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I officially wanted to start school this week but Evangelia had other plans so today I finally got a few pictures of her.  And yes that is a name tag for her desk and one over her back pack hook, she loves them!  This morning I attempted to do homeschool in the morning which was very hard due to the fact that the little boys wanted to join.  We also had to contend with the loud noises upstairs as they are fixing up the apartment for someone to move in. I had to give it to Ev who stuck with it through the sledge hammer through our entire time (in the first picture you can see Ian behind Ev with his hands over his ears.)  The girl loves to learn. 

Preschool

When the boys are taking their naps I have been teaching Ev preschool.  She knows the letters and their sounds and we have been working on her writing the letters.  Today I started to teach her some sight words and have her find them in books for me. Then I gave her a predictable book and had her read it on her own.  Here she is reading the book.  Ev loves preschool so much that she even asks me to teach her on the weekends. 

We've had several rainy days lately so we have been painting!

 
 

Baseball

Todd found a local elementary school who has a kid's baseball team that will let us play on their field when they are not practicing.  Today we went up and got to enjoy the baseball field for a while. 

                                              On the way to the baseball field in the taxi.

Dr. Pepper!

Since we moved her 4 years ago there have been some wonderful food items and every day things that have become available to us in our city.  The newest things have been that you can actually buy a Dr. Pepper (6oz. can) in the local grocery store.  For the past few years our Import store has carried Dr. Pepper (regular sized cans) off and on so it is pretty incredible to be able to buy it in the main grocery store.  The Import store is expensive but the grocery store is even more expensive so we probably will not buy them from there.  Along with Dr. Pepper is real Bounty Paper Towels.  After our first maybe 1.5 years here they started carrying paper towels but now we can get Bounty.  Too bad they are about $5.50 a roll, we probably won't be buying them but it is nice to know they exist. 

One Import store in town carries a lot of meat choices.  We cannot get good sandwich meat here but we can buy Pastrami and salami from this Import store when they have them in stock.  We can also buy hot dogs and much to our kids delight we can buy Tyson chicken nuggets.  I can't tell you how being able to get these helps our lunch and dinners.  The kids main lunch consist of peanut butter and jelly.  Maybe that is why they began protesting it in America. 

We Made It!

We have been back at home for a little over a week now.  Our very long day of travel went pretty well considering we were traveling for 30 hours with 3 little kids, no stroller and 11 pieces of luggage.  After 4 flights we were at home safe and sound.  We know many people were lifting us up during the process and we are very thankful for that.  When we got to our apartment it was about 1:30am local time and around lunch time in America.  The kids were so excited to see their home and toys that they wanted to stay up and play.  We let them have a little time with their toys and then got every one in bed by 2am and after just 4 hours of sleep everyone was up around 6:30am.  We left America at the start of Friday and got here at the start of Sunday morning.  Even with the loss of a day in the mix of traveling we were wide awake. 
We have been unpacking, cleaning out our apartment, and settling back into our routine.  We've been able to see most of our good friends and we got a nice welcome of not having water the first day we were back home.  All in all we have made it through jet lag in the first week and we are almost back to normal. 
The last month before our return we were delayed due to my health.  We were living week to week not knowing if we could or would be able to return.  The unknown and long transition time made us all thankful to get back home.  It is good to finally be settled and to have everything unpacked and put away. 
Thank you for lifting our family up as we traveled, have been settling back in and as we have been readjusting to life.  We appreicate you!