Seeds Concert!

One of our highlights this summer was being around for the Plaza Fellowship times after the evening service at church. If you have never heard of Seeds then you are really missing out. The boys love listening to all our Seeds music and the best part is that the lyrics are scripture! So, they are learning Bible verses as they sing along.

I got to see a lot of friends that night but I ran into a couple of friends who I least expected......Gabriela from Alabama and Robin from Mexico. Poor Robin had a terrible eye infection at this time but she was sweet enough to get a picture taken anyway. On the far right is my friend Esther whom I have known since I was a little kid.  It was a great surprise!!!

Thankful Thursday

It's time again to count the many blessings the Lord has showed me this past week.

1. Today is Josiah's 9th birthday and I am so thankful for him!He's been such a blessing to our life. He is truly a compassionate boy, cares for others, has an amazing memory, notices things about people that I never pay attention to, and asks some amazing spiritual questions that get deferred to dad! I pray that the Lord will draw Josiah to Him one day and that he will serve God with a whole heart.

2. I'm also so grateful that our travels to Samara went smoothly. The boys did great on the flights and on the 6 hour layover we had in Germany. We are especially grateful that we made it "through" our entry into Russia.

3. I'm also praising God that the boys have acclimated so quickly again to living in Samara. They were so happy to be in our "home" and to see their old toys again. They were especially happy to eat kielbasa and black bread again. Often times I feel that as a parent I am not providing enough stability for the boys but I believe that in the long run the lessons they are learning in flexibility in their childhood will help them in their future.

Travel Town

So, while I scrapbooked......Jon was gracious enough to watch the boys and take them out. They headed to Travel Town in Griffith Park. I have never been there but have heard about it. I know there are still so many more places to explore in L.A. I guess one just becomes comfortable with all the familiar spots and doesn't go out and explore.

 There are lots of trains to explore and the boys loved exploring!

 Then it was time to ride the little train!

The boys with the conductor.

More exploring.

Scrapbooking

Whenever we return to California my sisters and I go scrapbooking together! It's sort of a tradition. We scrapbook from morning until late afternoon at a scrapbook place in Valencia. It's a great time for us to catch up, laugh, tease each other, and oh yeah.....catch up on our scrapbooks!

 The place where we go to scrap is called Remember When Scrapbooking.

It's got a store attached to a big area where you can scrapbook. 

Even a guy came in to do some die cutting! I just had to take a picture.

Afterwards we headed over to CPK! YUM!!!

Visiting with Friends

One of our favorite pastimes when we come to California for the summer is to visit with our dear friends Keith and Rita and with their daughter Andie(one of my dearest friends) and her family. They live out in Lancaster so we try to head out there for a couple of days. At the time of these pictures Andie was pregnant with baby girl #4!

My boys love playing with the girls and thankfully they all get along! I love catching up with Andie and her mom Rita.......it's awesome because we are able to pick up right from where we left off! Praise God for kindred spirits and friendships!

Thankful Thursday

A while ago I started posting every Thursday about what I was thankful for. It was a good exercise for me in thanksgiving because so often I tend to have a heart that complains. It was so good for me to reflect upon all the blessings the Lord has brought my way that I think I really need to start again!

So here we go:

1. Today's biggest thanksgiving comes in the form of a phone call that I received from my doctor's office. Last week I had a biopsy done on a lump in my breast and thankfully the results are benign!!! PHEW! This past week I've been dwelling too much on the what ifs.....what if it's cancer? What if we can't return to Samara on Monday because of the results? What if? What if? What if? Today through Facebook I found out a friend just received news yesterday that her biopsy was malignant.....so this morning I called and left a message with the doctor. In all honesty I was afraid to make the call to get the results! So silly of me!

2. Praising God for an amazing summer! It has been a real blessing catching up with old friends and even making some new friends. It's been fun hanging out with my mom and 2 sisters. As a family we were also able to enjoy a mini vacation in San Diego this past week and we had a blast.

3. I'm thankful that we are returning to Samara on Monday. I miss my friends there. I miss our home. I miss ministry in general!

4. I'm also thankful for sermons and worship in English......what a blessing to my heart this has been. I've listened to some real challenging and amazing sermons taught by the gifted men at Grace Community Church. Plus being able to worship in song in English has been such a treat.

Celebrating Nathan's Birthday With Family

Nathan never really got a proper celebration for his birthday so we had a little party for him with my family.

 The boys of course were so happy to hang out with Grandma 

Maria. Can you believe my mom just turned 70? I think she

looks great at her age.

My sister Monica cooked a big Mexican feast. This is her famous

salsa and I just about ate it all!

My two older nieces texted on their phones the whole evening.....

sometimes I thought they were texting one another!

He has been asking for a Lightning McQueen forever but he said

he liked the cake I made for him last year better! 

So happy with all his presents!!!

Griffith Park

In between our July illnesses, the two boys and I took off for Griffith park one morning to ride the little train. I've done this with Jojo before but it was Nathan's first time.

 

Right next to the trains are the ponies. The boys were really hesitant to ride them but I talked them into it and I am glad they obliged. It was actually quite fun for them.

After our western adventure we headed to the picnic grounds nearby and had us a little picnic.

Enough of Greece......

for now. There are a couple of more posts I want to do on Greece still but I thought I'd better get a move on our time in California considering that in less than 2 weeks we depart for Russia again.

Our time in California has been a real blessing but also a bit of a roller coaster of emotions. During our time in Greece we received word that our resident visas were being annulled......this was quite a shock for us. Long story short.......we will return to Russia as planned on August 27 and then have to go to the migration office where Jon will get his visa annulled but he will appeal this to the court of Samara where God willing we have a good chance that the judge will rule in our favor.

During our first two weeks back Nathan suffered quite a bit from the Greece Conference flu, then he recovered, got 5 shots and then he reacted big time to the shots with high fevers and incredible pain. He recovered from that to catch a stomach bug!  Jon underwent surgery for his kidney stone which was thankfully a successful surgery......he was in a bit of pain for a week because of having a temporary stent placed. Then he recovered from the surgery to catch Nathan's stomach bug. Jon recovered from the stomach bug only to give it to me.....thankfully I was only out for 24 hours!  Needless to say July was quite a tough month but in all honesty we did manage to enjoy ourselves.

We spent a lot of days at the dentist and getting checked by different doctors. We are so thankful for medical advances and some pretty amazing medical workers. In the above pictures the boys are all ready to be seen by their pediatrician. I started working for him at the age of 19 and worked 10 years for him until I had Josiah.  He has been a huge help to us and always available for me to email him with my medical questions.

Greek Life

We didn't get too many opportunities to explore Greek culture and life but any opportunity we had to observe normal life I made sure to take some pictures.

The above picture was taken in Berea. We were being such American tourists here......there was a high profile court hearing going on and in the square some skinheads were preparing to protest. There was a heavy presence of riot police and both sides were preparing for an encounter. We walked right through the middle of the square checking it out!!!

The above 2 pictures were taken outside the Corinth ruins. There was a bazaar going on. The vendors are illegal immigrants who have come from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and other war torn Middle Eastern countries.

On our walk towards the Agora of Ancient Athens there was a street of people selling second hand items.

                                   There are a lot of scooters all over ........easier to get around all the traffic.

                                        So European.......just sitting around and relaxing at a cafe.

The Boat Ride

So while Naynay and I stayed behind at the resort, Jon and Jojo headed off early in the morning along with everyone else on the boat ride. It took over an hour to get to the dock and then they were off on the boat. The boat stopped off at two ports. Unfortunately, the seas were real rough and a lot of people got seasick but thankfully Jojo and Jon did just fine.

 Jojo and his buddy Bryce

Beautiful view from the boat.

On the island of Hydra

Yum.....lunch!

Nathan's 5th Birthday

On Nathan's birthday it was on the itinerary to go on a boat ride but unfortunately Nathan caught the conference virus/flu!  We felt awful for him because for several months we kept telling him how we were going to take him on a special boat ride!  Nathan felt so sick on that day that he didn't even really care about the boat ride (even though once he was better it was all he could talk about).

  We brought a couple presents for him from Samara. He felt awful when he woke up and had a fever.

By mid-day he was feeling a little better so we headed down to the beach but by the time we got back to our hotel room he was miserable again with a super high fever........probably shouldn't have gone down to the beach!!!

Nonetheless we are so thankful for our lively and rambunctious 5 year old! He has been such a blessing to our lives and we praise God for giving him to us!!!

                              Nathan was 4 months here and was wearing an outfit Jon wore as a baby!

                                                Here's Nathan at 1 year of age with his Tia Monica.
  

                                                  Nathan at 2 years of age enjoying some ice cream.

                                                 Nathan at age 3 with those lovely loose curls!!!

                                            Nathan at age 4 beginning to lose that baby face.