And then it was David's brithday

saturday morning football at LCC, thanks to student Roman Dolya





David really enjoyed his special LEGO kit to make unique projects which he got on his birthday. He ended up waiting quite a while till the second box arrived for his birthday so that will go into the next post.
Erik is quite active these days in playing football (Soccer) which is really about him most favorite thing to do. The picture shows him in a game at a school gym in another part of Klaipeda

February 100 days party -Bowling party

The arrival of gifts from afar allows birthday celebrations to be spread out over days and sometimes weeks!




The school has a tradition to celebrate after 100 days into the year in First grade. It included an overnight party which Erik really enjoyed.




thanks to a colleague at LCC the idea of a combined birthday party for the boys arose. The boys have pretty much outgrown the indoor play areas for parties, and for this they chose several friends each to attend.

New Year soon turns into Birthday time

Happy family moments also include visits from the Stave's kids. Ieva is David's age, in his class at school and the parents work with us at LCC. We also make quite a deal of lighting candles in the dark mornings of winter.





Erik's birthday is at the end of January- now an 8 year old- wow! We still have a little struggle in our family feeling OK about one person getting gifts so this year the boy who is not celebrating the birthday still gets a gift.

Heading into the new year

New year's eve we invited the Stave family and while the night was young we did our own fireworks. The boys were motivated to stay up till midnight to see the real fireworks and since we watched a movie, the time passed quickly. The noise overwhelmed David but overall the boys were impressed by the show we could watch from our window. people set up all kinds of colors from every year around for miles!


The story about Samantha and her sweet tooth tells of a girl that liked sweets and believed that when her tooth fell out she would be loosing her sweet tooth. In preparation she started trying vegetables of different kinds to get herself prepared and when she felt a bump of the new tooth she was sure her days of liking sweets were going to be over the next day. But, she found she still liked sweets and she liked vegetables. So, when her mother offered her cookies one night she asked for Carrot cake instead. Thus a request for carrot cake in our house. And they ate it just fine!
Putting together a race track gift.

Christmas 2011

Funny, this year I already easily write 2012 and it usually has taken a while to write the new year without thinking, now it seemed strange to write Christmas 2011.











We had Grazina Bielousova, a Lithuanian family friend to share the Christmas eve and Christmas Day with us. She was a great help in making the authentic Kuchios dishes that I have been trying to make on my own these years. And it was nice to have some help in getting Christmas meal ready too. But even more than that we are so grateful for Grazina in our lives as a friend, babysitter and colleague at LCC too. And she was happy to have a home to share these holidays in where the warmth and joy of family was open to her. She was also able to help us get family pictures!

Catching up continues in the New Year

November went by quickly in the sense that most of my time was absorbed in preparations for Global Leadership Summit and since that did not involve the boys there are less pictures and events to report on for them.

We did have one night in the hospital though with David for testing and we can gladly report that he does not have epileptic seizures. We are not sure what comes over him some times, but it is not that.

And then it was Thanksgiving celebrated on Saturday after the American holiday for the LCC community. Gregg had another meeting and the boys were not too settled about eating around tables with lots of people, so no good pictures of that. But there was time of activities for kids and they enjoyed that and mom got extra time for hanging out!


At LCC celebrating Thanksgiving also means welcoming the Christmas season, decorating the buildings for the Christmas program the next week. The semester ends early enough that to get participation the celebration is quite early. we saved one picture from after the program.

And then it was on to school charity concert the school held to raise money for families with children with heart problems.


And school Christmas entertainment:





And Advent and Christmas event in Silute:



The Christmas season seemed richer to us because there was interest from our Lithuanian church friends in Silute and Klaipeda in learning more Christmas carols- more are translated to Lithuanian than are in common use. So this is something we could do- teach Christmas songs!