At home

We spent the past week at home. We had been planning on doing that, once we had our garden planted and things settled at the dacha. Settling in here in our new apartment is going to take a lot of work, but Will was able to make good progress on that over the past week.

He sorted through things, built shelves, hung wallpaper, bought and installed a home entertainment center. . . um, well not a home entertainment center exactly, but our children think that's what it is. We now have a. . . (drumroll please). . .

Washing machine!
Originally uploaded by fylliska.

That's a first for us, and it is so nice! I can't believe how easy it is to wash clothes now. The children pretty much do it for me. We throw everything in, and two hours later it's all ready to be hung up! Doesn't even need to be wrung out! Jaan and Raia give me a blow-by-blow account of what's happening for most of the whole two hours. The first time they saw a spin cycle, Jaan came running to me with big eyes, yelling that something terrible had happened: the clothes had disappeared! He and Raia were both very relieved to see everything "come back" a few minutes later.

Doing laundry
Originally uploaded by fylliska.

On Wednesday we celebrated Will's birthday. He went to the nursing home as usual. When he came back, we were waiting with a special dinner, games, and mocha cheesecake. We didn't invite any guests, but we had a wonderful time as a family.

Happy birthday, Will!
Originally uploaded by fylliska.

Then Will also got to go to Moscow for a slumber party with Nathan. That's when he posted all those photos. (Oh, my! I'm just now seeing how many there actually were. I hope they weren't too much for anyone with a slow connection.)

For over a month now, we've only been home on the weekends. Those are our busy times, so we haven't been going for walks or playing outside around here much at all. This week we were able to get back into our old schedule with that. I was just amazed by how many people had noticed our absence. I would expect the babushki and young mothers that I usually talk with to ask about us, but I had people I didn't even know coming up and saying that they had been worried about us and missed us. I found it encouraging. People do notice us and miss us when we're gone. Several people wanted to know why Will had let the grass grow in the courtyard this summer, instead of cutting it like he has in the past. Again, I was glad that when we had to move, we didn't have to go far.