the Life of Olena

Things have been buzzing around here, and even though there has been a steady pace of interesting days I haven't had much motivation to write. However, I have TONS of things rattling around in this head of mine. First things first, Door to Door Organics ...check out the website. If you are in one of their service States and areas I highly recommend their services. I signed up with them about a month ago and Jason and I couldn't be happier with the service and the quality of food we get. For $23 we get what they call the "Bitty Box". well this so called bitty box is pretty big box stuffed with fruits and veggies. We get a delivery every week on Wednesday morning. They offer you the opportunity to substitute for any produce you don't want, you can order additional groceries - which are delivered with your produce, and every week they have given us 3-4 additional servings of various produce. Such as last week, in addition to my order I got a bunch of 4 bananas, a bun

November 30th was our 4th Gotcha Day! I thought I'd share a few of our adorable yearly winter pictures!

2009 2008 2007 2006

I was having a heck of time trying to get this picture and my camera would not focus so after about 50 shots I gave up and this was the best I got....terrible!!!

These are her two best friends - Gus and Brody. My other 2 are older dogs and they don't care to play with her much so she tends to torture these two more often since they like to "fight back" with her! Gus Brody!

Warning....I have a pretty boring life so I am not sure what I am going to write about tonight but I actually have a few moments of down time this evening and thought I would try and take advantage of it. Today was my wonderful mothers birthday - 50 years old. We LOVE YOU! We had a great dinner, and had a wonderful bday surprise for her. Olena was able to finally keep her first secret. I was worried about telling her, but she held strong and didn't spill the beans. I got tickets for the Broadway musical of Mary Poppins at the Detroit Opera House in December. My mom has been talking about it since the summer but was disappointed about the cost, so I looked into opening night tickets and got one heck of deal. The three of us girls will be going. (ALERT: something I never knew, opening night tickets are about 1/2 the cost for any theater production) Olena loves going to the theater. There have been a few shows that lost her interest and we left early, but for the most part s

Apologies in advance because I am writing this post completely on a whim but I have been thinking of so many things to write that I know I am going to forget. I figured it was time to stop waiting for the time and just make the time. So here it goes! CONGRATULATIONS to our good friend (and translator) Gene and his wife Helen. They welcomed their second daughter into the world late last week. Sofia. No pictures yet, but they are doing good and are very sleep deprived right now. Halloween was fun. Nana made her wonderful costume as usual, though I know it wasn't her favorite to make. Olena , who is ffffaaaaarrrr from a pretty princessy girl, wanted to be a dragon....a SCARY dragon. So here she is! All night she blew fire and roared at every kid that walked by. School is going pretty good...I am not exactly great at all of this yet, but I am faithfully working on it everyday :) I am constantly reorganizing myself and restructuring the lesson plans, which is really time consuming. M

My baby girl is growing up too fast!

Yes that is a dog growing out of my dad's shirt! Introducing Mia. she loves the boat! even in the freezing MI weather! Nana (aka Nina) and Olena...Nina doesn't quite share the same love of the boat as Olena.

At the sink looking down on the dining room The wood burning stove goes in here. Hopefully J will get it in soon! Thanks for the great idea Tonya! this is our "home management" area. Part of the kitchen