The kids' room

Katie is our photographer for the Bull Kids' Room...so enjoy the art work! The girls clothes cabinets and the desk in the middle. Mom had not made it to clean the desk before the picture. OOPS!!
The "Bunk Beds"...Katie sleeps on top and Matthew on bottom. All the blankets from the sleeper couch get piled on Matthew's bunk during the day.
The view of the window that faces out to the balcony. The balcony is an enclosed balcony, by the way.
This is our infamous sofa bed from IKEA...unfortunately, it doesn't look all that neat and tidy...the kids like to play, what can I say. The pillow is down, but should be up near the back. We leave the sheet on the bottom, so it's one less thing we have to do at night to get ready for bedtime.

Our Team---part of it:)

Arturo, Volva, Mary, John
Nina, Vera, Marina, Karen, Lena
Lucya, Losha, Karina, Misha

These are all the family home leaders/counselors and Lucya(she helps soooo much in all that we do), Losha and Misha(boys from family home) and Karina--Arturo and Nina's daughter.


Sorry, I haven't posted lately, I will do something more soon:).

Did you know we now have a trash compactor?

In honor of my friend Joanne and all of you who are like me and enjoy seeing pictures so we can understand daily life---I am blogging about how we take out the trash. By the way, my friend Sarah and many others have said that back in Texas, I had a small trash can--well, now, I have an even smaller one!!!!

I asked one time before knowing how trash was deposited, if we wanted to make the trash bag bigger then take it out when it was more full. Well, nothing was said, but I tried stuffing one to the fullest and then realized the reason the trash can needs to be the size it is!!!

Here is where we take our trash. It is located outside our apartment down about 7 or so steps. It's a lovely mint green---it looks like a pipe and this pipe goes down through each floor with an trash opening(which by the way, stays shut). Nope, it doesn't smell...I think it dumped below the first floor into the "dump" and then picked up by the trash collectors.

So, you open the lid, then you put your "small" bag in the hole. If it doesn't drop down automatically, you use a stick on the side of the pipe(I think it might be an old broom handle)....

and you push it down the pipe!!! Now, we have a trash compactor. It's actually quite nice.

So, don't you feel like you are here with me?

When you don't have a gym membership...

Matthew says---"Come on, you're almost there!!" Matthew had done his twenty sit ups on the bed and now it was John's turn. Katie is on the other side of John doing her math! Fun Fun!!!

Pictures from Airport...(Ok, so they are two weeks old!!)

Thanks to Steve and Deana for the entertainment!! The kids are watching Madeline on the portable DVD player given to us by the lovely Hovinds!

Lunch boxes that we packed full of snacks kept us from spending too much in the wayyyyyyy pricey German airport. Over there a dollar is worth 50 cents and we felt it. We spent $6 for a much needed water!!! Can you believe it???

Funny--sometimes we think this way...

I hate to say this is sometimes a way we think---but it's true. We need to think or pray the opposite-eh?

Praise the Lord for WD 40!!! and free tickets to ballet

Our door has been soooo loud in squeaking noise. Not good when you have little kids and you have to wake up sometimes in the middle of the night for them. So, John was exploring the things on the balcony and he found some WD 40!!! Woohoo!---there is soooo much that is out there! Someday I will get out there and organize for our friend Nancy!

I love fixing things around here. We joke about one of our purposes here was to clear things out. We have already gone through about 1/4 of a closet and gave some things away!!! We have empty shelves now!!! I am by no means a perfectionist, but I have grown to love order and space(empty space!). Harder to do with this apartment, but still very do-able!!!

Oh, by the way, we have yet to go to the grocery store Lenta(we only go once a week to that particular one), we went to the ballet instead! Ha! We were sitting in the sixth row thinking---now this is "suffering" for the Lord---funny! We used to joke about John's parents suffering for the Lord in Hawaii when they were in missionary school years ago--and we went to Swan Lake for free!!! It was beautiful:). We got the free tickets from one of the foreign touring companies that we evidently have connections with through a translator and Marina(our "boss). John and I went with our girls, Vera and three other kids from the other family homes. John did a ballet performance in our lobby of our apartment....it cracked Vera up....she is probably thinking that we are a very silly family. Well, ETA PRAVDA---("It's True" in Russian!)

Love to all of you...may you sleep well right now. It's 2 in the morning back in the lovely state of Texas!

Hi to all my family and friends that read the blog---It makes me smile to see your cities pop up on my visitor map:).

This week--what do we have planned??

Well, just so you kind of know a bit of our schedule for this week...we have a few things happening in addition to our normal school day.

Today: John went to get a router for our computer and Lena's so we can both be online at the same time. (I forget these needs/conveniences---when we only had one computer in the house before coming here.)
When he gets back we go to Lenta( the store like Walmart/Sam's cross)...it might be bigger than a Sams---they sell motorcycles too!!! This takes about 2-3 hours total and we make the trek on a tramvi(long i)...that's how you say tram in Russian. Today, I am taking a suitcase(small, of course) with me--it's not too unusual to see people toting these around b/c they have no car. We are realizing how much food we generally eat---b/c we are running out of food often:). We are working on "snack" ideas. Thankfully, we have a small store about a few blocks away that we frequent for milk, cheese, bread, fruit...when we run out. It's a tad bit more expensive so we try to get most at Lenta. The family homes really want to teach the kids how to live on a small budget.

Today or Tomorrow: Lena will meet with the counselor from the dormitory we will visit to get permission to visit in the weeks to come. The dormitory that we will go visit is where orphans stay after graduating from the orphanage. They stay here while they go to school/university. We have been told it's not a very desirable place to stay...one more reason we might add a few more girls to our humble abode in the coming weeks.

Friday Night: Meeting with the family home counselors---here oo menya(this is how you say at "my place" in Russian).

Saturday at 3---kids from a nearby orphanage(10 of them or less) will come over with some food they purchased from a market that day and cook with us. These will be girls from ages 7-15. That will be fun! This particular orphanage that is bringing the girls actually has caring counselors and they try to prepare them somewhat for life after graduation---something that is rare in the orphanages.

Sunday--visit another Russian church called Harvest.

Our humble abode!

Ahhhh....Pictures at last--so you can picture us here:).

This is our entrance way...see all the shoes. Russians take their shoes off at the door and keep on socks or put on slippers. That is our front door(well, our second out of three!).
This is our room...yep, it's pretty small:), but it works. Lena's room is the same size...but I didn't take a picture of it. We still have one suitcase at the back of our room that needs to go out to the balcony...someday. This is the first door on the right of the entrance hallway.
This is a short hallway to the kitchen...the last door is the toilet room---yep, the toilet is not part of the bathroom. The door closest in the picture is the bathroom where the shower/tub and sink and washer is. Yep, it's all in there!! Not much standing room, but it works!
Our kitchen! Our beautiful kitchen table...that seats six, but we put 8 around it! HA!! This is my only source of opportunity as my father would put it!!This is a picture to show how we have hidden our dryer in the kitchen behind the door to the kitchen and perfectly in the corner. I will post later about how the dryer works...very different than what I am used to using, but it's great---Thanks to Nancy's church for buying it for the apartment!!
Our little stove...awesome to cook with gas! Makes me think of my grandmother...you have to click a button and blow on it to light for about two of the burners. Gas is included in the rent of the apartment...so it doesn't cost anything extra. Too bad our washer and dryer are electric.

Matthew enjoying something!
Our living room! The first door on the left of the entrance hallway. The kids are doing school. This is where Vera and the other two girls(when we actually get more kiddos) sleep. The pink chair folds to a twin and the sofa is a sofa bed.
The longest shoe horn we have ever seen! Random picture.

I will post a picture of the kids room later, but that's about all for our apartment...remember it's about 7-800 sq feet.

Back to Life

Well, our computer has been fixed!!! I am sitting here in front of the tv about to watch a figure skating show...in Russian, of course:). I catch a few words here and there!
I am going to try to download some pictures soon. Now, we can use skype and get calls free from the states! YIPEE!!! A connection that is greatly appreciated.

Today, we met a counselor from an orphanage we will work with soon. She met us at an expedition for fashion--Katie and Melissa came with me and saw their first European fashion show. Very interesting! John had the boys with him to pick up the computer. Fun day!

Tomorrow we try a church called All Nations. It has English/Russian translation!

Love to all!

Still alive and kickin'!! Very long post!!

I have a few hours to myself--well, myself and four kiddos--but now a days that is to myself. John is not working over here in Russia, so life has readjusted in many ways. We wake up later, get to see Daddy almost all day and more things. It's really different but good too! So, what is our schedule like these days? Very different from day to day. We tried to start school on Monday, but really need a printer and the one at this apartment appears not to work???? So, we might be making a purchase at Lenta(Russian version of a cross between Costco and Walmart). So, we have done some school, just not our particular curriculum. So far, we have done Reading, writing and Arithmetic---just the basics, but it's something.
Right now, Lena went with John to drop off our computer and the "family home" computer to be fixed by a brother of a friend of ours in town. Nope, we are not just dropping it off with just anyone:). I can't wait til it is working b/c then I can post pictures.
Lena will go with John and then continue on to church tonight. They don't have children's service on Wednesday, so we will be staying home. Vera has gone to her church too. So, tonight we will enjoy a quieter family evening home alone. It's funny to think of being home with your family as alone---but it is for now.

Yesterday, we had a meeting with the group we are involved with here and we met other Americans, Brits, Canadians, and more...all of us spoke English, most spoke Russian too. Anyways, what a great time to be with other Christians and see other families that felt the call to come over around the same time. There is one family with a 12 year old and 7 year old! We are going over to their place tomorrow and will eat dinner with them. They came at the end of July! It's so nice to see that God does work with many people on the same "theme" or calling ---so we know we aren't alone.
So, for this meeting at 10am, we had to leave at 8:30!!!! No, it's not that far away, but with taking the metro and buses at "rush hour" time, you need that much time to get there!!! We were on time!!! Russians are not the most "on-time" people ...it reminds me of my parents when they said the American Indian time was "ish"...that is the way it is over here. Some people are on time, some are not. We were gone from 8:30 til about 4ish:). We even ate at a Restaurant by ourselves--ok--no we didn't order in Russian, there happened to be a lady there that knew English who could help us. Thank the Lord!!! She even helped us order something for Katie without milk. By the way, this has been doable(is that even a word??) to eat without milk products.

Every day here, we are growing to love the people more and more. God has so much of a bigger picture than we typically do, so it's nice to be able to rest and rely on His time and His will/purpose.

If you are wondering how to pray for us??? Here are some prayer points to consider in prayer:
Basic needs: Computer to be fixed(screen doesn't work), Interenet connection so we can call home. Discipline needs: balance between school and scheduling things to do--visiting orphanages/dormitories. Spiritual: Continue to call upon the Lord daily...b/c as a friend of ours said today---this work with orphans---you can't do on your own, you must rely on the Lord. This is true of all ministry in Russia or US or anywhere!

I also want to end with this--thank you for all your prayers, comments here and emails too!!! We so appreciate all of them. We love you and hope you all are doing well. If you check this blog and think of someone who doesn't typically check blogs--you might remind them to check so they can see this post. Thanks!!

Well, We made it:)

We have arrived. Our flight went great! The kids did awesome, except Matthew didn't sleep except for the first few hours. The rest he was up---until the last leg(first leg is the long 9 1/2 hours) Then, we have a lay over---the last 5-10 minutes he had a melt down, while we were boarding. He was so sleepy, he was standing, but not really---so, I had my purse(heavy), my camera bag, and one carry one, and I picked him up so he could sleep. Which he did--right away. In the middle of the two and 1/2 hour flight, he woke up crying ---like he had an upset stomach. So, we did the benadryl , upset stomach medicine and John got him to sleep on him. He didn't do very well through customs---maybe a blessing--they put us at the front and wisked us through---they couldn't take the crying either!!

After he got into the car to go to our apartment, he slept for over 14 hours. This is great, but right now, he is just now going to sleep---it's midnight here!!! So, let's just say--he is not fixed yet.


Ok, so, our apartment is great--very small--but very nice on the inside. As Melissa put it---it's the shortest house!! I thought that was too cute.

John went to Ikea today and bought a futon for the kids(we have a bunk bed already). He even got one HALF OFF!!! Funny, Daddy still has his skills in Russia for "a deal!" He left the house at 11am to go to IKEA(1.5 hours of traveling away) and to the computer store to fix our dead computer screen--it had travel issues too!!...he didn't get back til 6pm! We ate dinner at 10pm
This is not a habitual thing thankfully.

Just in case you were wondering---we are normal people and we are emotional---send on those prayers for grace:)
DASVEEDANYA for now!

We leave tomorrow!!

Well, the time has arrived...our house is almost cleared. We are packed and ready to do the last few things tomorrow. I feel like the hurricane has hit my life--haha!!! The Lord is in control and thankfully He is the peace giver!! I am grateful to be married to a very smart man who can think when I can't!!! We have all our ducks in a row(we think we have remembered most things--at least we hope!!).
My parents came up for the last visit for now til we come back. They were lifesavers and helped with the kids and paint and putty! Thank you Mom and Dad!
Ok, I think that's all I have time for---we haven't answered our phone all the time, b/c of being so busy and I know I haven't posted or checked email that much either! I love mail, so that is a hard thing not to do for me!!
Love to all!!! See you from the other side of the Ocean!!
Karen