My Little Loves!

These kids have been so great! They don't have their own toys yet, sometimes they have to watch Team Umizoomi and Mickey Mouse in Russia, and lets face it... they are in a whole new place with only Will and myself as a familiar face. I am so proud of the way they are transitioning and adjusting. 

So a few things that we have done are take them outside and familiarize them with the area and point out "Our" house. I thought this was going to be difficult because all the houses are green or red and look exactly the same. So ours has a little bit bigger front staircase because of the hill. That is an identifier for them and try to get them to look for "17" on the post but that is kind of hard to see most of the time. 

Walking to the Community Center - not even  5 minute walk from our house. I love how the woods stagger through the area :-)

Apparently every Tuesday at noon the women of Olympia meet for lunch at the Community Center restaurant. The ones with non-school aged kids bring them and its a mixture of the young moms with lots of kids and then the older ladies. Not a whole lot in the middle. Will and I also did great by bringing our small army of children here because that is the normal thing. Very few people have just one kid. Some came with 4 kids and some with 5. 3 kids is pretty standard :-) 

When we got there kids were running EVERYWHERE!!! Now I am the kind of person that encourages "inside voices" when eating out. So I embraced the madness and asked Ash and Mike if they wanted to go play. They both had a look of fear and they clearly looked overwhelmed by the kids running, screaming, and playing. This is normal for Tuesday Lunch. Kids being loud and playing is expected. Ash said "Mommy I just want to sit" - hehe it was all too much for her :-)

This is the "No Mom I don't want to play" face - LOVE HER!

And of course - He's happy and eating

CHEESE!

We stayed for about an hour then CJ was on his way to epic meltdown... Cue... TIME TO GO! They were so good that we stopped into the CC mini mart and picked up some ice cream bars. 

Holding hands!!!! I told them to walk home. I followed behind but I did not direct. I wanted to see if they knew their way. Sure enough they did. They walked home without detours

Ice Cream as promised!

Back porch

The yard with an AWESOME sledding hill!!!

Little Diva

Sometimes you just have to Hug It Out

Can't forget CJ

And there it is! They all love each other

MOM! We have to test out the Hill!!

THIS IS AWESOME!!

Her nice white leggings were not so white after this - MOM: 0 ASH:1

Photos around Olympia

We live in the Exxon Compound called Olympia. Here are some of the views we have

Main Gate into Olympia

Main Gate again

The forest inside the compound

soccer fields

More recreational fields - Mountains in the back

Slowly Experiencing Sakhalin

We have been here for about a week and I am slowly getting my feet wet with what this city has to offer. It is hard with the huge language barrier and understanding your surroundings. The first place that I went to was City Mall. You can find absolutely anything you could possibly need here. There is a grocery store, sporting goods store, toys, clothes, Samsung, very small drug store, food court, and basically everything you'd find at a US mall. It is 4 floors. We have been 3 times. Once was on a Sunday (mid day) and that was overwhelming. LOTS of people and my credit cards were not working. The machines are hit or miss here so having an ample amount of Rubles on you at all times is pretty crucial. I didn't that day. I only had 900 rubles with is about 20 US dollars. All in all that was a bad day :-)

City Mall

Grocery Store entrance

Kids looking out the elevator

"It has a Cow on it, Its gotta be Milk right"

As we get settled into routines and find "things" we are seeing that very few things are in English.... 

Some of the residents put food in out house to hold us over for a few days. Everything is in Russian

Me: "Will I do not know what half this stuff is" (Packaging is different as well"
Will: "This has a cow on it so it has to be milk right?"
Me: "But what kind of Milk....."
Will: "Taste test??"

First Aid Kit - Medicines are in Russian. We got a Medicine Manual so we know what were taking

"I see the Island! Full speed Ahead!"

My kids are handling the chaos of moving with such ease. They have no toys except for a few things we took on the plane. Everything else is arriving in our shipments. So their imaginations are in full force. Yesterday morning they had a whole pirate thing going on.

Mike and CJ's room over looks the neighborhood park which is right across the street. Very Convenient!! So I am getting dressed and the kids are running through the upstairs yelling a bunch of Pirate jargon.... "Ahoy Matey", "Set Sail Captain", "To the Look Out", and so on... Then I hear a bunch o conversation about some Island.....

Mike: "The Island awaits Ashwinn" (He has a hard time pronouncing the "Lynn" part of her name)

Ash: "I got my pack Mike! Lets go!)

Mike: "Straight on till morning... I see it, I really see it! I see the Island"

Ash: "Yo Ho Ho"

Mike: "The Playground!"

Ash: "Full Speed Ahead Mike! We need shoes!"

I was laughing so very hard at these fools :-) Needless to say we went to the "Island"

Home Sweet Home

This is our house. Our stuff has not arrived yet so we have the basic linens and items that were provided to us. We should be getting out shipments over the next 2 months or so. But in the mean time this is our humble abode :-)

This is house 17. Ours is on the left (17A)

Entrance from front door. This is the mud/snow room. Very large and Very convenient

Living Room

Dining Room

Kitchen

Breakfast Nook

Back Hallway - Kitchen entrance on left, Laundry on right, backyard straight

Master Bedroom


Kids rooms look similar except Ash has a queen bed and the boys have two twins in their room. The fourth room is going to be turned into a playroom for them. When we receive our shipments and I can make the kids room their own I will post more pics

Plane flight from hell.... Just Kidding! Kids were great

So naturally I was terrified from the journey over here. Our flight path was Houston to Tokyo, Tokyo to Yuzhno. Houston to Tokyo was 13.5 hours. I don't who you are... that's a long time to sit and that's especially a long time to sit if your a child. Oh and did I mention that we were all riding in style up in first class, so now I felt even more pressure to make sure that my kids were on their best behavior while riding in the lap of luxury on this Boeing 777.

As a family were did not get to sit together. I was in row 8 seats A&B with Ash and CJ while Will was in row 11 seats K&L with Mike. It worked out fine though.

The flight started with the Stuart taking dinner orders. Naturally I was confused as to why I was placing a dinner order at 9:30 in the morning but we were operating on Tokyo time so they wanted to acclimate us on the plane. In first class it was a 4 Course meal. We had a bread cart followed by a dinner salad, then an appetizer that included Prosciutto rolled up to look like a rose bud with a piece of a California sushi roll. That when over well with Ash :-) The girl likes her sushi! Then dinner.. We had chicken with steamed spinach, carrots, and some sort of bean that was actually pretty gross. I requested a coach meal for Ash because I knew she was not going to eat the main  course in first class. Coach was having Chicken, Veggies and Spaghetti! What kid would turn that down.. Oh, and CJ destroyed the spaghetti. Following dinner was an ice cream sundae cart.

The whole dinner process took about 2 hours it seemed. Then lights went out and it was bed time. First class seats extended out into beds. Really convenient when traveling with an opinionated 18 month old boy. After he ate his weight in food he fell asleep for about 4 hours. He woke up and made some noise for a bit but nothing too extreme and slept again for the last few hours of the flight.

When we landed in Tokyo we had a few hour layover so we hung out in the United Airlines lounge. We got a family room and let the kids run wild for a bit and stretch the legs. The next flight was only 2 hours but they were over the traveling and now tired. When we boarded the next flight all kids were mad, bored, cranky, and almost unbearable with the crying. Then takeoff happened.... ALL KIDS ASLEEP!!!! Mommy and Daddy got to sleep too :-)

We got to our house at almost 11pm Tuesday (Russia time) and kids went back to sleep. They took some time to adjust and pretty much slept all day the next day. Woke up for meals and that was it.