Birds

These people love their birds.  They also love cats but, this post is about birds.  People make and hang bird feeders EVERYWHERE.  We constantly see people pulling old bread etc out of their bags to throw out for the birds.  This causes us to break out in the song from Mary Poppins, Feed the Birds and then we end up singing it for the rest of the day.  Which then, for some unknown reason, leads into the song Edelweiss.  And of course, we only know a few of the words so we end up singing the same 5 -10 words over and over again.  The other day Dalton and I saw a bird feeder full of cooked cracked wheat.  Maybe some Russian mom cooked it for her kids for breakfast and they, like American kids, refused to eat it...

Milk box.  Milk here does NOT come in jugs.  It comes in boxes.  This is the biggest box they sell it in.  It is one liter.  We buy them by the case...  The other mystery to me is why they can't have screw lids.  They are pull tab things that inevitably spill the milk when I open it.

This is the deluxe edition as you can see it has a wood base!  It makes it easy for remodeling after it rains and ruins the roof.

Look at the love and care that went into this one.  They lined the bottom ledge with Duct tape so it wouldn't hurt the little birdy feet!

The Piano Guys

These fabulous fellas did a concert in Moscow, Russia!  Can you believe that?  Tickets were crazy expensive so we didn't go but, the decided to do a fireside for the members.  It was awesome!  They are so down to Earth and super funny.  They bared their sweet testimonies and played a couple of songs.  Sadly, they can't play too much music for audiences without breaching some sort of something in their contracts.  But, it was still fun.

I really wanted to hand the girl in front of me a hair brush.  It did look super cute from the front though.  She must not be able to see the back of her hair at home.

The guy on the left in the White shirt was the translator.  They had a Q & A session.

Hornet Update

Two weeks after the fear striking event, Chris finally took the initiative so that we could start sharpening our pencils again.  Poor little hornet, just got lost and disoriented.  However, if he had listened to his mother and not wondered off, this would never have happened.  But, still a little sad.  I was hoping he somehow got out and flew out while the door was open.  RIP scary Russian hornet.

A visitor

The other day we got the last of our stuff and we had boxes galore.  Chris popped the screen out of our living room window so that we could just drop the boxes down to the driveway.  This worked fabulously.  The problem was, we had a hornet fly in.  Ethan was sitting at the computer and saw the hornet fly right into the pencil sharpener hole.  He was freaking out and so I hurried and sharpened a pencil.  We opened the tray to see if we had hornet guts in there but there were none!  So, we were convinced that it had flown into the motor part of the sharpener.  This was our answer.  If you need a pencil sharpened, go to the neighbor's.  It has been at least 2 weeks and we still don't dare to take the tape off.  What if the hornet has been living on pencil shavings this whole time and comes flying out steaming mad????

As I look at this picture I notice that there is crayon drawn on our sharpener.  I'm pretty sure my kids are too old to still be drawing on things with crayons!!!!  Stop the madness boys!

Our way home

After I turn off the busy road, I drive down this road.  Isn't it beautiful?  I can't wait for it to be all green!  On the right side is the Blessed Water Forest (see previous post.)

After I pass the Blessed Water Forest I come to this intersection.  The school is the building you see up on the right.  I turn right at this intersection.

On the left you can see the the wall to Pokrovsky Hills (our housing community) and on the right is the Blessed Water Forest.  Straight ahead are some very fancy and very expensive apartments.

This is our entrance.  We have to pull up and scan our gate card that opens the gate for us.  On the right side are the fancy expensive apartments.

This is a really bad picture of our gate.  When you go through the gate, you turn right and that is our street.

I just turned right and our house is at the end of this street on the left.  Our roof is sticking up behind the trees, with the vent stack thing.

Crazy Lady

Meet Crazy Lady.  Chris and I came out of a store and she and her mother were freaking out because our license plate was touching her bumper!  She was yelling at us that we couldn't leave, she had called the police and they were on their way.  

Camera one.  (Our car is the black car.)

Camera two.

And from this angle, you can see light between the cars...

Whenever the police are called, we must call the Embassy and they send out a representative to mediate for us.  We are not to sign anything without a representative of the Embassy in our presence.  The Russian police got before the Embassy representative did so Chris decided he would just talk to them about it.  The policeman started yelling at the lady that she made him come all the way out here for THAT!  She yelled back at him and kept taking pictures and saying how much money it was going to cost.  The policeman told us to back up our car so we could see the "extent" of the damage.  After wiping the grit off her car, you can see the expensive damage that was done!

No damage at all!  The policeman took the forms from Chris crumpled them up in a ball and threw them away and told us to go and get on with our day.  And this is how Chris was 1 1/2 hours late to work and got out of going to his meeting.  

I couldn't help but feel a little bit bad for Crazy Lady.  I have to wonder what makes a person act that way?  And then to be openly mocked...  I hope the rest of her day was better.

A fire pit at last!

We have been looking for a fire pit since we got here.  They are incredibly hard to find unless you are willing to pay way too much for them.  Luckily a Russian who works with Chris just made one out of a beer keg and gave it to Chris!  Hooray!  Except we are pretty sure that it hadn't been cleaned out first.  Hee hee.

I took this from the kitchen balcony.

Chris reading campfire stories

The only thing better than s'mores are s'mores with Nutella and beer roasted marshmallows.  

Dalton decided to try roasting the cracker and chocolate instead of the marshmallows.

Dalton's picture of the fire looks like the devil!  (spooky music playing)