Merry Christmas to you all! We pray you will have a blessed Christmas season. May all your wishes come true. All the best in 2008!

The Taylors

Laura Rose (10)




Benjamin (10)



Santa (44+)

Thanksgiving is past and Christmas will soon be here!

We had out Thanksgiving dinner with friends on Saturday rather than on Thanksgiving day. All of our guests were fellow teachers and we had to work on Thanksgiving day, so we decided to feast on Saturday. It was a great time. The kids played nicely and the adults did too! Laura and Stacy put on a lonnnng show of High School Musical dances while the boys watched football. It wasn't the exciting Detroit-Green Bay game that we watched earlier in the week; it was UVA vs Va Tech. Everyone had to root for UVA or else!

"Football! Awesome!"

Paul is beginning to understand more and more about American football!

The girls danced for nearly two hours!

Andrew, the little one, was fascinated with the girls and their dancing!

Three more weeks of school before Winter break! We are all ready for a break. Winter has set in. The days are short and dark. We had several inches of snow last weekend and several more during the week. This weekend it is melting and what is left behind only adds to the greyness of the winter. The other night I caught these pictures of the sunset. The sight added some welcomed color into our world.

Both of these pictures were taken out our living room window!

I have taken a lot of pictures lately and have them posted on my Picasa site. The link is listed above on the left hand side. Have a look!

I will close now. Hope all is well with you! When you have a minute, drop us a line and let us know what's new in your world!

Christina

Fall has arrived in Kiev

The temperatures are cooler and the leaves are changing, so that can only mean one thing here in Kiev--Fall is here. The chestnut trees turned brown and the leaves fell in August, but the rest of the trees are turning golden and red signaling the shortening of days and the sleepy time of fall. School is now entering it's sixth week. Hard to believe. Both kids are doing exceptionally well in school. The best start to a school year ever! We are so pleased! I am balancing two demanding jobs. There are days when I want to pull my hair out, but resist the temptation since it would require more effort (I have short hair) than I have on a good day! Instead, I do the best I can with the time and resources I have been given. I have gotten positive feedback from teachers and that is enough to keep me going.

I have a new camera. I have taken many many photos. Here are a couple of new ones. The rest can be found in my Picasa Web albums. You can find a link to the left of this message!

Taras Shevchenko in the park named after him.

St Sophia's Cathedral

This is a mural on the side of a building near the zoo. I have admired it, and the others, for years. Today, I finally stopped and got a picture of it.

Another mural

Thank you for checking in with us. Drop us a line sometime to let us know what is happening in your world!

Christina

School has resumed!

We went back to school on August 27. Laura is in Grade 5 (across the hall from my office) and Ben is in Grade 4 (far away). Both have wonderful teacher this year, so we are hoping for a wonderful school year. Ben will begin soccer training on Monday. He is beside himself with joy. He doesn't like having to wear his new glasses while playing because they "make me hot." Interesting reason.

Today is September 1--the traditional first day of school for Ukrainian children. Even though today is Saturday, all Ukrainian get dressed in their school uniforms and take flowers to their new teacher. It is a neat tradition especially if you like flowers-and you are a teacher! The girls HAVE to wear huge white frilly things in their hair when they meet their teacher. Here is a picture of what I am referring to. The girl was at another picnic table, but i think you get the idea from the picture.


For a year now a friend of ours from our first time in Kiev and I have been trying to get the staffs of our two schools together. I finally convinced our director to make the first move and organize something. He did! Today we went to the Architectural Museum and had a picnic. There was also a craft fair going on at the museum. It started out as a chilly and rainy day, but ended up being a nice sunny afternoon--perfect for a picnic. Here are a couple of pictures from the day.

Cossack man playing music for us

Laura and Anastasia wanted to dance with the Ukrainian folk singers, so they got up on stage and danced!

Ukrainian Easter eggs

Dan, Natasha, Anastasia (9) and Paul (6)

The Taylor family

Our next family adventure will be September 15. We will go with our housekeeper, Olga, to her summer home 1oo kilometers from Kyiv. She is worried about me because there is no toilet in her house! I have to go outside! Oh man, I am worried about me too! The following week we will go to Dan and Natasha's summer house and Dan, knowing my issues, has promised to make it smell nice and clean the seat! What a great friend!


Keep in touch!

Christina

Summer Vacation Part 2

We went whale watching and

moose hunting in Maine. Guess which one we saw?

We have returned to Ukraine which means our vacation is officially over. We returned on August 10 after one of the most uneventful flights ever! We got on the plane, we got off, we hung around Munich for 5 hours, we got on another plane, we got off, we got our luggage, and we were driven home! WOW! What are the chances of that happening?

Before we returned home, we drove from mom's house in Maine back to Virginia. When we left Mom's the plan was to drive to Portsmouth, NH and spend a couple of days. We were going to go to Kennebunkport and gawk at the Bush's compound, but after a long day of driving, we decided to do something fun instead! We did! As we were driving into Portsmouth, we got a little lost. We ended up on coast near the Atlantic Ocean. There was a public beach that looked very inviting. The next day instead of gawking, we went to the beach and the kids swam in the Atlantic Ocean for the first time! Laura and I spend several hours in the water-diving into and riding waves. Landon and Ben preferred to stay on the beach and play in the sand. After returning to the hotel, we met a friend of ours from Kiev for dinner. Katja was in Portsmouth helping out the Passport center. She had been there for nearly four weeks and needed to see a familiar face.

Where is Ben?


Birds on a rock

After a relaxing day at the beach, we got back in the car and started on the long drive from Portsmouth to Brandywine, Pennsylvania. It was a long and fairly quiet ride. We hit traffic near some of the big cities. When we arrived in Brandywine all we wanted to do was eat dinner and get to bed! On Saturday morning we had breakfast and headed for Longwood Gardens. As a child, I went to Longwood Gardens on school field trips and never enjoyed or appreciated the beauty of it. Today, as an adult I feel differently! What we saw was so beautiful. Here are a couple of pictures of the gardens.

There are many more pictures of the flowers and trees, but I don't want to overwhelm you!

We spent Sunday at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Landon has been teaching the kids American history and we seized every opportunity we could to visit historic sites. Valley Forge was nice, but it sure was hot! Here are a couple pictures.

Washington's Headquarters

Monument to those who were at Valley Forge

The return to Virginia was welcome. We had spent nearly a month on the road traveling and visiting. We were all tired, but no one was quite ready to return to Ukraine. Being in the states and visiting places, meeting people, and being with family and friends is awesome. We are only able to do it once a year and even then, our time is rushed!

School begins August 27. Laura will be in grade 5 and Ben in grade 4. I am amazed at how grown up the kids are! Sometimes I miss their toddler years!

Summer Vacation--Part 1

We are nearly half way through our vacation and man, are we having a good time! My mom flew in the day after we did and drove up to Maine with us. My brother and his family came to DC our first weekend in the US so my mom could have all of her grandchildren together. She has seen them separately, but wanted her to have a chance to love on them all at the same time. It was a great time. Laura loved being a big sister to Erik's little boys.

We drove from DC through Gettysburg up into New York, Vermont and New Hampshire. We then drove across the state of Maine to Calais. The drive was so beautiful. There are some charming towns in the northeast. We have over 1000 pictures and I can't share them all, so I have chosen a few. I will post more later.

Ben, Laura and me in front of the Native American museum in Washington, DC

Nana and her brood!

A canon in Gettysburg

The beautiful blueberry fields of Maine

The Green Mountains in Vermont

Lake George, New York (This view is from Ft. Ticonderoga)

School's Out For Summer!

YIPEE!!! We are free for the summer! It was a long and interesting year, but it is now history! Laura and Ben survived the year and are much better students! Both kids made tremendous improvements in their academics. We are proud of both of them. Laura will be in grade 5 next year and Ben will be in grade 4.

I will still be Special Needs Coordinator and on top of that Primary Years (PYP) Coordinator! I don't know what I was thinking when I agreed to be PYP Coordinator! I have two great examples to follow. Stan, the coordinator from my previous school, ISL and Tasha, the outgoing coordinator from my current school! I leave Saturday for Bucharest, Romania. There I will sit in a sweltering school and learn how to be a good coordinator!

Three days after I return from that trip, we will head to the US for a month! We have decided to drive to Maine so we can explore more of the land we love. We will go to Gettysburg, NY (Albany), and through Vermont and New Hampshire before driving across the state of Maine. We will return to Virginia, our starting point, via I-95 making stops in Chadds Ford, PA and Annapolis! I will try to keep you posted as we travel!

I hope you all have a wonderful and relaxing summer. Stay cool and drink lots of water!

Until later,

Christina

More Spring pictures!

Ben saw the ants!

I don't know what they are, but they sure are pretty!

Aahh!

This is one of two churches on the Botanical garden grounds.

A view of the left bank from the lilac grove! Is there such a thing as a lilac grove? Perhaps it should be called lilac heaven!

There were a couple of trees that had lilac blooms. We sniffed all of them!

The "Iron Lady," or Mother as she is known locally, is the fourth largest statue in the world.
A wonderful shot of a magnolia bloom. Many of them were gone and those that were left were not in the greatest condition. However, Landon did a great job on this picture!

Three quarters of a family photo!

We all took time to stop and smell the lilacs!