"Russian Week" and Ella's Birthday

"Russian Week" 

Last week gave us three opportunities to celebrate and remember our missions to Russia.  On Wednesday evening we hosted three young women from our ward for a Russian dinner and missionary lesson.  They were having a YW activity to prepare them to be missionaries someday.

This was our table's centerpiece.

I prepared borscht and blini for them.

Some of the blini were filled with creamed chicken for the main course and for dessert, we had raspberry/strawberry filled blini.

After dinner, the YW/"missionaries" taught us a lesson about the Book of Mormon.  They did a great job teaching and answering our "Russian investigator" questions.  

Blue and Gold Banquet

Friday evening, we helped with the ward Cub Scout Blue and Gold Banquet.  The scouts, their families and all guests were loaded onto an "LDS Air" jet (chairs set up in the hallway, take off  safety instructions and a flight attendant ,handing out peanuts )and taken to visit new places and foreign countries.  Our first stop was Hawaii!  Here we enjoyed dinner:  Hawaiian Haystacks, salad, rolls and cupcakes for dessert.

The cultural hall was decorated for the event.

The cupcakes had little flags from the countries that the scouts would visit.

After dinner, the scouts took their "passports" and visited the 6 countries on their tour to learn more about them.  After their visits, their passports were stamped and their trip was over.

 We set up some tables with information and items from Russia.  It was fun to teach the boys about the animals, flag, souvenirs and hats that we  had in our display.

 
The Hermansens behind their display of Zimbabwe.

Lele Neria with his display of Samoa.

 
Italy, France and Scotland were also represented.

 

It was a fun evening for the scouts and for the adults as well.

Dinner with Russian Friends 

On Saturday evening, we hosted our Russian friend - Denis Smogluck and his cute wife - Elena and their two children, Vitaly and Miesha.  We met Denis on our first mission to Russia.  He was a great help to us when we were preparing the Youth Conference.  He helped us find a facility, purchase the T shirts for the event as well as serving as one of our YSA counselors for a group of YM at the conference.  He came to our apartment often for lunch and dinner and we came to know and love him well.  Now he is married with two little boys.  He and his family are living at Wymount Terrace, in Provo, while he gets his masters degree of law.  He graduated from law school in Moscow and had been working there for the church's legal department, before coming to Provo to attend school.  It was fun to meet his wife and boys and to talk about our times together in Novosibirsk.

Ella's Birthday Celebration

We gathered at Allison and Jon's on Sunday to celebrate Ella's 7th birthday with cupcakes and homemade ice cream!

 Our birthday girl with cupcakes and gifts

Grandma and Grandpa with the birthday girl 

Birthday party guests

Four beautiful cousins!

 

 Our two Prestons

  Princess Evie Marie (barefoot)

Tricia and James

 Jon

Kelly

 Violet and Aleeya

 James & Preston

Ruby and Evie

 
Preston and Minnie

 Jon and Minnie

 Brothers

Alex

Our oldest grandson  - Treygan