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...