Our Life in a Series of Pictures: November 2015 to March 2016

 

 

 

 

Thanksgiving 2015 and the making of pumpkin pies! We celebrated with Mike's Advanced English class at our apartment.

Christmas 2015 and the decorating of the tree. Celebrations begin in December and go through the end of January and include: St Nicholas Day, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, Ukrainian Christmas Eve, Ukrainian Christmas Day, Old New Year's and Old Christmas Day and maybe I forgot a couple here and there- but, it is quite fun to have so many celebrations.

Mike resuming preparations for his classes mid-January. We had a drafty apartment...

Solomiya and Fedya and Chicken Pox. That was not fun.

Fedya learning to drive Rudolf's van post-Chicken Pox.

Solomiya in her pre-school class. Contrary to what you may think, based on this picture (yes, Solomiya is in the green dress and looks like she is sleeping), she LOVES school. Sometime in 2015 spring (my memory is a bit fuzzy), we moved Solomiya from the government kindergarten to a private kindergarten. Did I mention she LOVES this school and absolutely LOVES her teacher?
This school has been great for her. The differences include: smaller class size, Montessori style of teaching, shorter day.
The school is actually held at our church and the head teacher is our Pastor's wife, Lilia (pictured above). The lessons are taught in Russian, so now Solomiya is becoming trilingual (English, Ukrainian, Russian) and soon will become my personal translator.

In March 2016, we moved out of our apartment and into this house! We are still renting, but the cool thing is that the rent is the same as our apartment. Yes, thank you. What a blessing from God!
 

This is what the garden area looked like in spring. Now, late summer, it looks a bit like a jungle.

Three weeks after we move, Misha is born! Phew, that was close.

     This house has been such a huge blessing! There is a lot of room for the kids to play, we can all sit at the same table to eat, we can easily go outside without cramming 2 adults, 2 kids a baby and stroller into an elevator.
     We also have extra bedrooms and have been able to host friends from New York, friends from Poland, a teacher from Sweden and a pastor and wife from England.
Please come and visit!