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...

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

She loves school. Enjoys and is pretty quick with spelling and reading. Not very patient with science and does not like math! That is everything I have managed to learn about her within 3 weeks. I have to admit it was a good feeling to know this about her so quickly. I know with her being in a regular class room I would have not figured this out for a while down the road. 1. I doubt the teacher would have enough one on one time to notice and 2. if the teacher did notice they probably wouldn't tell me until parent teacher conference in November. :) Oh and today she counted to 100 without my help but she did use her number chart. She started a new therapy about 2 months ago, therapeutic listening, and we have been very pleased with the results. She listens to a CD with a particular pair of headphones 1-2 times a day for 30 minutes. She does 1 CD for 2 weeks and then goes onto another one. The entire program takes about 12 weeks. We have just started CD #3 and in that time ...

just hanging out on the porch of her house. fighting dragons with her sword and shield (mommy's spatula handle and Tupperware lid) Fighting the dragon (or the rose bush) and loosing! YIKES! she came out of this battle with a few wounds! one tired and dirty little girl!

So here are a few of the before pictures. Beware...they are scary . Thankfully things look much better now, though we are still a bit rough around the edges, we are a work in progress. I will do my best to get after pictures tomorrow - every time I think to take some pictures my house is a mess from school, laundry or dogs so I keep saying "tomorrow!" Dining room dining room. We have a wood burning stove that will go in here. Can't wait! looking down from kitchen

One half of the family room the other half of the family room kitchen bedroom bedroom

These are a few pictures Olena decided to take of the old house before we moved. She said she wanted to remember! Her closet floor Daddy's legs cooking some breakfast...2 poached eggs, 1 slice of white toast lots of real butter please. (and this is for O, every morning!) AH some wrapping paper! very strange view of Luther, Olena's self proclaimed BFF. Otis our evil cat. Not a bad picture.