"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!

We have a 12-year-old!

Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought I would be celebrating my child's 12th birthday if you had asked me, even 6 month ago!

But, God has different plans than we do sometimes, and we have found, it is best to go with His plan, because His ways are the best ways! What we would have missed already had we stuck with our "logical" plan!

But, yes, Mariyana turned 12 in the middle of the month. My parents brought Mariyana to the ballet for her birthday - it was my pure delight and joy to help her get ready, including curling her hair. Once she was all ready, I wasn't too sure we were going to let her out of the house - what a special, beautiful girl she is becoming! And, she certainly looked a tad older than 12! (Maybe that makes up for her mom, who looks a tad younger than her 32 years!)

Mariyana had a wonderful time at the ballet and came back with a balloon (yes, still a little girl in some ways!), smiles and stories from the ballet. Here are a few pictures of her ready to go...

The birthday girl - can I really already have a 12 year old??!!!?!?!


Ready to go to the ballet with Granny and Pops!


In addition to the ballet, Mariyana had a party with her friends in Moscow, during which the 17 children (!!) made and decorated houses with candy (like gingerbread houses, but we used wafer creme cookies instead). Unfortunately, I used my "old-fashioned" 35mm camera, and don't have the pictures developed, so I can't put any up yet....

I am catching up with everything, so I'm going to post this update and move onto the next update!