December 15, 2013

This week Justin continued his love of creating things out of construction paper and tape.  Keeps him busy, but hard to find places for all of his creations.

 

The boys had a great time in the snow.  We were all feeling well so they had the opportunity to enjoy playing outside.  It looks pretty enough, but it gets old fast.  I hate having to put on the layers and pulling off wet boots and having my entry floor dirty and wet. :(

Sun!  Unfortunately, clear skies mean it is colder. :(

The community has someone do off our driveway.  They don't do it all the way, but they do it enough that we can get in and out.  Sure glad I don't have to shovel the snow.  Brrr!

Ryan at school.  When I went to pick him up, he couldn't figure why I was there.  He couldn't believe that it was already time to go home.  He had a lot of fun playing in the snow with the other kids.

J and R had fun playing out in the back yard.

 My book club meeting this month took me to my first Soviet era apartment building.  It was an experience!  Once buzzed in, you enter into a lobby(?) indoor courtyard (?) that reminded me of the kind of parking garage where you would be afraid to park.  It was dark until we got over near the elevator and the stairs and finally got the automatic lights to sense us and turn on.  Here is the elevator, which evidently smells really badly in the summer since it is next to the trash chute.

 This is an apartment on the ground floor.  I loved the exposed wiring, etc.  Nice, huh?  Anyway, the apartment I went to was nice.  It was a smallish size two bedroom for US standards, but cute and a fine place to live.  Definitely larger and nicer than some of the places my sister has had in New York.  No offense, Meredith.

Evidently, the apartments are redone and some are small studios while other people have taken over all of the apartments on a floor and made them into a large place.  Heating and water conditions vary according to apartment as well.  The building, as others I have seen, is really ugly on the outside.  It amazes me to think of what the apartments used to be like and what a depressing place it must have been to live.  I guess some of the places still are.

 

Ryan got to have his preschool winter performance.  He has been SO excited for it.  It was a nice little show.  The teachers are very kind and hard working.  They love and care for and about the children and it shows.  The parents are great about helping to make the preschool a good place to be.  They are generous with time and resources.  It will be sad to have Ryan leave in the Fall when he is ready for kindergarten.

 

     

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On Friday, Justin took cupcakes in to school.  His birthday is over the break so he can't take in cupcakes on his actual birthday.  It just so happens that his teacher has the same birthday as he does.  Justin took in cupcakes and a present to celebrate HER birthday and will take in cupcakes for HIS birthday after the break.  He has a great teacher and he really likes school because of her.

 

Now the boys are on winter break until January 7th.  It might be long.  They alternate between playing really nicely together and fighting like cats and dogs.

 

On Saturday, Rob and I went to a Christmas bazaar and then out to lunch.  I bought several wooden ornaments. There wasn't much else that interested me.  Lunch was fine, not great, but it was good to be out of the house without the boys.  They were at home with Skyler.  They lover he babysitting so much that they wanted to know if she could be their new mommy.  I'm glad that they are happy when we leave them.  I wish Skyler could be their mommy when they are sick or up in the middle of the night.  I doubt she wants the job though, especially since the mommy job doesn't pay.

 





There wasn't really anything to take a picture of at the Christmas bazaar, so I took a picture of a statue we walked by so I had a picture of something. :)

 

Tonight we had the missionaries over for dinner.  It was fun to have them here and they seemed to enjoy having some American food and conversation for a change.  We had Christmas cookies to give to them.  It was amazing that I hadn't eaten them all myself.

October 27, 2013

This was Fall Break for Justin's school so he was home all week long.  Ryan still had school on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings as usual.  Let me just say that it was a looooooooong week.  Justin seems to have forgotten that I don't always just sit around and watch TV all day.  He was a bit annoyed when I would do laundry, cook dinner, or do something else besides play with him or rush to meet his every need.  There were a few play dates, but it is amazing how many hours are in a day. I can hardly wait for Christmas break when I have them BOTH for over three weeks.  Hopefully new birthday and Christmas presents will help keep them entertained.

On Tuesday afternoon, Ryan complained that he was itching.  I ignored him because (1) he tends to itch a lot and (2) he seemed to itch the most when he was asked to do something.  Put away his shoes?  No, of course he can't because he itches.  Well eventually I looked and he seemed to be getting a rash under his arms, on his stomach, and in the groin area.  Soon I saw a bit on his face.  It spread and seemed to get worse.  I gave him benedryl and put him in a cool bath.  I asked Rob to find out what is available here to help with itching.  Evidently not much, but he brought some zinc oxide home.  More benedryl and a body coated with zinc oxide had him comfortable enough to sleep.  By the time I got ready for bed and checked on him, he was cleared up.  Go figure.

Isn't he pathetic looking?

It got a lot worse than this, but no naked shots for the blog.

 With so much extra time to play, Justin was bored because of course the kids don't own any toys.  So what did we spend hours doing?  Yep, drawing on cardboard boxes.  We made cities by drawing directly on the boxes and by adding additional touches created on other paper.  I knew I saved out some boxes from the move for a reason.

This is Justin's first of three boxes.  He made bridges to connect them.

Ryan didn't get quite as into it, but he had fun adding to J's so I gave him his own.

I bought some straws for a project we are going to do.  It was cheaper for me to get 500 straws than 100, so we have plenty of straws.  These were individually wrapped and I need them unwrapped.  We had fun shooting the straw paper off of our straws and seeing how far we could get them to fly.  Justin was the champion.  He could even shoot off multiple straws at a time.

We also made cookies.  Well, I made the cookies and the boys got to help frost some of them.

Ryan made some pretty scary ones, right?

Plenty of pumpkins so we could share and have our own. :)

 We made some Halloween bags for some missionaries who are here from the US.  Along with the cookies, we had a variety of candy and a few other snacks.  The boys had fun coloring bags and then filling them up.  They could hardly wait to deliver their bags and the missionaries enjoyed getting some American treats.

 On Saturday, we went over to the Hansen's for their garage sale.  Their kids are younger, so we knew we didn't need what they were selling, but a local farm was selling some pumpkins there as well.  We had to pick up a pumpkin for Halloween!  Ryan's preschool was also selling goodies to raise money for charity.  The boys were more than happy to support a good cause by eating cookies and hot chocolate.

After that, we went to church to help clean it and get it ready for Sunday.  The boys would have been in the way more than they helped so we parked them on chairs and let them play on the iphone and ipod while we worked.  When we were finished, we headed to KFC for lunch.  Who could ask for a better treat than that?  The boys were excited.  Funny how we don't go to KFC in the US, but when that is your fast food option, all of the sudden it is awesome.  Justin is eating more lately and Ryan less.  Funny to have their roles reversed, but Justin probably needs to eat a bit more if he is going to get taller.  Don't know that he could get much thinner.  We went to Yum Yum Doughnuts after KFC and got ice cream as a treat.

J loves to pose making funny faces.

Ryan has to try to be as funny as Justin.

 On the way back to the car we passed a bouncy thing by the Opera House.  We let the boys enjoy the nice October day by running and bouncing around for awhile before heading home.

I think this building is interesting and since we were stopped at a red light I took a pic.

 At home we were able to get to our pumpkins.  Since the boys can't carve yet, they had markers, stickers, wiggle eyes, and pipe cleaner to decorate their pumpkins with.  It kept them busy for longer than I thought.  Ryan also got to choose what kind of eyes he wanted me to carve on the larger pumpkin.  Justin chose the mouth.  I tried to copy their drawings and fortunately they were simple enough. :)  They couldn't agree on a nose, so our jack-o-lantern went without.

Left to right: Justin's, mine, and Ryan's

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!