Team Work Day

     Since we moved to the village, we've had lots of things that still need to be completed with the house.  We moved in before the house was completely built, and then life has just made it hard to make progress!  We felt so thankful and blessed when our team declared a work day at our house to help accelerate some much needed work!

Dave and Kandid finished putting siding on Nettie's side.

     We decided not to spend the money to put siding on the garage.  We put up sheets of plywood to cover the insulation instead.



     Then we covered it with a protective sealant.  It turned out to be kind of an ugly brown-orange color.

The kids helped, too, which was great!

Measuring and Cutting the Plywood to Fit Just Right

Irene was here for the team work day, and got right into helping.

     They helped us to build a covered area along the side of the garage, too (after the plywood was up) for storing our woodpile.

The kids played, too.  Here, they were catching grasshoppers.

A Little Lunch Break

     I found Ike up on the roof of the playhouse, eating a huge bowl of fresh lettuce from the garden.

Somehow the kids convinced their Papa to let them up on the roof. 😉

Here are more pictures from the day....

We are so blessed to be a part of such a wonderful, loving team!!

40th Birthday

     I had a great 40th birthday this year!  Something interesting is that people here celebrate birthdays ending in a 5 or a 0 in a big way.  Usually you plan it yourself and have a big party either at your house or a restaurant.  They call them Jubilees.  But for some reason, people do NOT celebrate the 40th birthday.  (it's some kind of superstition) This took the pressure off of me needing to plan a party.  But I also felt the freedom to celebrate, just the same.  =)  Gramma Irene arrived from the States just a couple days before my birthday.  It was so special to have her here, and we celebrated the day with Gramma Irene and Nettie.  Leif made omelets for breakfast (my favorite) and we had Greek pizza for lunch.

The girls and I wore matching dresses.

Ike bought me this necklace with his own money.

     Then we headed to a special sauna.  I'd been there recently for my friend, Larisa's party.  When we looked it up online, we saw that they were having a 50% off sale!  It was very fun, because there is a pool to swim in.  The kids are little fish and could swim forever.  My favorite part is the steam sauna.  The dry sauna usually gives me a headache, but the steam sauna feels so nice to breathe in!

This is a bucket that dumps ice-cold water on your head.

    Our perfect day had a perfect ending.  Earlier that week, Leif had seen that a certain sports store was going out of business.  The family got me a bike for my birthday (which I've been wanting since we moved to the village!).  Ella's and Ike's bikes were already too small, and Leif didn't have a bike either.  We stopped into the store after the sauna, and they had three bikes, all the right sizes, and all on a super sale!  Great Grandma Marjie had given us a special gift via Irene, and we were all so excited to use it so that our family could ride bikes together!  That evening, we all rode around through the fields and roads.  I feel so incredibly blessed!

Girls' Weekend

     I was inspired by Leif's blog about his hike with Ike, and thought I'd post a blog about our mother-daughter weekend, too.  On Friday, right after the guys left, I told the girls if they helped me clean the house really well, we could completely play the next day.  They were hard workers and the house was sparkling clean by evening.  Melly and Thomas (from Germany) came for dinner, and it was really lovely to spend the evening with them.

     Melly lived here for several years until she met Thomas (a pastor in Germany) and married him.  They have made a decision to come back here every couple of years to continue connections with people Melly has invested in. We all went for a walk together in our village.  The kids had fun teasing Thomas.

     The next morning was a sunny, happy day!  Our special mother-daughter day!!  We woke up and shortly thereafter walked 1/2 mile to the bus stop (as Leif had the car).
     

     We needed to switch buses for our special plan, and where the buses switch was a place that serves breakfast (not usual here for cafes).  They even had hot cocoa!  I brought along a list of questions to guide our conversation in meaningful ways.  I love to hear my daughters' hearts, and it was so fun to see their excitement with the breakfast and time together.

     We got on another bus and traveled to the only outdoor pool (that we know of) that is open just for a couple of months in the summer.  We had always wanted to come here.  Since Ike had been wearing his cast for a month (and couldn't get it wet) and was supposed to go easy on it for a few more weeks, I thought it would be perfect to bring the girls here.

We swam and swam and played and played.  The slide was a fun addition to the pool.

     We then headed downtown and walked and walked all over.  I'd be interested to know how many miles total we walked that day!  We ate street food and enjoyed the beauty of the fountain.  We had planned to go home and finish our day with a movie, but I realized we were right next to a movie theater.  We decided to check and see what was playing (movies here are much less expensive than in the States.  The price of three tickets is about the same price as renting a movie).  The girls were absolutely bursting with excitement!  They couldn't believe we would do SO MANY fun things, all in one day!  It turns out that Toy Story 4 was playing at just that time!  I just loved how happy the girls were, and I was happy, too.

     By the time we got home, our feet were sore, and our hearts were full of special memories that we'll always cherish.

    The next day we went to church.  After church, we went to Sara's for lunch.  

   

     She took us all on a hike on the hill behind her apartment.  It was fun to think about us hiking the same time as Leif and Ike!  It was hot, and it was a bit of a challenge for the girls to climb,  but they all had a sense of accomplishment afterwards. 

Here's the view when we were almost at the bottom on our way back.

     Then each of the girls brought a friend home and they had a sleepover.  They played and played while I caught up on some things.  ;)

     I feel so blessed to have Anneka and Ella as my daughters!  They are such treasures, and I love getting time with each of them.

A hike with Ike

I was particularly inspired following my hike across Lake Baikal with a bunch of men (see the blog from March), that I should look for opportunities to do father child things and particularly a father son time out in the wild somewhere.  I actually had first thought Ike and I would go with another father with sons, but things fell through for others, so we decided to head out just the two of us.  We packed up camping gear, clothes and food to last us for a few days and headed out to "Holy Nose" a large peninsula in Lake Baikal that is basically a mountain.  It was pretty special to go just the two of us.  Jami also got some great time with the girls while we were away.

We started up the trail and in all honesty the trip had a bit of a rough start that began with the car making some ugly noises shortly before we arrived at the trail head (it turned out that it wasn't serious, but just loud).  Then as we started up the trail, the mosquitoes were in full attack mode and Ike asked if we could stop about 5 minutes in.  We decided to set a timer to give us regular rest times.  I negotiated with Ike about this a bit and his final suggestion was 15 minutes, so I set the timer for 20 minutes (we did great with these time intervals, and when I confessed later that this is what I did, he was totally okay with that).

The weather was absolutely beautiful as we headed up the mountain and we were enjoying our time.  With is being just the two of us, I was reminded what a social guy Ike is.  We had constant conversation as we headed up the mountain and throughout our entire extended weekend together.  After a while we started to see other hikers coming down the hill who had started early in the morning and were going up and down in one day.  Ike and I were doing things a little different.  We were planning on spending a night at the top of the mountain.

One thing that interested Ike, was that we didn't wash off the apples before we ate them.  I told him that out in the wild all you need to do is rub it on your shirt, and that you don't even need to wash your hands.  He was pretty excited to tell mama about this later.  He was also pretty excited to have his hiking equipment, and in particular liked the little bracelet on his arm which had a flint, compass and whistle and was made up of a wound cord.

This cross was put up at about the half way mark.  The steepest climb is right before this, so it felt like a good accomplishment to make it here.  I didn't tell Ike that this was only half way, but instead chose to focus on how far we had made it and how the rest of the way was different as we would be above the tree line.  He actually seemed to be stronger on this second half of the hike when we were above the trees and he could see the top of the mountain out in front of us.  Or maybe I was just weaker by the second half and so he seemed stronger?

It was such a hot day and I realized that I didn't really have as much water as I should with how much I was sweating.  Thankfully there was a group coming down and when I asked if I could get a drink from them, they gave me a full bottle of water.  It was enough to make it the rest of the way to the top where there was water that could be boiled to drink.

In addition to packing too little water, I packed to much other stuff, or at least things that were heaver than ideal (i.e. a tent made more for car camping, more clothes than necessary and an extra day's worth of food), plus I took all of Ike's pack (should have double checked what he packed and taken out the "extras").  This made the end of the hike a challenge for me, so you can understand the big smiles on our faces when we finally made it to the top!  I was also happy to change out of my sweaty clothes, including a my favorite pair of shorts that I managed to nearly rip in half down the crotch.  It took us about 6 hours to make the climb.  I was wiped out, but Ike's energy jumped way up again.

We found this place set up for a campfire and pitched the tent nearby.  I think Ike's favorite part of the entire hike was lighting the campfire.  He worked to find fire starting materials, smaller kindling and larger branches.  Even though there was a teapot hanging there, we decided not to use it as it looked pretty rough.  For the most part we actually just used a little gas stove to boil water for our meals and for the hike back down, but I didn't want to take away from Ike's joy of starting a fire.

Here you can see the tent set up in the background.  the top of the mountain is actually a bit of a plateau with low foliage.  We enjoyed typical camp food with instant potatoes and canned meatballs for dinner and instant oatmeal for breakfast to go along with large amounts of trail mix and granola bars.

Maybe the biggest highlight for Ike (besides the fire) was that we got to walk on snow in the summer.  This snow field was a couple hundred meters from where we had our tent.  Both in the evening as well as early morning we were basically alone on the top of the mountain, and it was fun to explore in this quite place all by ourselves.

I sure love this guy!

We also got to see little guys like this (I think they are northern picas) running around in the rocks near the top as well as a few chipmunks in the forest areas lower.  This whole area is National Park, so we had hoped to see something bigger, but even rodents are fun.  And, I suppose rodents near where you camp is better than bears.

Ike also really wanted to play a trick on Jami, Anneka and Ella.  He had me take this picture and then wanted me to go in the house ahead of him when we got home to show this and to say that Ike had an accident where he fell.  I talked him out of trying this practical joke, but it was still fun to take the picture.

Here is a picture from our hike down.  You can see the bay to the south of "Holy Nose" in the background.  Ike enjoyed climbing up on the little rock features like the one in this picture.

We made it down quite a bit faster than going up.  Not far from the trail head there was a campground and Ike and I found a nice spot there.  It was really nice and we talked about maybe going back there for a family vacation some time.  There was also a kiosk where we could get food and drinks to supplement what we have.  Actually, we basically just got drinks as I was thirsty after the hike.  All the water and juice just seemed to super-hydrate Ike as by the evening he was literally going to the bathroom every few minutes, or more accurately going to a nearby tree.  

We dipped ourselves in the water which was wonderfully refreshing, and enjoyed a campfire that evening.  There were even some kids from the neighboring campsite that came to meet Ike and shared some watermelon with us.  

This was Ike's first real hike, and he is proud of his accomplishment, and I am too.  You can see the mountain in the background.  I feel really blessed to have this guy as my son!