Second Tournament

Just a few picture of Daniel and Sonja playing at the tournament this past weekend.

Update on Summer Decorating

 Unpainted archway

Painted archway

 



Basketball Season Again

With winter comes basketball season and both Daniel and Sonja are busy with practise and games.

No! this is not Daniel playing basketball, this is what he usually looks like when he is home. With practise up to five times a week, games, school, homework and whatever else he does, it wares the poor lad out, and very often if not frequently as soon as he sits down he is asleep.  He only has had two games so far but this coming weekend they have a tournament.  Hopefully i will have some picture of that and will post them for you.

Sonja has been practising and playing on the middle school team, (6th - 8th Grade) and they had their first games this past weekend.  Actually it was a tournament in which 5 team were competing so over the weekend they played four games.  Considering that this was their first games of the season and the quality of some of the other teams they did pretty well.  The last photo is of Sonja getting an award for the best forward of the tournament.  Sonja has now been drafted into the high school team (9th -12th grade) as they were short of players and she will also be playing in the tournament this weekend. 

Winter Again

Well winter has finally arrived, we have had a very mild November with no real cold temperatures worth talking about and only a few small snow showers which didn't last long.  My hope was that we would make it into December or even the new year with little or no snow.  Snow was forecast for yesterday and it started about three in the afternoon.  The photos below were taken this morning, yesterday there was no snow here and this morning there was already this much and it meant to snow for at least another 24 hours.  So it looks like this is it and we will have snow from now till early spring.

Bike Ride

In the end I had cycled 60km

 

All this summer and before winter came I have been thinking about and planning or hoping to take one day and go on a long ride around the city on my bike. At least once a week or every other week I would easily do a 25 km ride so I was think I should be well able to do a 50km ride.  As the the weather is now cooling down the decision was made to make this ride last Saturday. so with my route planned, food and water in a backpack, I set off. It was a really nice and i was enjoying the sunshine and the city, making my way to the Moscow river and then following it to the final park before heading in the direction of home.  By now my legs were getting tired but I was still enjoying my time, till about 5 Km from home, going down hill as a fair speed while hopping up over a cerb I lost control and came crashing down.  After getting myself untangled from the bike and the bike straightened out again, with a sore hand, sore and cramping legs and a bloody arm I hobbled home the last 5km.  Three days late, my arm is healing and my hand and leg no longer hurt so much.  So all going well I should be out on my bike again in a day or two.  

 

I have a few other photos  I was hoping to add here, but they are on my phone and I can't get them off it right now, so as soon as I do i will add some more here.

Almost finished with the decorating.

Although there are still a few small odds and ends to finish up we are basically finished with our painting and decorating.  When we told a friend that we were finished, she said she thought that you never finish painting, just get tired of it and quit. Well we can certainly say we were tired of it, it was hard work trying to get it all done, but we stuck at it to get it finished, because we knew that if we didn't, it might be a long time before we would have another chance to do it.

 The girl's bedroom.  This is what their room looks like after we finished.  Sorry no before or actually painting photos. 

This is the new door we fitted to the storage cupboard beside the kitchen.  Like many other thing in the apartment we had fitted a temporary door on it eight years ago with the intention that one day we would fit something more permanent. 

Painting the Livingroom.

This week we all got stuck in again and painted the livingroom.  Once that was gone we moved all the stuff back in and once every thing wss rearranged a bit we are able to enjoy a brighter livingroom. We also added a trim to the archway into the room, this still has to be painted.

Painting.

In 2005 just before we moved into our apartment it had all been painted with just one coat of white paint. The idea was that over time we would paint the different rooms with the colours we wanted. Well it never happened, there just never seemed to be enough time or the right time, with the exception of two bedroom which we were force to paint due to some water damage from upstairs everything stayed the same with the coat of white paint.  This year our summer looked a little quieter that other years so we decided that we would take July as semi-vacation and do the decorating necessary.  So this week we got started with the hallway/corridor and kitchen.  So with many helpers, in two days we were able to get all the ceilings and walls finished.  It was such a big effort to get it all done in such a short time and by the end of the two days we were all very tired and sore, so we are taking a few days break before starting on the next project, the living/sitting room.  Check in again next week to see how we get on with the living room.

Moscow by Night

From a vantage point high above Volgograd, Moscow resembles a bright, glittering star in a nighttime photograph captured by one of the crew members of the International Space Station. In the photo, the sea-green and deep purple lights of an Aurora Borealis burn above a yellow airglow in the northwest as a bright-blue dawn rises in the northeast, NASA said in a statement on its website. Read more: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/international-space-station-takes-stunning-nighttime-photo-of-moscow/456471.html#ixzz1redRN7hZThe Moscow Times

Video clip from Paddy's Day in Moscow

Sorry about the quality of the sound, it was record on a phone!

St Partick's day on Stary Arbat, Moscow

A few more pictures of the St Patrick's Day parade in Moscow

Paddy's Day in Moscow