More photos were taken with the camera this week than the iPhone, but here were a few of our family happenings:

I had never seen “It’s a Wonderful Life” until Joe introduced me to it at Christmas time in 2008. Now it is one of my favorite Christmas movies. Of course, anymore, we watch movies in spurts it seems, so this one took a few days to finish.

We actually had snow for Christmas. It had snowed the day before and we still had some good covering for Christmas Day.

My four little blessings all under a blanket.

I received a gift card for a spa here from our friends the Minard family (you will get to meet Sheena Minard on Monday), so I used part of it to get a pedicure on Wednesday. And as with so many other things here in Ukraine, it was a fantastic deal. Only $12.50 for 1.25 hours of having my feet pampered, sipping tea and reading my book.

Happy Friday,

Here are some happenings from our week.

We decided to step out and give a try to eating rabbit. The woman who runs the cleaning business we use asked if we wanted to buy a rabbit from her, so since it would be cut up, we figured we could give it a go. I had to then call my grandma (who used to make things like Squirrel Pot Pie) to figure out what to do with it. It was an adventure getting it cut up and fried, and truthfully by the end I was sort of nauseous and could only take one bite.

My sweet Abby heard the word rabbit and declared herself a vegetarian for a whole 24 hours. She seems to just be against furry, cute animals that she can hold. Understandable.

Nothing warms my heart like seeing our kids love on one another. Here Abby and Naomi are taking turns reading to Isaiah.

Abby had to write about her state this week for Social Studies and said her favorite place to go in PA was to my parents’ house. I figured that would make them smile

And finally, a great reminder to me the other morning of the upcoming celebration of Jesus coming to earth to rescue us. He is a place of safety for us from danger…and not only did he save us from the consequences of our most dangerous enemy (our own sin), He also died to completely free us from the power of it now. We can celebrate this weekend the birth of Jesus as the rescue from our sin that we in no way deserved and the ongoing work in us to kill the indwelling sin that still resides.

My week in pictures:

Abby uses a Kindle to read at night and here were her notes from reading the Bible before bed.

The kids burned off some energy for $12.50 for all of them to play for 25 minutes in a play place.

Thankful for a wonderful birthday.

I enjoyed some quiet time at a cafe before grocery shopping. Joe has been wonderful at giving me time out to enjoy some peace and quiet.

The 5th New Boom Action is up in our apartment. It was purchased for Isaiah, but Elijah has already broken it and moved it up high where Isaiah would never be able to reach it.

Happy Friday,

Isaiah used to Mr Picky when it came to food. But now he is getting quite chunky and will often eat things the other kids won’t. Like a batch of yucky oatmeal he is on his second bowl of here.

Isaiah is at the age where he is into EVERYTHING. I am not sure how I conveniently forgot that 18 months take a lot of training in this area. But it is cute when he finds something like a hat that is much too big for him and comes walking out with it on his head.

Mostly pictures of Isaiah this week it seems. He is nearing that 2 year old age though, so everything is either super cute or super rebellious (sometimes both at the same time).

My girls finger painting. Thankful for the paint that was left here, but Naomi mixed so many colors I am going to need to buy another set.

Wishing everyone a great weekend,

I missed last week, but I hadn’t taken that many pictures, so I am going to combine the two weeks here in one post.

Naomi and I now have a new daily ritual of coloring after her nap.  She reminds me about 1,579 times before her nap that we are going to color afterwards

I taught Abby and Elijah “rock, paper, scissors” and now they will just break out into a lively round every once and awhile.  The cutest is watching Isaiah come over and shake his fist to try and join in.

I love this picture my Dad got of me Skyping with my Grandma.  Technology is pretty incredible when you really stop and think about it.

We got our Christmas tree up quick this year because of Joe’s busy travel schedule.  Can you tell Abby helped with the lights?

This hot man was on the billboards around the city at the end of last week.  Unfortunately, it may be like the SI cover curse because he got hurt after that and is now out for a month.

More fun from the Ukrainian grocery store: this is how they display the carrots.  Hopefully that means they’re all natural!

Started our advent calendar yesterday.  This is our 5th straight year of using this one from Noel Piper and it is still a favorite with the kids.

Our oven here is one where you need to light it with a lighter.  But not only that, it has NO temperature control.  It looks like you should at least be able to control the size of the flame, but event hat doesn’t work.  So baking has been “interesting”.  Yesterday I finally won my first battle with that oven and produced something with no burnt parts!

Have a great weekend,

Not a whole lot of action from my phone this week, but it may have had something to do with settling in in a new country

Joe using his day off to connect with the kids. He is such a great dad and grows in it by the grace of God each day

Abby and I fitting in with our warm coats on a walk outside.

Finding an awesome (and cheap!) bowling alley. We may be hitting it up every week.

Another awesome find at the grocery store: a rabbit in the frozen section with the furry paws still attached.

Happy Friday!

It was a busy week for us, so there were lots of opportunities to snap some camera photos!

Friday night we visited with our good friends before leaving State College. Lots of tears and sadness, but tons of good times to remember and look forward to again! How can it be anything but fun when you have two moms and eight kids

On Saturday we stayed at my parents’ house. It is always fun for me to see the kids with our parents.

This shirt of my mom’s should resonant with and get a laugh from anyone who has lived in Europe.

This was the beginning of our trip: my sister-in-law, Krista, with us at the Harrisburg airport and then at the Dulles airport eating some pizza.

Waiting in Dulles where we met my sister-in-law Karlie who traveled with us.

Here I think Isaiah’s face looks like he is saying, “You DO NOT expect me to get on another one of those do you?”

Karlie and I at the first home Azovmash game we got to attend here in Ukraine.

Even though this is my 6th European country in 9 seasons as a basketball wife, I am always looking for new things I haven’t seen before. These canned strawberries at the grocery store yesterday were a first!

Back with another post before the weekend to end my quotes from “Loving the Little Years,

Happy Friday everyone. Here is what we had going on this week…at least according to my iPhone!

Elijah used Saturday morning to catch up on some English Premier League soccer. Here he is pouting because Arsenal just got scored on. It went on to be a fabulous game though ending in a 5-3 victory for Arsenal over Chelsea (the team Abby has picked she likes because the name is “pretty”. Gotta love those girls!) Elijah didn’t see the rest of the game though because…

…we got hit with some snow on Saturday.  This was just the beginning.  I think it ended up being about 5-6 inches, but thankfully all power stayed on in our area.

The kids played outside, drank hot chocolate, ate popcorn, carved pumpkins and basically just had a fun kid day. I did 5 loads in the dryer to keep everyone going strong

Monday was Halloween. We had a Yoda (amazingly he kept the ears on the whole time without even a mention of it. I was NOT expecting that!),

a Batman,

a Sleeping Beauty,

and a Jessie from Toy Story (please close your eyes to the mess in the background. Getting four hyper kids out the door for trick-or-treating was more than I could handle, so the clean up had to come later).

My two littles hanging out. I love these moments.

Getting very excited to see this handsome man very soon!

Have a great weekend everyone!

I have enjoyed using Instagram as my one social media outlet lately. I have decided not to follow people I don’t really “know” and thankfully it is not really that addictive. I am going to take pictures anyway, and I like seeing the way the different filters make my pictures look cooler than they actually are. So to share a bit of what our week is like, I figured I would join in on InstaFriday (started over at Life Rearranged).

Last week was Abby’s school picture day on Friday.  I can’t believe how big these kiddos are getting.

Friday night I took the kids to a women’s volleyball game.  They were totally enthralled for the first 15 minutes and then began to crawl around the stands.  I also showed them pictures of Daddy and Mommy int he Rec Hall pictures of all the teams at PSU.  Abby informed me I looked “so young”.  yes, my dear, that is what happens after 4 children and 11 years.

This little man had a few early mornings earlier this week.  One of those nice pointy teeth was popping through, so I am hoping that was the problem because it was a bit early for my liking.

And this is what happens during morning errands after he is up too early.

And speaking of getting big too quickly.  How is this little guy already 5.5 years old already?  He was excited yesterday was his “half” birthday!

Hope everyone has a great weekend,