Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Stuck?! March 1st Sketch

One great thing about entering scrapbooking sketch challenges is that it gets me motivated to scrap! While Jon was gone I worked on several pages. After seeing other people's layouts, I realize mine are still drab.............gotta keep working harder on my layouts! Maybe add more bling or something.
 Here's the sketch......


Here's my layout which is actually a two page spread out so
my journaling is on the second page.

Monday, March 26, 2012

Cardboard Garage

Well it's meltdown time here in Samara. This is where we finally begin to have temps above freezing and all the snow begins to melt. It gets pretty nasty outside as all the mud, trash, and dog surprises begin to make their appearance. We seldom get out when it's like this so I try to keep the boys as busy as possible indoors. I used to subscribe to Family Fun magazine and Jon brought a few back home with him when he returned from Shepherds' Conference. I found this fun cardboard garage to make and the boys have had so much fun playing with!!! 
 We spent one afternoon painting it all.....the boys love painting.


As soon as it was dry, I was able to glue
it all together and here you have our
two tier parking garage.


It's kept the boys busy in the morning as
they take out their gazillion cars and park
them on the second floor. I was thinking
of adding some more details to the garage
like maybe a name or some signs inside.

I found the directions online over
at the Family Fun site here.

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Adjectives

We've been working on adjectives in our grammar curriculum. So, I recently asked Jojo to describe his dad with an adjective. His reply was : "smart dad".  Then I asked him to describe his mom. His reply was: "old mom".  He quickly realized what he said was probably not the best thing to say by the look on my face so he quickly changed his answer!!!

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Week 22 Caramel Pecan Bars

I interrupt the regularly scheduled posts to let you know that I am baking again. I feel like the women's conference sucked the life out of me.............I was exhausted afterwards! Then Jon went to California on a week's notice to attend the annual Shepherd's Conference while we went to Heather's home to help the time go by faster. Just yesterday I finally had some free time to bake and I am glad I did. This recipe is so easy to make plus it is super yummy! Yes it required quite a bit of brown sugar but it was worth it.

There wasn't much left by the end.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Samara - Keeping Jojo Busy

Having only one child sometimes can be a lot of work. I remember spending most of my time just trying to keep Josiah busy, especially during the winter months.
We did lots of finger painting.....


played chess quite a bit..............


ate at the golden arches............


took lots of walks in the winter............


and visited the tulips in the spring.

I really am so thankful for all the extra time I had to spend
with Josiah. I have a lot of great memories from our first few
months of living in Samara because of him.




Monday, March 5, 2012

Samara : City Living

When we lived in Novosibirsk we lived about 1 hour away from the city center. We actually lived on the outskirts of the forest and it was absolutely beautiful. When we moved to Samara we quickly realized that Samara was a completely different city than Novosibirsk, plus we also lived only a few minutes from the city center. Samara is known here as a "labor" city, so there are a lot of factories and blue-collar workers.


Since we only had Jojo we loved going out and exploring the 
city. We were completely dependent on transport and since we
lived on a main street with a tram line it made it a lot easier.
 Here we are at sunset on the Volga River.



 This is Kuibashev Square..........every Russian city has a big square.



And here's Lenin, every Russian city also has a Lenin statue.

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Samara: Our New Home

I was really excited to see what our new home would look like. Just like we only had one month to prepare to move to Samara, our fellow teammates only had one month to find a furnished rental for us. Thankfully they found something on such short notice and not to mention that for about 1 week at the beginning of January everything closes down for the holidays.

This was the main entrance to get to the elevator of our building.
I distinctly remember the first glimpse I had of this on the first
day we arrived.......I thought "I can't believe we're in Russia again!"



 This was our living room. I remember our team leader telling
us before we got there that the apartment had leather couches...
this wasn't what I had in mind but it worked!


This was the view looking out our living room window. The tram 
ran right on our street which was extremely convenient. We
rode the trams a lot and Jojo loved riding in them.


Friday, March 2, 2012

Samara: The Russian Winter Again

Whenever we'd tell people that we lived in Siberia they really couldn't believe it. I think most people in their minds pictured frozen tundra with polar bears walking around. Getting acclimated to winter was real difficult for me and in all honesty I did not look forward to dealing with Russian winters once more.
 As you can see in the picture, the day we left from L.A.X it was 
absolutely gorgeous in L.A. Pretty soon we were going to trade
in sunny skies for snow and freezing temperatures. I don't recall
if we checked on what the weather was like in Samara before 
we traveled but before our plane touched down on the tarmac we
were told it was -36 Fahrenheit outside. Russia was experiencing
it's coldest winter since 1981!


I really shouldn't complain about the cold weather
considering I only had 1 child to bundle up! The 
first few days we didn't go outside though because
it really was too cold to take Josiah out. I did go out
exploring to the grocery stores but I remember being
disappointed at the lack of food and ingredients that
I could find easily in Novosibirsk. I remember
being so discouraged because of the extreme cold,
the lack of food, and the lack of sleep!  Thankfully
the food shortages were due to the cold temperatures
and soon enough I was able to buy the things I needed.