AFOSA Luncheon

Also, I’ll posr this one photo of the Armed Forces Officers Spouse Association (AFOSA) group of which I am president. I have really enjoyed getting to know these ladies! Here we are at Arathi’s (India) apartment. She had put together a fun quiz game teaching us all about India! And of course cooked many authentic Indian dishes for us to eat!  Can you say "spice"! and btw, Happy Leap Year!

Japan

 My month finished up with a little cooking lesson from my best friend from Japan, Hiroko. The kids love her too as she taught them origami and enjoys watching "It's a Wonderful Life", and has given us Japanese toys.  She and I love to spend time together just chatting over tea, shopping or going to the ballet! We cooked so much today she sent some home to Joey and he was a happy, full man!  I took this picture of him because I had sent banana bread to her husband was a happy, full man!  He had her take the same picture about a week earlier.  What a fun couple!  We will miss them... and they just might be our motivation to get to Japan for a visit!

BANYA

One of Joey’s favorite cultural experiences is the Banya. Men (mostly, but some women) go into a sauna like room, sweat it out, then jump into cold water to cool off and then begin the process of sweating it out again! Don’t ask me what the draw is but he loves it! He got to join our Israeli friends a few times as they have a banya in their apartment.  The teenage boys thought it was the coolest thing ever, no pun intended!

Peter packs a punch! Vote.

Back on the home front our friend in Germany began campaigning heavily for mayor. 

John loves sporting his shirt!

February School Break - Norway

Picture postcard of our ride up the ski lift

The view from our apartment here in Hafjell close Lillihammer.

February break came and I must say was probably our most relaxing vacation ever! We planned carefully and our trip went off without a hitch!   Knowing it would be super expensive to eat we found a place to stay at a ski lodge where we had an apartment with 3 bedrooms and a kitchen. Then we packed as much food as we could in our suitcases and had to buy very little. Simple easy meals was key!  

 Getting our ski legs back!

The first day of skiing John wrenched his knee pretty bad so we decided he would take a few days off. Looking forward to not skiing everyday, Joey stayed home with him on the second ski day. For me two days in a row was great but I was ready for a break the next day so I stayed home with John. We had a great time walking in the snow, relaxing and did a scrabble puzzle! The following day he skied with us again and took it a little slower.

Sometimes the three olders would go off and ski on their own. Here Clara found herself in a bit of trouble.  Reuben went to help her out and found himself up to his waist in snow.  They had a great time getting themselves out while Seth recorded it with pictures for me to see.

Seth and Reuben decided to give snowboarding a try on our last day! Seth liked the experience but decided he was a skier. Reuben loved the speed but realized very quickly how dangerous it was. But I think he is a snowboarder from now on. The weather was perfect, the area stunningly beautiful, and the people so friendly! Some of our photos look like post cards!

Monte Cristo

Last year Mary had seen advertisements for Monte Cristo, Joey's favorite movie, and wanted to take him but could never quite figure our how to do it.  So when I saw the advertisements again this year I was determined to get it worked out!  So for our entertainment this month we took some friends with us to see Monte Cristo. It was a really interesting show. Fantastic dancing, sets, and costumes although all in Russian and I didn’t know any of the music so I had a really hard time following the story. Was another great night at the theatre in Moscow though!

Winter Winners

November 6 - Just to note since I'm back-posting.  You can see I'm not doing very well on using less pictures and more words.  But Joey helped me with my little file-size-glitch by upgrading me to google plus.  YEH!  

     To start February posts I must note an interesting cultural winter experience here in Moscow. Many places hand out these little fabric blue booties that go over your shoes as you enter a building. This is in an attempt to keep the winter muck off the nice clean floors inside. Not that it works really, but still it is an attempt.  The orthodontist office has taken it one step further to assist you in putting these little winners on. Just as you enter you step your foot into this little machine and as you pull it out you bring the footie onto your shoe and with the elastic it gets pulled snuggly around your foot. The machine then resets with another bootie for the next foot. Whoever took the time to think this one up... what an invention! It worked about half the time but gave the security man an added dimension to his duties as he constantly had to “service” the machine, resetting it to work. Perhaps another reason why orthodontics are so expensive… to pay for fancy gadget machines like this!