Old Friends

This is our great friend Vasgen!  We love him so much!  He got married and had 2 boys since we saw him last.  We introduced them to "roasting marshmallows".  The boys loved it!  We had such a great time that the next week, we went out to his place.

Vasgen has great musical talents.

Vasgen has built a home on the outskirts of Moscow.  It was awesome and super fun.  He cooked us some seriously delicious food!

Bwahaha.  They have a little kid rope climb work out station.  This is how they use the rings...

I started salivating when I posted this picture!  SO good!

Weird creepy pillow thing.

Finally Chris has someone to place backgammon with!

As we sat here and listened to Vasgen rock out on his guitar, I asked Ethan if one year ago he could have ever imagined that he would be sitting right here in this room listening to an Armenian play the guitar in Russia.  He said no.  Every once in a while I remember where I am and I am a little surprised.  

Seth Graduates From Elementary School

Seth missed the last week of school because he had pneumonia.  His teacher asked if he could come for the graduation.  So, I made him take off his pajamas and come to the school.  Bribed him not to cough the entire time and then we went straight back home and back into the pajamas.  He didn't even finish the cake on his plate.

The school auditorium is called the Bolshoi Theater.  Isn't that clever?

It was at this point in the program that I realized that "formal uniform" means blue pants.  Every day of the year they can wear tan or blue...  I thought formal meant button down shirt and tie (which I was also confused about earlier in the year.)  As a teacher, when you see ONE student out of hundreds has on a pair of tan pants, wouldn't you put him a kid or two in instead of making him stand on the end of the row???  Total mom fail.  Oh well...  Now we know for next year!  :)

Luckily the principal still let him graduate, even though we can't figure out our tans from blues yet.  The principal is shaking hands with Seth, (I hope he remembered to wash his hands before eating his lunch in his office.  He may have a pneumonia germ or two.)  His teacher is at the microphone.

His class.  "One of these things is not like the other.  16 of these things are kind of the same..."

And then there was cake.

Russian Cooking Class

We started out this grand adventure at a food market.  This was a market like they use to have all over the place here.  It was an "open air" market, under a big permanent tent type of thing.  They have everything fresh from local farms etc...  There were cheese, fruits and veggies, honey, poultry, red meat, bunny legs, fish.  You name it, it was there.  Just laying out there on tables.  They would bring the raw unwrapped meat in in shopping carts.  Carts full of raw exposed meat...  Definitely not a place for the weak

After we bought the groceries, we took it all to this lovely place where Dimitro, from Moldova, taught us a thing or two about Russian Cuisine.  

Of course, we started the course out with tea.

Victoria was the best borscht maker I'd ever seen! 

 

Tammy is cuter than a bug's butt!  Mixing like the master she is!

Jen is the one who arranged this whole thing!  She rocks!

My job was stirring the potatoes.  I pretty much rocked it.

 

This is what Tammy and I look like when we are out of focus.  Which is most of the time.

Viola!

Borscht.  A-Mazing!  (I sang that last word)

Meat Pots.  Hotter than a Coal Miner's lunch bucket.  Burned my tongue and the roof of my mouth and couldn't taste for 3 days after but it was TOTALLY worth it!

Bilini.  Need I say more?  Fabulous!!!!!

It is stuffed with creamy cheese stuff with apples and cinnamon.

And let's be honest, the reason I came was for the certificate.

Tsaritsino Castle

This is called Tsaritsino Castle.  It belonged to Catherine the Great.  It was never actually completed.  She died before its completion.  It is over 700 hectacres.  I just looked that up and that equates to just over 1700 acres.  There are ponds, fountains, a church, kitchen house, and lots of other buildings and beautiful grounds to walk around.  Just recently have "they" finished the Grand Palace/castle (The actually only finished a few rooms to look like it would have when it was being built.  The rest of it is un-visitable).  When we were here before ('99), it was still in the abandoned state that it was left in when Catherine the Great died.  I think my boys would have enjoyed it more if it were still abandoned and we were able to roam in and out of the castle.  But, it was still pretty cool.  It was so weird for me to see it and remember what it looked like before.  We came here 15 years ago with my parents, when Ethan was 7 months old.  He couldn't remember any of it...

 There are these I love Moscow all around town.  So, we occasionally get pictures with them.  Today, Dalton opted out.  You can see the castle on top of the green hill.  On the left of the heart is the church for the castle.  The building above the heart and to the right is the roof of the castle.

 The estate has many beautiful features.  One of which is this cool fountain.  There are a million lights under the water so, I bet it is amazing at night.

I asked Seth and his friend, Luke to stand in front of the fountain so I could get a picture.  This is what I got...

This is the front side of the castle.

This archway takes you from the front to the back.  It is huge and crazy amazing in real life.

 Here are two outfits that belonged to Catherine the Great.  We decided she probably had to walk through the doorways sideways.  Not the most flattering of styles.

This is what the door knobs were.  Super cool!  You pull the huge stone ball and it opens the door.  I kept going in and out of the room just so I could keep using the door knob.

 This room looks very yellow but it is actually gold!  Ok, a little bit of it is yellow but it is mostly gold.  The floors were all wood inlays.  CRAZY AMAZING!!

Catherine in here prime.

 One thing I will say for "the olden days" is, they had serious wood working skills!

but not such great painting skills...

This floor blew me away!  So, I took a picture but then I realized you can't even tell it is a floor so, I had Ethan put his feel in the picture so you could have something to compare it to.

Red room

You can rent fancy clothes and get your pictures taken.  We wanted to do it so bad but, we decided to wait until Chris could come with us.  So, be watching for it!  

Is it just me or does she have a tiny head?

This is a tapestry and it was huge!  Like, the size of the entire wall!  The frame is part of the tapestry.  I was entranced by this but the camera, yet again, does not do it justice.

Backyard

This is a sun room in the kitchen house

Olden day toys.  Super cool!

Side view of the Grand Palace from the kitchen house

Even the stairwell light sconces are cool.

Backyard.  We bought some ice cream and brought our soccer ball.