the Life of Olena

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...