentle giant... and pretty good with a bike.


Will is the audio/video guy. He rides right along with them, but he also makes great DVDs of their trips.


Ryan is helping to build a bike ramp in the empty lot next to our house... that is, until the owners showed up and put a stop to it. They were afraid we might mess up the property that they may or may not build on in the next 20 years. We were actually cleaning up all the garbage for him!

We knew we had kids in our neighborhood, but they really came out of the woodwork when Jake started doing his tricks. We were warned about Jake before he came. He is not afraid of anything, even getting hurt! He proved it the first night he was here by shattering a coffee mug with his foot. Ouch!


He is even crazy without a bike!



I let them do this to Steve, but when Maddie tried to volunteer I said, "Enough is enough!"


These are two girls, Anna & Ira, that we have been getting to know when they come to our house every other week to practice their English. Yes, that is me... I went a little short and light for the summer!