Presents for 8th Birthday

Left pile is from Baba and Kolya

Middle is from us 

Right pile is from Elijah (puzzle) and Bibb cousins (2 books)

 From Nan and Pop

Really?

The other day kids had a fight. When we tried to intervine to see what the problem was, they said they were arguing about if Brandon was real or not. (REALLY?)

When me and Brandon went to Conewago trail for a walk, he told me he thought he had monkey DNA because he climbed the trees so well. I wonder....

Brandon at 8

Height: about 50.75"

Weight: probably 54 lbs. 4 oz

Favorite color: orange

Favorite food: pizza

Favorite movie: Madagascar-3

Favorite game: Lego city Unvercover

Favorite place: Disney

Favorite animal: snake

Favorite books: Junie B

Favorite musical group: Big Time Rush

Favorite school subject: recess :)

Favorite fruit: watermelon

Favorite vegetable: cucumber

Favorite holiday: Christmas

Favorite month: April

Favorite candy: Reese's pb cup

Favorite hero: Spideman

Favorite thing to do: Legos

Favorite friend: Elijah Speck

Most frequent used phrase: "I have no idea"

He likes to cooke and bake
Likes to wear his clothes inside out (especially pjs)
Uses lots of poop, butt and eyeball words

He learnt how to sew this year

Did track and field, basketball, gymnastics and baseball 

First teeth came in July :) 

Likes silly jokes like knock-knock jokes

Likes to slap his own face (don't ask) 

Loves to run around with Pop

Loves to roughhouse and play ball

Still has hard time when losing

Bad Finger?

It is interesting how they start learning bad stuff. Kyra knows there are curse words but she does not know any. They both know words Hate and Stupid are bad and they are hurting other people's feelings. Now when Kyra was showing Brandon something, she showed it with her middle finger. He said:
- Kyra, Kyra, you can not show the bad finger.
- What is a bad finger?
- Middle finger is a bad finger. If you show it at school, you will get in trouble!!

I hope it will not too soon that they know what that means.

Chester Celebrated Too!

Kyra was lucky to get Chester for the whole weekend of Brandon's birthday so he was lucky to go to hotel with us :) 

Busy Birthday Weekend

For Brandon it was a crazy busy weekend - he had baseball practice on Saturday morning. William's birthday sleepover with laser tag, miniature golf, late movie and sleepover on Saturday night through Sunday morning.

Around 3.30 we had Elijah picked, cake chosen, pizza ordered and here we came to the hotel! Of course, the first thing kids did....?? Jumped from bed to bed (mandatory :) Then we changed to went straight to the swimming pool. I am so glad it was Sunday and there was NO ONE. We were alone in the pool.

Kids had so much fun! Elijah was the first to try the slide and as soon as they all reluctantly tried (my kids, I mean).. they could not stop.. They were going up and down the slide. Brandon, funny, he went to the bottom of the slide.. sat for a while and then only jumped it :)

Kyra, as always, was perfectly happy by herself, splashing around :)

Very blurry picture of Kyra trying to strike a pose

Those silly boys! Pizza for supper and peanut butter ice cream cake from Friendly's 

 Present open.. Very cool set of Star Wars 3D puzzle set from Elijah

 Time for a little bit of miniature golf and...

 And basketball

More swimming after that.. Little bit of playing DSs before bed and... Kyra was out in 2 seconds. Literally. For boys it took a little bit longer than that. I slept with Kyra and oh boy.. Did we have a rough night! She kicked me every time she moved and pulled my blanket.. I barely got any sleep! It was all good still :)

Brandon's 8th Birthday and After

When we got up in the morning in the hotel, we had breakfast and went to swim. Brandon did not look very good at that point, like wiped out and tired. You can always see it in his eyes if he does not feel good. So, he got cold and just asked to go home. (part of it, I am sure what his anticipation to open his presents). That is what we came home to: (Pop and Nan's work)

 Inside

 They did a good job, did not they?

Brandon opened his presents and was getting restless for more presents to open. I started feeling like I would get sick. I was worried for the kids to see it. However, my smart belly waited until Nan called and asked if Brandon would like to come to her house to be a present opener and as soon as kids left, my belly told me it was time. I got so sick, sick as a dog. It was nasty. I could only lay on the couch. 

Kids ended up having Brandon's party at Nan's because noone wanted to be around me being sick.(Do not blame them) :) I just felt terrible I could not be at my own child's birthday. 

Love this picture of Brandon.

Wii U game he really wanted. At some point it was sold out everywhere but Pop was lucky enough to find it.

 Kyra looks super cute here :)

 Cake Brandon wanted (from Star Wars)

Not a very small set.

 Me and Brandon worked as a team on this one the next day when he stayed home from school being sick.

 Another one Brandon built with little help from me.

At some point, he said: "Mom, can you build this step the following steps while I go the bathroon?" which I do. When he comes back, he said: "Mom, can I please have my job back?" Cracked me up! :)

When we were building, Kyra was out at school, house is quiet and here Brandon said: "Mom, I really like building Legos with you." He is 8 now. I thought all the mushy words and feelings have gone. I am so thankful they are not. At the end of the day when we talked about Highs and Lows he said he did not have any Lows but his High was building Legos with me. I love him to pieces! :)

Note from Kyra to her beloved brother :)

Mother Nature Is On Strike

This winter Russia had record amount of snow. Now it is spring and snow started to melt..Water does not have many choices on where to go. My parents are very lucky so far not to have their house flooded althought Volga river came up about 50 meters from them. There are many pictures on the webiste where you can see the damaged caused by this flooding. I remember ours here, in September 2011. However, at least it was warm here. There, water is still frozen.

They compare this flood to similar one in 1955. Almost 60 years ago! How crazy!

It is certainly not all but still shows how much.

 People's gardens are under water

 What used to be a line of a beach sand. Umbrella and changing area (white) are all almost under water

 A road

 How muddy the water is!

 A lof ot ice!

 A bad timing to want to have a boat ride

 Looks cold and ugly

Lake 

 Poor doggies could not walk on its own

Another Pass

Brandon cashed his rewards for no homeschool pass. :) That's my boy! :)

My Monkey Monkeying Around

Just to make a mental note (aka blog note) - Kyra is proud to announce that she can do the whole length of monkey bars without stopping! Hooray!

Reward Cards - 3rd Marking Period

Like Kyra's approach to those cards - instead of report cards, she calls them reward cards :) Why not if that is how they look:
Kyra - Advances in math and writing.

Reading

Hershey 10k Conquered!

I could not believe that a couple weeks before the race I somehow pulled my groin muscle on my left leg. I am not sure if I did not stretch it enough or I overused it, I do not know but it hurt. I was not doing much running in the last two weeks. I was still debating if I should/should not do it afraid to hurt it even more. I decided to at least give it a try and if I felt I could not, just wait for Renee at the finish line.

On the morning of the race I got super excited! I had to get up at 5am and drive to Cocoa Diner for carb breakfast. We got to the start and I was surprised to see how few people were there comparing to Hershey Half. It was kind of chilly but we had long sleeves while some people were wearing shorts and t-shirts. Brr!

We started stretching and got to the sun area. After 30 minutes we felt like we were warm and stretched enough. :) We could not wait to start! We were somewhere in a middle of a now big crowd and all this excitement from the people around us... I could practically smell it!

We took off and here we went... I went for 2.4 miles with no stopping and then I had to start power walking for a minute till we could get a drink (and I NEEDED it!).

We went from Hershey park Stadium, towards Giant Center, then right onto Hersheypark Dr towards Outlets, then got into Hershey park where Sidewinder and Storm runner are and running past 10 out of 11 roller coasters.

On the pictures you can see the number of miles we did that we were showing with our hands.
We were still cold but fresh.. About 7am

Mile 2, Hersheypark Dr

 Mile 3, heading to Hersheypark

 Mile 4, Fahrenheit is on my right

 Awful photo :) Mile 5

 Proud campers (aka runners), finish line behind us

Renee, who has been too busy with workl and nursing school did not train at all and ran for the whole time. I trained (but have strained muscle) and I ran about 98% of time. We were talking and making jokes for the whole way and did not even got out of breath!

When we got to the end where we saw finish line, I yelled to her so we pick up speed and we rushed to the finished line.
Total 1.15:30, pace 12:30. I cut 27 sec of my mile since Hershey Half.
What I do not understand is how in the world I went to work after Half?? I must have been completely out of my mind!
Jimmy brought the kids about 5 minutes after I finished, was so happy they were all there :)
SO PROUD OF US!

DC Trip

I saw a picture of somebody at Cherry Blossoms in DC on fb and I remembered that every year I always wanted to go but never got to. It was Monday and after thinking it over it was decided Thursday would be a day to go. Kids would be out of school as educational trip and see their cousins as well.

Jimmy and Pop could not go with us - had to work - so it was me, Nan and kids. We left at 7am and headed to turnpike. I did have GPS but when I grabbed the ticket from the booth, there were signs for Phili and Pittsburgh. I did not even look at GPS but both, Brandon and Nan said I had to go to Phili. I had part of a second to decide (had a car behind me) so I went towards Phili.

What do you think? It was wrong. We had to drive 18 miles each way to start all over. Closer to DC traffic got bad. Then even worse and then simply horrendous. 5 lanes, people drive like crazy, no turn signals (or signal with their arms hanging from the car windows), people squeezing in front of us. It was HARD to drive.

Kids, for some reason, call us Bob (Brandon especially) and laugh at it. At some point we saw a car that said Bob Wrights Air conditioner and kids burst out laughing. It was funny :)

We barely moved when we had 19 miles left till we hit about 12 miles left. Those 7 miles were the slowest in my life :)

When we were 2 miles close, we were supposed to cross a certain bridge but Nan thought it was the one we were passing and told me to turn here. As it turned out, it was not the one - it was the one before we needed to turn. At this point she did not even want to take calls from Greg who was getting very frustrated with us. We ended up with almost 5 hours one way and kids did a great job being patient.

We headed to Cherry Blossoms in Tara's car and were very lucky to find a parking spot right away. I could not believe how small parking lots are and how many cars! It was very hot - close to 90F and the first day for sun block.

I was surprised with two things - I thought cherry trees smelled but they did not have any scent. And I liked magnolias much more than cherry trees.
Magnolias

Magnolias

Many of cherry trees were very different - including colors. Those cherry trees represent friendship between American and Japanese people. Not so many original trees because they simply do not live for very long time.

Around Tidal Basin

Love this picture :) Cute little boogers' hineys :)

Close up

This one is super white

We took some pictures before heading to Jefferson Memorial. 

Brandon looks grumpy on this picture but he really was not :)

Kyra smelling non smelling flowers :)

Love this picture of two girl cousins :)

Me and the kiddos

The only picture Nan was in.

Even duck got in a picture :)

Brandon was not excited about having his picture taken. Jefferson Memorial is behind him

Kids were excited to count the steps to the top (42!). When we got to the top, I told all four kids a little bit about him and Kyra asked me if he was still alive. No, he was born even before Pop's Pop was born.

New Luther King Jr Memorial across from us.

It was fun. If it was up to me, I would have walked around the whole Tidal Basin but... Kids, although, were done with walking and just wanted to go see the animals.

ZOOOOOOOOO!!

First we sure headed to see pandas. How could we possibly not try to if Kyra is sort of obsessed with them? 

One out of two pandas is enjoying lunch

There were so much information on pandas - how they sound, how little they are when they are born and even how female panda was able to have a baby (could not natural way) Kyra was walking around with her DS taking her own pictures.

More about pandas.

Kyra is in heaven :)

Besides those pandas there is another one called Red Panda. It kind of looks like panda but in fact the closest relative of this animal is raccoon. Can't believe that! :)

I LOVE how they have a statue for the animal that you stand near!

Adelyn likes elephants the most, so that was our next stop after pandas.

Great Apes

There were three of them - seemed like Dad, Mom and a baby. It was so cute! I was so amazed at how smart there were! Before Dad sat down at the cement floor, he put a bunch of hay under his bottom and only then sat down. How smart is that? 

Here the kids are right next to the gorilla - Dad. So cool!

King of the jungle :)

Now Brandon's imagined heaven. One of rattlesnakes

Eyelash Palm Pitviper. Seriously? What a name! They can be even pink color! Imagine that! They are the smallest of poisonous snakes in Central America.

One of my most favorite pictures. It was so funny when Brandon looked at those turtles with their slow elegant moves (which reminded me of Finding Nemo) and said: "Awwww, they are so cute!" Out of the mouth almost 8-year old! :) Loved it!

White's Treefrog. This funny looking frog secretes chemicals that lower human blood pressure. Amazing!

Blue Poison Frog. Interesting, that in the wild, this frog manufactures a dangerous skin secretion from chemicals in its diet but in zoos, without the same meal of rain forest ants, this frog does not produce those toxins. Mother Nature!

Reptile Discovery Center

Last mist splash before heading back to Adelyn and Caden's house.

At last, picture of all 4 kiddos which Tara managed to take while I ran to the gift shop to get a couple of postcards and a fridge magnet.

Again, thank goodness, Tara drove. I would have gone crazy driving through city bumper to bumper. Would like to come back to Georgetown sometimes, I was in this little town in 2003 but it started to storm so we had to leave early. This time we only drove through but the atmosphere is.. so like a magnet. I want to go back and walk along the street and window shop in the little shops.. And stop at famous cupcake cafe :)

At their house kids got ordered pizza and Tara made home made cookies. How can you beat that? No school, trip to DC, pizza, cookies and run around with cousins?? It is 5 star kind of trip :)

On the way home I got confused between making selection on my GPS - to choose the shortest, fastest or unrestricted route. I think I chose one of the first two and oh boy. I thought the lady who was announcing my way was drunk. I never drove so complicated way, turn here and turn there and make this exit.. I ended up going home through Towson and York (do not ask). Long way but what a fun trip - so worthwhile the long ride in the car!!!