It's Beginning To Feel A Lot Like Moscow

The weather has gotten much colder from the mild weather we were having around Christmas. So that means the ice and snow sculpture places have finally opened. We went to one on Saturday and were a little disappointed at the sculptures, but presently surprised at the fun activities they had for the kids. The best was an ice/snow slide which I don't have a picture of, but you'll see in the video I'll post next.

The sculptures in the background. Oliver does only what Leah does so in order to get him to ride in the stroller for a while we had to get Leah in the stroller too. It was nap time so she wasn't too hard to convince for a little while at least.
Leah in the snow maze. You can see the slide in the background of this picture.
The snow Kremlin.

This car was carved into the wall of the snow Kremlin.
They had at least 3 of these ball pits. Oliver loved it. This was the first time he went in and was sliding all over and couldn't get up so I had to go in and fetch him. Afterwards he figured out how to lean out at least so we could reach his arm and pull him out and let him slide in over and over and over.

While Levin and Oliver did the ball pit Leah really wanted to sit in an ice sculpture of a throne. I took her over, but some Russian "beauty" was in line before us and two men started taking glamour shots of her and were taking FOREVER. Finally I let Leah start climbing on it a little in hopes they'd get the hint their turn was over. We weren't the only family waiting another little girl was too. But my trick didn't work they just asked if she would move out of the way. Finally, she left and Leah and the other little girl climbed up together quickly sat there and got down. Unfortunately, Levin had the camera.

We had such a fun day. Levin got me snow pants for my birthday and I thought he was a little crazy, but I have to say I wore them thinking we'd just be walking around looking at stuff. I wish I'd worn them last week on the walk to the grocery store too. It is cold!!

Oh, did you notice it was sunny! You may not think that is a big deal, but it is a huge deal. We haven't had sun since Thanksgiving when my sister was here. The sun was out all last week. I was so excited when I opened my curtains and had a one foot wide by 3 feet long patch of sun on my wall. It was heaven. The first day I just told the kids let your face feel the sun!! Of course we were outside and it was so cold you couldn't really feel any warmth, but we tried it inside later with better results.

The Emperor's New Pajamas

Oliver is . . hmm . . how to say this nicely . . a horrible sleeper. I hate letting a baby cry when you think there might be something you can do to solve the problem. SO one day shopping for Pull-Ups I saw these wonderful pajamas in a Russian children's store. I bought them up even though they were like $35. He HATED them at first. HATED them. I'd have to immediately offer him something he loved after putting them on. The next morning he had forgotten he was wearing them I guess. He came and found me in my bathroom. I gave him a hug and lifted him up and said, look how handsome you are. He saw himself in the mirror and immediately started freaking out that I take these horrible puffy pajamas off! I did, but it hasn't taken long for him to like them and he puts them on happily now. And he has been sleeping better - still wakes up, but not so much. They take forever to dry so it is a sad day when I have to wash them and he has to wear other pajamas.

Pinata Video

Sorry, I forgot to post the pinata video.

Please don't notice how messy the house is. And if you're wondering why Oliver doesn't have a shirt on . . . . this is pretty typical after dinner attire. I can't find a bib he keeps on and I guess I haven't tried hard enough, but his shirt usually becomes a bib and must be removed after dinner. The good news is the chill he gets usually has him quite willing to put on his super warm pajamas not too long later.

Palace Let Down

A few weeks ago we went to visit a palace. We'd read about it online and they had sleigh rides and lots of fun stuff to do! We drove out early Saturday to avoid some traffic and arrived at the palace. I'd tell you the name, but I honestly can't remember it. It was something like Angelskaya, but that's not it. I googled that and came up with some results for a hot girl's blog. I didn't look at the blog, but based on the info. . . .

Anyway, here we are near the entrance. We weren't charged for parking so that was nice. We parked by the end that had a veteran's hospital. Pretty quiet. We started walking and realized the whole place was even quieter other than the hospital where we at least saw one guy outside smoking and could see some lights on inside.
It was definitely cold. But it was pretty with all the snow and there were tons of trees.
Just imagine how pretty this walkway would be in the summer.
That is as close as we got to the castle. It was all shut down - I assume for renovations. No sleigh rides, nothing. We saw one or two bare bulbs shining inside and I saw one man doing some work on a wall. Kind of disappointing, but at least we got a little drive out of Moscow.

One thing I have discovered since this incident is that a lot of the Moscow/Russian websites don't ever get updated so you can't really trust the information. Maybe next year.

A Real Pinata

Thanks to an episode of Handy Manny, Leah wanted to have a real pinata. She is obsessed with my birthday and said we could have one for my birthday. But my birthday is a long way away. So . . . somehow we decide to make one. I wish I had a video of Leah pronouncing it because she says it sooo cute! And correctly I might add. We aren't so fancy so Levin paper mache'd a balloon really quickly and the next day we let Leah paint it.

Here she is painting. Her "mustache" is caused by breaking into my lipstick moments before it was time to paint.

She was pretty excited to break it. The Burger King crown added a nice touch. Since it didn't have too many layers we thought the plastic bat could break it, but it still took quite a few whacks and maybe a teeny bit of help from Levin. Oliver helped too, he's in the video, not the pictures though.

She is already promising me a real pinata for my birthday and "even you can eat the candy Mom."

The Blind Leading The Blind

Here is a little better feel of how it really was. I wasn't going to post this because it's embarassing, but oh well! Here goes.

Ice Skating at Gorky Park

On Monday we went ice skating at Gorky Park. Leah got ice skates for Christmas. She has been wanting to go ice skating since we moved to Moscow, but we had to wait for it to get cold enough. She fell down, SOOOOO many times, but loved it! She kept saying, "Mom, can we not go home? Mom, can we keep practicing?" And my favorite, "Mom, I'm getting it, I'm getting better!"
To be honest, I'm not sure we ever did get any better. Levin and I went ice skating once for a date and other than that I have not been except for a few times in high school. I was not actually doing much skating as I slowly moved Leah around the ice, but I only fell down once and it was when I went to talk to Levin who was on the bridge above us and had to cut through people who actually knew how to skate. Trying to get out of their way I lost control. Leah did better when I didn't hold her hand, but she would hardly let me let go of her. My muscles were so sore the next day from picking her up or dragging her up as she started to go down.

Here you can see just a small part of the other ice skaters. At Gorky park it's no rink, it is just tons of track. There are a lot of good Russian ice skaters. They had loud music playing and it was a lot of fun. In the end we had to go home Oliver had had enough of spectating. Although he was a very happy boy initially. He loved his perch up on the bridge above. Leah was freezing by the time we got to the car and the wetness from falling so many times had seeped through her fleece lined pants. If we go again we'll have her put on snow pants.