I know, I am blogging again about 2004 but remember it's my favorite year. As I wrote before I was super sad being away from home for the first time. Instead of sulking, I chose to have a Christmas Eve party. It was a lot of fun. We invited a lot of our new friends.
This sweet lady is Baba Zhenya. She helped us out a bit with Josiah every now and then. She went to be with the Lord last year, she had some heart problems. The other children are the Petrovich kids. The Petrovich family was the other missionary family that we ministered with.
Here's our wonderful neighbor Nadia. She really was an amazing woman and took such good care of us. We met a little bit after we moved in. I was trying to get into our apartment but my key was not letting me unlock the door. I was really flustered and I had Josiah with me. I got so upset that I kicked our metal door real hard. She then came out of her apartment to see what was wrong. Thankfully she spoke a bit of English and from there we didn't really have any more encounters but I thought we would invite her. I didn't think she would come but she did and ever since that evening we became real close with her and her family.
Here is Natasha (Nadia's daughter) and her husband Igor. The little boy is Vanya and he was Jojo's first little buddy. Natasha became a dear friend to me. She also spoke a bit of English........less than her mom but we were able to communicate just fine. I miss her so much. We would go on walks every single day and when it got too cold we would have "play dates" in our apartments. When I first moved to Samara and I would go out walking with Jojo, I would automatically look for Natasha but then would realize where I was........to this day I still find myself looking for Natasha and Vanya whenever I am out. Because of the situation we had with our previous church, I was not able to go back to Novosibirsk and say good-bye to her. Jon was able to go back and pack up our belongings and had to say good-bye to her on my behalf.
We didn't have a horse at our party but we did get to go on a one horse open sleigh one day. The funny thing is that Jon is super allergic to horses and he sat in the front. By the time we were finished he could hardly breath.
This is out in our courtyard. In the evenings all the fathers that lived in our big block would come out and make these slides and igloos. They would also pour water down the slide so that it would be slippery and get real icy. During the holidays they would pour food coloring onto the structures to decorate them.
The yellow coloring on this structure could very well be pee pee.
Here's Jon getting ready to go down the slide.
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