Happy Mustache Birthday

My niece Vienna just recently had her birthday. Apparently she thinks mustaches are the funniest things, and will put her hair, a pen, fork, anything under her nose and just laugh. So, for her birthday they had a Mustache party at the park, and all the kids ran around with paper 'staches. We were sad we couldn't go, but we were there in spirit.

HAPPY MUSTACHE BIRTHDAY VIENNA!!

Picture of sweet little V from my sister's blog.

23 Things Update

1. Move - WE HAVE MOVED!!!! and we LOVE our apt, it has a balcony!! (complete with hammock soon) and it's close by everything.

6. Attend the Temple 2x/mo. - So far going strong. And we've gotten to attend all sorts of new temples now that we are so close to so many!! They are all so beautiful!

11. Cook 5 new recipes- French Onion Soup, and Olyvie so far.

13. Take a vacation - Vegas, and it was LOVELY!

14. Finish the Photo Wall project - finished picking and editing the photos, just need to print and hang!

15. Edit and print our wedding photos - started.... but this one's going to take a while.

21. Continue to learn Russian - slowly, but surely

22. Find 2 new hair-do's - YES!!!! I will try them and post if they turn out...

Up to accomplish this sumer:

2. Hike Mt Timp

4. Make flower hair clips

5. Host a party?

7. Try out Zumba

8. Run a race

9. Meet my new nephew

10. Read 5 books for fun

11. Cook 5 new recipes

20. Have 6 couples over for dinner

23. Make a rice sock?

Мальчики читают

I am well on my way to becoming a Ukrainian!! This past month I have made Borsh and Olyvia, and I am slowly but surely learning some russian. Currently my favorite phrase to say is :Мальчики читают, which means the boys are reading... but it is SO much better in Russian! It is the most fun combination of letters and sounds, it will wake up your ears and make them want want to do a jig!! Also I work with a Ukrainian woman who was in the SLC olympics... how does that help my transformation? well it doesn't directly but it's just one more connection, so yes, I am practically Ukrainian.

Here are some of the other things I can say in Russian:
pen, child, children, rice, apple, horse (although I don't like to say it because it sounds like a bad word to me!!!); writing, reading, 1,2,3,8,0, red, read, bicycle, car, drive, walk, run, swim, lets go, what do you want, what's this?, slippers, sandals, hello, goodbye, goodnight, i love you, and what are you mumbling under your nose?

Ok, so I'm not THAT close, and when I hear Dima talk to his mom on the phone I realize just how far I still have to go in order to really be able to communicate to anyone, but at least I'm on my way, and hopefully by the time we go to Ukraine I'll be able to say more than "the boys are reading" to his family.

Homeless

For two weeks in the beginning of May we were between apartments. Things didn't get so bad that we had to stand on a street corner or go without bathing though. Thankfully we had lots of family and friends who were willing to put us up for a few nights here and there. So after a packing up our life into a trailer and a military cleaning to get out of our Provo apartment, Dima and I hit the open road and headed down to Vegas for a few days of blissful vacation after a month and a half of stress and excitement. It was so fun to be back in my old stomping grounds after so long and see how everything had changed, and yet stayed exactly the same. We spent our days sleeping in, going on beautiful hikes, watching movies, visiting friends, shopping, swimming, eating, and seeing some of Vegas' finest entertainment.

We attended the witty Penn & Teller magic show, the unique and hilarious Blue Man Group (my favorite), walked around the new City Center, Caesar's Palace, Town Square Mall, ate at Planet Hollywood, an AMAZING Italian place that I can't pronounce the name of, romped around Mt. Charleston and enjoyed the unique beauty of Red Rock, went to the temple, and just enjoyed being together.

The strip is so much better prettier at night.

We are so strong.

I may or may not be stuck at this point... :)

Haha, I love this picture... I think we are discussing whether to have the nice stranger take the picture vertically or horizontally... little did we know he'd already made the decision for us.

There once was an old woman who lived in a shoe.... / Check out all that bling!!!

Graduation

Dima graduated with his Masters of Accountancy this past April!! I think I was just as excited as he was!!! It will be good to have our evenings together. We had lots of family in town for the occasion which made it that much better!! It was filled with good eating, Carl Bloch museum, the movies, Easter celebrations, and fun family time. Thanks everyone for coming down to celebrate and be with us!!

Congrats Husband! I am so proud of you!!

Recipe One of Five

So I'm getting an early start to my list this year, and last night I tried my first of 5 new recipes. I usually don't branch out much from the traditional chicken or beef-based dinners, so I thought I would try one of my favorite soups while it is still wintery weather: French Onion Soup! Yum! I thought it would be really hard since I always saw it as a gourmet dish you could only get at restaurants, but it turned out to be super easy! I used this recipe as a basic guide, and made a few changes: I only used about 1 onion, and used all broth instead of half water, half broth, substituted apple juice for the wine, and added a hint of Thyme. yummmy! It was a good change from the regular grind, and filled in all the cracks.

picture from here

And, I think I just found recipe 2 and 3! I'll let you know how they turn out...

If you have any favorites recipes you think I should try feel free to leave them in the comments!! Any and all ideas are appreciated!

Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer...

So I'm not quite sure how this happened, but the other day I was straightening my bangs and I burned my nose!!!! That's right, not anything normal like my forehead or ear... but my NOSE!! The very tip of it. And if you look closely at the pictures you'll see that now there is a perfect circle of pink on the very tip of it. Luckily its not terribly noticeable as of yet, but sometimes it gets worse as time goes on... Dima says I remind him of Mickey (or rather Mini) Mouse. haha. Oops. Now every time I see it when I'm getting ready the song "Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer" comes into my head. Hopefully I can still play in all the reindeer games... or become a hero or at least meet Santa or something...