our second trip to st. petersburg
One year ago, Stefan and I went back to Russia , after 6 long months of waiting, to see “Nastja” again and for medicals and court. I’m quite surprised how different the weather is . . . a year ago we had snow while today is a “balmy” +6 Celsius. We had arrived in St. Pete between 4 and 5 in the afternoon. The original plan was for our driver to take us and the other couple directly to the orphanage to visit with our children. However, between 5 adults, our luggage, our orphanage gifts and a Ford Mondeo . . . we had to stop at the hotel first and drop off some of the luggage. Here are some photos from November 23, 2008 (when I looked back

you call that a snack?
Yesterday was a bit rough for our youngest three . . .  So before bed, I prepared this snack for them: Obviously, you can figure out the homemade pumpkin pie with whipped topping, but what’s with all the pills and the glass of water??? Let’s see .

not again
My car is dead again. You would’ve thought 1155€ would do the trick, but no . . . . do bad Toyotas go to heaven?

worth its weight in gold?
Last week was a bad week . . . a lot of things went wrong . . . we had a health scare (turned out to be nothing) . . . we had dog poop smeared around the house via the bottom of a shoe (right as I was trying to rush out the door to a music lesson) . . . and my car broke down.Tuesday night, as I was driving to work it stalled. I started it. It stalled again. Rinse. Repeat. I had to phone Stefan to come get me and drive me to work. Luckily one of my students was able to drive me home.The car was towed away on Thursday. Today it was ready for pick up.You know how labour at the mechanic shop is always a hard pill

sugar and spice and everything nice
Woo hoo! I got an award! Dear, sweet Ondrea let me know that she gave me a shout out on her blog and passed this award along to me. If you've never visited Ondrea's blog, it's something you should do. This southern gal has such a heart for orph