"Laura Ingalls" style walk to church

We brought over our (somewhat) final load from Moscow and are getting settled. We arrived on Saturday afternoon, and the next day being Sunday, it was off to church.

We are only 1/4 - 1/3 mile away from church, and so we decided to walk. We wore our boots, dressed up in warm clothes (it was quite cold, but beautiful and sunny!), and loaded the little ones onto the sled. What an amazing way to go to worship the Lord, walking through and enjoying His creation along the way.

Sunday at church was the Christmas "play", and our kids had been asked to participate. We had a wise man (Sasha), shepherd (Vanya) and the cutest four angels you've ever seen. Considering there were only 11 children in the play, we rounded it out quite nicely! All the kids did a great job - they had to walk into church, down the aisle and stand up front while the congregation sang songs, some special music was played, and the Christmas story read. Except for Anabella getting a stinky diaper right before walking down, and thus the "littlest angel" was a stinky one, all went smoothly!

Our shepherd and wise man.


Our four little angels.


And when church was over, it was time to head back home. The church had collected food items to give us, as a welcome gift. There was probably 50 pounds of pantry items that we loaded onto the sled and headed home. Walking through the snow, in dresses, bringing home our groceries, I felt like Laura Ingalls!

Our sled-full of groceries!