Lovely Little Russia Home

We have been in our lovely little Russia home for two weeks people!

Haaapppppy day oh happy happy day.

It’s spacious and I don’t know how we’ll fill all the cupboards and closets! We couldn’t be more grateful and feel more blessed to say farewell to the suitcases for a while.

First thing Hannah wanted to do on move-in day was go upstairs and find the toys. Sadly there were none to be found, but she was thrilled enough with her own big special bed!

Onto the pics of the house!

Our house is the door on the right.

Entrance/mudroom:

Looking in from the mudroom: 

Now looking left: Maybe this is confusing, but on the left is the staircase, on the right is the formal dining and the far right is into the kitchen, far left is into the spacious laundry room (sorry no pic, it’s always laundry day). And of course the backdoor..

Hello kitchen!

Obvious staircase to upper floor: The little door below is a pretty awesome crawl space/toy closet (or fun slamming mechanism for Mr. E). And don’t forget the fancy toy box out of cardboard.

Upstairs: There are 4 bedrooms… (Two each side)

(Not that it matters to anyone…this extra night stand will go somewhere else.)

Right now E is in the bigger room because he is actually in the spacious closet. I think this will eventually be Miss H’s room/play room. But the poor lad has had such up and down sleep, and we are finally somewhere I can let him fuss a little bit.  So the closet is where he will be heard the least (hopefully). I know, I know, call me a terrible mother.. but after a year of us both not sleeping, it is TIME to sleep!!!

And you know what?

He loves his little closet room.

Shhh, don’t tell him but he is sleeping great!!

I’ve also noticed he sleeps better in the dark, so yeah, I even put the chair in there to rock him a little (see, I’m not so bad, right?). I’m really kicking myself that I didn’t put our room-darkening curtains in our air shipment. 

Our room–bike is a nice accessory, yeah? 🙂

Sorry no pic of Hannah’s room since she was sleeping when I took these.

The furniture is provided by the company. They also include other essentials like dishes, towels, bedding, etc. Most of our personal things/decorations are coming in our big sea shipment.

Our air shipment arrived around the time we moved (great timing) and we had some of our own essentials. During pack up, unfortunately some things got shifted around and didn’t make it into the right pile but it’s just stuff, right? We’re hopeful our sea shipment will arrive in a month or so, but I’m not counting on it. There is a big strike (check it out) on the west coast and TONS (literally) of shipments are just sitting there! Wow.

In closing, our big announcement: Eli has taken his first few steps!! He’s not on the run yet and I can’t seem to catch anything on camera, but he’s pretty pleased with himself!!

Ps–Anyone have any fabulous interior design kid-friendly wisdom of house to hide all those eye-sore computer cords??)

“Happa Birfday” Junior!

That’s how you say in Hannah-ian.

С днём рождения! [s DNYOM razh-DYE-nee-ya] is how you say it in Russian!

We celebrated Mr. E’s birthday on Saturday–my Valentine’s baby!  I thought about attempting a traditional Russian birthday meal (that I googled) which would involve fish (pickled or smoked), and perhaps a potato and beet salads. And these fried dumplings call pirozhkis frequently make appearances at a birthday parties, too. They are generally filled with meat, cabbage, cheese, potatoes or eggs. But no. Maybe next year.

The celebrating was pretty low-key. Unfortunately we have each taken a turn with the fevery-flu thing going around and hit Jake that day. Earlier in the week we had at last moved into our house (shout hoooooray!!), and even received our air shipment (another hooray!)!  Soooo, Eli’s special day was pretty lazy..  He wasn’t too upset about it, but turning 1 is still a big deal and at least grants some definite reflection the momma’s part. Thus, this post is to him and probably will drip of sappy sentiment. Read on if you’re into that kind of thing. 😉

Well, no we didn’t have matches. Whoops. Fail.

Hmm, what do I with this?

Stuff my face, got it!

Sweet? Seriously?

Demolished.

Dear Junior (your sometimes nickname),

Happy birthday, buddy!

Well, wow! Your three hundred and sixty-five days of life have just whizzed by. In some ways. Are you really 1??

In other ways SO MUCH has happened in your tiny year on this earth it’s almost a challenge to digest.  The day you came was very, very anticipated and FULL of hope, a little fear, and a whole lotta faith and prayer.

When I think back to the first few weeks of your life, my heart gets all bursty-feeling and my throat gets all lumpy-ish and I’m just a big mooshy pile of emotion.  Whew. You went through a lot for a little guy and oh it’s a wonderful thing you won’t remember it!  You had amazing nurses, you had amazing doctors, and you had (still have) amazing family and friends and angels supporting you (and supporting Mommy and Daddy!) and sending up prayers.  Maybe one day we will know why you were sent to us with a tumor. I hope so.  The skilled surgeons did SUCH a fantastic job and I will try forever to thank them. Your recovery, though difficult to endure (tears at your poor swollen face!), was incredible.

Ps, You better love your cute bum-scar because it’s a pretty awesome battle wound.  Just don’t get all funny-boy-humor-weirdo on us and show it off to your friends when you are older, k?  I will figure out a way to staple your pants on, count on it buddy.

You have put your mom and dad (and all your supportive, sweet loved ones) on a roller coaster ride of worry with your health you precious thing. Couldn’t you have come with an extensive manual of “This is What My Insides Look Like: What to Do Now” or “Definition of Cries Numbers 1-210”. (A “How to Get Me to Sleep. Period.” guide would also be greatly appreciated!)

But I am astounded, humbled and all sorts of thankful to be your mom and witness the amazing little miracle you are, and really how healthy you are, too. We treasure every ounce of your 22 (ish) pounds! (sap sap sappyyyy.)

A few specifics that seem simple but are kind of a big deal:

Your legs wiggle (Ohhhh do they wiggle.)

You can crawl (everywhere).

You can go potty (I mean really, you can. Eeeeeven though we go thru triple the amount of diapers a typical baby might go thru. Oh the diaper rash!)

Your appetite is fantastic (victory, victory! SERIOUSLY). Your favorite thing to eat is paper, but you also love anything I am eating.  We are in love with your food sounds–“umm aumm yum num”. Thank goodness spit up is a thing of the past!

You are standing on your own here and there–you are so so so close!

You have been infection-free (from UTIs) for six months!  (even though we’ve had a few scares and sleepless nights thinking you had one or two.)

My body won’t ever be the same (thanks to your 8.9 lbs) but it was so worth it.  You are a happy, (loud), smiley, busy busy busy, giggly, momma’s boy who bonks his head on everything, loves to get into all things and actually is rather cuddly lately (hm, or clingy?!). The discovery of climbing is well in force (payback, right Grandma?) and boy you’ve got the giggles when you make it to the top of the stairs.

Your singing voice is adorable–like an “ah ah ah” kind-of yelling voice that might bother everyone else (sorry neighbors) and you even try to wave your arms like the choir conductor during church (also adorable). You love to pound the piano, or pound the table, or pound on me. You love to “wrestle” with your sister or attack her. Thank you for being so accepting of her glee in rolling you around, yanking your poor arms and sometimes sitting on you. Feet in your face or not, you totally love her and laugh the most with her. I will remind you of this later.

Balls and balloons are your passion and the fun of pushing a car along the floor is catching your attention. You usually go for emptying cupboards, suitcases & drawers (or climbing in them), or dangerous things like outlets and lamps and slamming fingers in doors. Of course.  I need eyes on you e v e r y  s e c o n d.

Photo cred: Miss H

I love you forever, little guy.

A Season of Whirlwind

I will now define a whirlwind in four words: The. Past. Three. Months.

“You kidding me??” To borrow a phrase from Hannah. No, no.. definitely not kidding.

I don’t think I could adequately describe why. Nor do I think I should try. But, I can say in all my thirty-one years (yes, yes, there are wrinkles) I cannot recall another time where I have prayed harder, cried more, slept less, ran a never-ending marathon on empty, felt more @#%!, or came completely and undoubtedly unglued. However, sun is shining, people, life is beginning to settle.

And here’s the kicker: settle where?

In the beautiful island of Sakhalin, in eastern Russia!

Yep! We are now living across the world in Russia. Many of you (oh you sweet few readers, you! Hello again! I promise not to leave you again. Really.) know Jake has been rotating over here with his job (drilling engineer) for about a year and a half. That is behind us I am GLAD to say shout. We are now one big happy family that welcomes Daddy home every night with big open arms and yelps of glee.

The preparations for this move were pretty intense, and that’s putting it lightly.  We were staying in Utah with family and the to-do-and-organize list and to-stock-up-on list and to-pack-in-certain-piles list felt endless.  I discovered how very much addicted I am to shopping on Amazon.com and oh how very much I would miss it…. Sigh. And what would you stock up on if you didn’t have a Walmart around the corner? (Oh you small-towners-without-a-Walmart I’m so impressed with you! I’m such a spoiled city girl!)

The plan would be to fly out of Texas. The company would slow-boat a 20 foot container via the ocean of all our stuff in addition to a quicker air shipment of more immediate needs.  We went from Utah to spending the holidays with Jake’s family in Colorado. More unpacking/packing things a few times from one place to another… Then it was off to Texas. Jake and his incredible helpful Dad drove down with the dogs (our dog and a friend puppy we were helping to transport) while I got to fly down with the kids. YAY for us, I know. I told you I was spoiled!!

Texas was full of fun (sarcasm times a thousand) going through more of our things we had left in storage. More piles. More packing. Or unpacking to just pack again. Have you ever wanted to inventory all your belongings? Like every single itty bity piece of paper down to the color and type of every single pair of sock? No? Well, geez I don’t know why not. It was a BLAST. No small task, honestly, I can hardly describe my gratitude to those awesome blessed people who helped us out!!!

Here’s Hannah at the storage unit, the only moment I captured. No shoes, but AT LEAST she has a coat on! So, just imagine lots of boxes and chaos filling up the hallway.

It was lovely to see Houston again–mainly the incredible friends we have there and SWEETEST people ever we stayed with who are like family.  But it felt like one thing after another kept slapping us in the face. We couldn’t escape some wretched theme song with a title like “It’s going to get worse just you wait”.

One last straw was Eli and a fever of 104 degrees the night before we were to fly out. With his history of UTIs, I was pushing for a urine sample (catheter) but that meant going to the ER. So off we went at 8pm and waited for 6 hours to be seen and another 2 hrs before we left.  This being my first ER experience, I have to say we didn’t get along very well. Guess what? We didn’t fly out the next day.

It was a UTI, or so they thought. So we treated it as such and flew out 6 days later. And he was fine. A few days on medicine, his fever was gone.  (Turns out it was not a UTI after all?? Which is great news, actually. Just a bit of a mystery.)

So, onto Russia! It was such a relief to finally make it to the airport and onto our adventure! We were allowed 3 bags/person and Eli had a ticket (hallelujah!!) so that equals 12 pieces, my friends. Twelve. Plus a stroller. Two car seats. And a bike. It was a sight, I tell you what!

This is what we think of first class (below)! AWESOME possum, baby! Super nice. (Sorry some of these pix have turned out fuzzy..) I was dreading that lengthy 14 hr flight to Tokyo (plus 3 hrs onto Sakhalin), but it was not all that bad.  I didn’t even use my whole bag of tricks. Eli needed them more than Hannah. Since his middle name is wigglemeister, I was overjoyed he had some floor space to get down and wiggle.

When we arrived in Sakhalin it was night. Blessed sleep, oh blessed sleep! Why do children not want you? Jet lag was something I was not quite prepared for. We were all exhausted, so of course the kids would just bounce right into a nice sleepy routine, right? Wrong. Poor Hannah, who will one probably be really mad I captured her very sad face at 3am in the morning. Ah well. The house we will be living in is not quite ready yet, so this was taken at the hotel we are staying at instead. I’m sorry, neighbors, I really am. I’m doing my best to keep these noisemakers calm and quiet. Can’t complain about no laundry and free breakfast, but everyone is grateful the challenging 2 & 3am mornings are a thing of the past. It took about a week and they were more in a schedule.

Snow is pretty abundant around these parts ya know, and we have had some fun breaking in our warm boots and snow suits! But don’t you just have to giggle at this cute Mr. Marshmallow below??

I could hardly get her to stop digging in the snow or eating it. She was in snow heaven.

Picture credit below: Hannah Jo photography
Such tired kiddos. He stayed alseep through the whole process of getting changed into jammies! And this little sweetie kept falling asleep in her car seat, on the way to church and then again on the way home. So we just left her there. An hour later she finally pulled herself out of such cumfy accommodations!SO, actually, if you are still with me on this essay-post…. Guess what. We got to take a break from the hotel!! Jake’s AMAZING coworker let us stay in his place while he and his wife were away. OH MY GOSH could I have just kissed them right then and there. It was such a reprieve and lovely to have a bit more leg room, to say the least. This is the view from the front door. Little people are so cute all bundled up in coats, aren’t they? Even though they scream and fight every second of putting them on. Well, at least mine do. It’s just horrible I want to keep them warm, I guess. 

Welcome to Olympia, the compound community for employees & families here. It is definitely a beautiful place and the people here are incredible. The homes/duplexes are great and the trees all around are just gorgeous. We have met many of the families here already, and everyone is super nice. It brings tears to my eyes the kindness they are willing to pour out to complete strangers!  They have truly made this adjustment so much easier.

There you go! Here is our new home! Hello Russia! We’re here! Whew. We are all in one piece and alive. It’s amazing! Now, other than making it to a few stores to pick up groceries and necessities (which is a feat all by itself I’ll tell you about later)), we haven’t done much sight seeing. Hopefully do more of that when things continue to settle, so stay tuned!

Ps, Not that it really makes sense to anyone, but the house on the left (and the left SIDE you see of the house/duplex) is where we will be in a few weeks! WOOOOT! Can hardly wait!Ta ta!