Wow, does time fly! School started and away we go! I have been a very bad blogger! Heidi has been getting complaints on Facebook about my slackerness! (Thanks Jana!)

Hardly a weekend goes by without a adventure, last weekend was face painting at the H Street Open House, this weekend it was petting zoo time at the Oktoberfest on Barracks Row (Marine Barracks Washington)

Update from Heidi:

If you haven't checked the blog lately - the kids are doing well. Still going through a lot of changes and developments on a daily basis but they are coming along and so are we as parents!

Sasha is in the 4th grade and participates in an after school dance class on M,W, and Fridays and is on the same soccer team that he played on last spring. The soccer team practices on Tues nights and plays games on Saturday mornings.

Christina is in the third grade and has soccer practices on Wednesday nights and games on Saturday mornings. She will also start to participate in Girl Scouts on every other Friday afternoon after school. Her and I are also starting to work together on Monday nights to serve a dinner meal to a church group of adults for a new beginner group called Alpha. We went to the training night of which was introductions for the leaders of all Alpha groups and the meal prep folks and we stayed the 1.5 hours of the meeting vs what I thought we might only stay for a half hour. She proved to enjoy it and our time walking there and back as it is near our home was very promising in a Mom and daughter outing that went well. This is a ten week class that I hope we will continue to do well at.

Tanya is in the 1st grade and enjoys it. Because she showed little interest in soccer practice last spring we are not gonna push getting to 3 practices and 3 games in different locations on Sat am so Tanya is not participating in Soccer. Unfortunately being the youngest she gets dragged along to the practices and someones game but there is a playground and other kids that often help that out. Tanya will also participate in Girl Scouts every other Friday after school starting soon. And we started her in on a pre-ballet class (it is a 5 year old class) but it is at her speed of learning and so far so good. We are getting ready to place her in a speech therapy class as her words were hard to understand in Russian and it is following over in to English too.

All in all the kids are doing well!

Erik and I are hopeful that they will continue to grow and develop well! Their care towards one another is good - with the occasional (ok daily) fights among one another that really is simply the whole sibling thing. They also tend to be jealous of one another but are sort of learning to get over that (ok, wishful thinking on my part)... We continue to have Masha (an official Au Pair last year with us from Dec 08 - June 09) and now we are sponsoring her as a student at our home. She provides help for us to listen for Russian phrases especially those that need to be watched (bad words and conversations of concern). She also has allowed Erik and I to get out weekly and be a couple and re-group to maintain our relationship strong. This has been very helpful. We lost our last elderly pet (Ajo, our 16 year old Aussie Shepherd) in August. It was a hard one for me as I had her for 15 plus years. The kids saw the loss and what Ajo meant to me and still to this day thank God for Ajo every night at our dinner prayer. We haven't gotten a new pet yet but may at some point (just hard to match the right pet to all of us) - and no hurry yet! Thanks for your time and support to our new family! Blessings to you all and to your families as well!

Regards! -Heidi