My dad has said this sage quote for many years (I think since LP's were a new fad and groovy was the hip saying) and it makes sense to me now. As we have been engrossed with our "new life" we have been struggling with the balance of being present here and learning of news from home.
Liv's (I guess I should say "Our") Grandma, Patsy, recently suffered an aneurysm consequently hospitalizing her and placing her in a challenge of recovery. Family has gathered around in support and started making adjustments. We are so thankful for the technology that has allowed us to stay in contact, and in a lot of ways increased communication! Although selfishly we wish we could be their to give hugs of support and be physically present, we realize our constraints. I think the silver lining of this situation is that our family has become closer and reconnected. I give thanks for being part of a family and having a wife that has strength to persevere through challenging times and create a stronger life as from before.
I share this because I need to say the things we think everyday but have been struggling putting into words! We live in a world that meets no restrictions of time; I mean hear I am typing this as most of you that will read this, are falling into slumber. Our daily tasks focus on what and how can we make things better and how we can make or spend more money! Yes philosophical and yes a bit anarchist. But living a world away from what has happened back home allows you to question what is important. A Blessing that Liv and I have had many conversations about. Priorities lie in family and friends and maintaining those relationships where ever we may be in the world.
Well the happenings of anew reside in highlights of Lucy getting to meet her boyfriend, Kili (Spelling undetermined, but short for Kilimanjaro in Africa a favorite trip of Rob and Jill's).
They can't get enough of each other and will play endlessly for hours.
Although Kili is a puppy he isbigger than Lucy now and she is quite the surrogate mother. These photos are of a trip to Pushkin where Catherine the Great Summer palace resides. We had a great walk chatting and throwing snowballs for the dogs!
We relish the white blanket over the city as it creates a facade of Christmas and the holidays reminding us of home. The canals that meander through the hustle and bustle of this megalopolis are all frozen and an eerie silence blankets our street as the bullhorns of floating tours and mufflers of madness have seemingly hibernated! The Neva River is a site to see as the blocks of ice with occasional bird passenger float by foreshadowing the impending winter.
Liv and I have invited our staff over for a Thanksgiving feast to attempt some normalcy in our absentia of family dinners back home. We have ordered two birds and will prepare a potful of mashed potatoes. Some of our fellow staff members are going to bring some traditional Russian fare, you can probably guess which one of us is excited about this news. We hope that everyone back home has a wonderful holiday and we will be thinking of you on this day while we are in school... Regardless of where we all are we will raise a toast to all of you on Thanksgiving!
20 comments:
Happy early Thanksgiving =)
glad you guys are having a good time...everyone misses you here
the good news is I am back in the saddle without the back brace. I just have to do physical therapy for awhile to gain my strength back.
Hope all is well
~Ariel and family
yes, i've been waiting for an update. we've got our visas and are all set for our trip, though i am not looking forward to the cold!
wow buddy - what an incredible expression of your last few months there! I can't wait to see you guys in person and take it all in. As Zeke says we have been given the okay by the Russian Government and we're on our way.
I love you Beau-Beau and livia!
ABBY
Man you should be a poet?
Liv, long time no see! Beau - Salutations!
What a brave pair you are. Great blog - interesting, beautifully written and I'm anxious to read the next entry. Take care, take heart, and keep taking pictures!
-T
HI!!!! It's Breana Miller, I hope all is going good in Russia. So, we have a new teacher coming in to replace Ms. Margo, and you probaly already know that we have Mr. Cummins. Phisical Science is kind of hard, I like Life Science a lot better. Well, I hope your Christmas and New Years was awesome! Mine went pretty well, I got a digital camera so I can start my photography class YAY! I started school, late this year, I was home schooled for like two months but I came back in late October just in time to go to Ashland. Well Merry LATE Christmas and Happy LATE New Years!
Breana Miller
hi mr.v. this is ivy. how are you. i miss you because i won't nam names but sombody, (wink wink) is.... well i don't know how to explain him. oh well, i guess i only have to see him for 45 min a day! but still. any hoo, i hope to see you later!
Hi mr. V!!!
You may not remember me from 4th and 5th grade but i remember you clearly! Any way i am doing great in school and made friends, as usal, at start.I wish i could see you again so i can tell you my stories of me and my grandpa. Til then, bye!!!!!
sincerely,Cody Dean
Hey!!!!!!
How was your Christmas and New Year? Do the russians celebrate it as much as we do? It sounds like its beem pretty cold there are you still walking to work? I went and hung out and with Olivia, Sam, and Mackenzie for New Years and it was really fun! Oh guess what I finally had my Birthday party! Ya!!!! Me, Olivia, Sam, Holli, Mackenzie, and Maddy went and saw National Treasure 2 book of secrets and it was really good!! After the movie we hung out at my house and played a bunch of games it was really really fun!!! Ya we were also supposed to make our own cake, but we kind of destroyed it before we put the four layers together. It wasw a ton of fun with all of us. The break was great and we just hung out for christmas and Zac came over. Last weekend we bryce took me and holli up to the mountain and i had to helo her every time she got stuck in the powder. So that was an interesting expierience. Mikayla is as annoying as ever and when we went ice skating she created another kill Taylor and Holli club with 15 little kids. They were all pelting us with snowballs, she is evil! Hahaha then olivia and i went bowling with aric and olivia won!!! We have started our volleyball conditioning and it HURTS!!!! ahh holli and I have been so so so sore because they work us for the entire 15 minutes. After our last one i could barely walk. I got a new snowboard for christmas and it is a lot more balanced than my tiny purple one! Okay so that is about all i have to say for now! okay BYE!
~Tay :)
hey mr. V,
i dont think that you have ever met me before, but my name is Amanda Dean. I transford from Obsidian middle school and so far tumalo is the best school i have ever been to. it has great teacher and great people. i wish that i could have met yuo before you left. you sound like such a great person. people say your more like a friend then a teacher. so, how is the weather there? well it has been very cold here and snowing a lot. mrs. margo is gone and i miss her so much. well unfortunatly i have to go so i will talk to you later.
hello mr.V you should come back sooner than two years because im going to high school and I dont know if i will be able to visit.
how was your christmas I got a lot of money and a psp and i bought an ipod.
how was your new year. i just stayed at home and watchjed movies.
i wrote an essay about how you are my personal hero, i dont know if your dad has gave it to you yet.
have a good time in russia!
~jeremy
hay Mr.V how is it going? I still have drian bammage( brian dammage).
is it cold over there? I am moving to Salem this year, i will still over to see you. We all miss you.
Later Zach
hey mr.v! its holly i miss u a lot and i have a few things to say about ur post.
i totally know how you feel about being in such a diferent enviorment. when i went to paris, it was such a different atmosphere then it is here at home. after being there for just 3 days, i cheerished things much, much more! something as little as milk! the milk in europe tastes so much different than the milk here. another thing i was thankfull for after being there was huge...i missed the air that i have at home! so many people never stop to think how lucky they are just for something that seems as free as air! it france, EVERYBODY smoked! it was disgusting! i am happy to be in a place that has those things. i realy love how you wrote about the qoute at the beginning but i would also like to say something about it(as if thats a surprize:])
ur quote was:"life is whats happening when your making other plans"
thats such an amazing way to put it i think! its bassically saying(in my mind) that if u spend all your time planing what your going to do, youll miss whats going on around you. its like if u made day plans for tomorrow, and then tmorrow you try and makes plans for the next day, youll never get to do what you had planned because you were so busy planning what else you were going to do. the biggest fear of many people is that they're not going to succeed... therefore i understand if people think that making plans for their whole life will help them to succeed! but half the fun of life is not knowing whats gonna happen the next day.
all the people in the world that think they want to know the answers to the unknown questions in the world are just tricking themselves. if someone said they wanted to know if God really exsisted, and they got the oppertunity to find out the truth, they probably wouldnt actually want to know. my reasoning is becaus e right now the people that believe in christ think that he really does exsist, they wouldnt want to know the truth because they always have the fear that he doesnt. what if when they learned the truth, they found out that he wasnt real? many people like imagination better then they like reality! i think thats how things came to be in the first place. people want to belive that they can be forgiven if they do something wrong. even if they arent, they always want to think that they can be.
wow i said a lot! but i couldnt stop once i started:]
there may be a page two a little later but i gtg right now because class is almost over.
well i hope you enjoy ur time there and i miss you a ton!!!!!!! love u both! bye!
Hey! We miss you sooo much but it seems like Lucy is likeing Russia a lot I hope you are to! I Hope you heard about Mrs. Margo I'm happy for her with her new job even though she can't be our teacher but it is a good oppertunity for her. I am really excited for high school and i am having fun doing math with Holli, Taylor, and Olivia in the back of the math room!!! My mom got a job at the red cross drawing blood so she had to do a month training in portland and half the time i stayed at Taylor's house which was a lot of fun!! So i saw ur thanksgiving pictures, it looked like a lot of fun. Tay and I had so much fun and Rennee and Ben are really really good cooks!!!
ByE,
Samantha Cooper:)
Hey mr.v how are ya? how was your new years and stuff?
mine was good. i made honor roll at a 3.7 yay.. Ivan said hi!
Jeremy says hi!
my mom came in to town from Nebraksa, and i saw my little brother he is soo cute!!
Talk to u later
hey V-dog wat up , skip scool and go get wASTED just kidden drugs are bad tell marshall that.we have been hangen out doing good things and see you later, two years.
Mr. V!
Oh man I've thought about you a lot lately. For some reason, when I walk into a store, I always see a Hawaiian shirt of some type, weird huh?
But anyway, Over Christmas break I pretty much lived at Kaytlin's house. Like last year on New Years, we burnt down her Christmas tree again, that was such a blast.
How was your New Year?
I really cant wait for you to come back, It will be so good to see you again.
I hope you had a good Christmas and New Years.
-Sarah
Hey mr.vhow are u ? it was nce talking to u on the phoen. we are dancing in P.E ya i know ewwwwwww cooties! Right? Just kidding.I got a Labradoodle in like September whne i went to utah and he is huge but he is like 6 months and he stand s at my waist he is a monster who does not use is mind!! I aslo wnet to Utah like oct 10 to slaughter cows it was fun but gross! This weekend i hung out with Lyndasy and Amanda and it was really fun ! we were whatching this movie called Darkness falls and they kept sacring me ! because it's about a thooth fairy who kills people whenit's dark but she is afriad of light so i walked onto a dark room and they pop out and sacre me really bad! And i kinda hit Lyndsay's garbage dispoal and it was really loud and she hit me !! My sister and I wre sledinmg on our Hlaf pipe and we have this idea to take a little baby sled and sled down sitting on each other so i go frist i push us down and we craked the sled then i wanted ashley to have a turn and she could not push down the sled so once she finally pushed the sled and she broke it into to piece and we hid it in the round pen!! gosh i t was fun!!
did u know u are right about a lot of things. and example is that last year u said Zach Morrison and i had a lot on common and u wre right we went "out" from the social @ sunMountain until Decemeber! wow ! we love our new L.A teacher!! andscience is kinda boring without u cauise all we get is lextures! we trid to get him off topic but it does not work as well as it worked with u!!
Rawar comeback we miss u so much!
anyways i ll talk to u later.
Happy Birthday!
Well i just wanted to say happy birthday because today is your birthday! But i bet you already knew that so that is all i have to say for now!
Hope you have a grrreeeeeeeaaaaaaat day!
Luv,
Tay
Hey! how are you?
i hope russia is funn but not has fun as here... hahha
Just Kidding
i am so exicted for high school
i gues it will be funn
but i will miss Tumalo so much..
hope your summer or whatever season over there is going good
even though i think its summer
oh well
i'll figure that out!
Brianna KOrn
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