A share in a Dog

Meet Max, (the dog!) Max belongs to the guy who runs busses out of the yard beside our house, but he love to come visit, have a little something to eat and play with the kids, in fact if he hears the kids out playing he is over for some fun. He is a very friendly and gentle dog and our kids enjoy him. so we don't have any pets, just a share in a dog!

Kids ready for School

I know the photo may not show it but the kids really like their school here in Ireland. It is a small country school just a mile down the road from us in our local village. Normally they leave about 10 after 9 in the morning and are home by 3.10pm. In Moscow we had to leave our apartment by 8;15 in the morning and they didn't get home till 4pm

Birthday, have come and gone.

Karina's B'day was first on Oct 2nd, she invited the four girls from her class. We took all to a indoor play centre to play for an hour and to have chips and sasuages. they had a wonderful time.

Timonthy and sonja had their B'day on the 11th Nov. We had a bouncie castle and slide (sorry no photos) they had all their class mates and some cousins here, so it was a wild afternoon but they had fun.

Daniel just had his B'day this week (Dec 17th) and we took him blowing last night with some of his friends from church.

Last night Gudrun and I were happy to have all the birthday parties over for another year.

The Irish are not Rushing at the moment they are simply being Irish

We have been in Ireland now since the beginning of July and many time I have thought about the fact that i need to up date my blog and show you some of the differances between our life in Ireland and Moscow. So here are a few photos!!

This is the yard and view at the back of our house

This is the yard and view in front of our House.

Sadly it has Rained a lot since we have been home.

It even snowed one day but it lasted about as long as it took to take this photo.

School Photos

Daniel
Karina
Sonja
Timothy

Summer is here again!

Summer, well spring is here and with it warm and sunny days and like all other Moscovites we like to get the grill out, get some meat, chicken and hot dogs and head out of the city and enjoy a nice BBQ. Once again we returned to our favour spot, actually we don't know too many spots but we like this one. This time we took our friend Julie along.

The Joys of being Irish

The purpose of our trip to Denmark was to renew our Russian visas, we had done this one year earlier with out any problems. Since then Russia has changed it's laws on where you can get your visas, namely in your home country or as Europeans somewhere in Europe. But as Ireland is outside the Shangan agreement we thought there might be the chance that we wouldn't be able to get our visas in Denmark, which I found out to be ture on the monday morning. So we went to plan B. Monday afternoon I was on a plane to Ireland, Tuesday morning I was at the Russian Embassy in Dublin and got our visas issued there on the spot, Wednesday morning I was on a flight back to Copenhagen. Last year when we were in Denmark I enjoy a really nice week and was able to relax a bit before returning to Moscow and had hoped to do the same this year. After my flying trip home to Ireland and back to Copenhagen I was finally beginning to relax on Saturday before flying back to Moscow on the Sunday morning, so much for my rest!

The latest photo of our kids

Daniel, Timothy, Karina and Sonja

A week with Family in Copenhagen

Here are all our guys with thir cousins, David, Thomas and Philip.
Gudrun's dad Hanus, sister Betty and mum Solrun
This is what Timothy did most of the time, playing Playstation with Thomas
Visiting Andras (Gudrun's brother) and Gitta's summer house.

I Love Coffee

Our Garage from Space

The red square marks the little garage (tin box) we keep our car in.

Our apartment is in the end of the building next to the garage.

Driving in Moscow during the winter.

It was snowing real nice this morning so I thought I would bring the camera along and take some photos as I drove (for safety reasons not recommened) through the city but by the time I was out the snow had stopped. Anyway here are a few photos as I drove through town.

Here they are loading snow to be hauled out of the city.This is us back home and the car tucked away into its little garage. It is really nothing more then a tin box, but it keeps the snow and froze off the car at night. Keeps it a bit safer too.

Colours of Summer and Winter

No! not the colours of the leaves on the trees, but the colour of our car, as during the winter when the streets of the city are constantly dirty it is in possible to keep it clean so our car is usually dirty for long spells. It is illegal to wash you car on the street or by the building you live in, so you have to take it to a car wash, as it normaly cost from €10 to €15 to do this, I don't do it too often and somtimes even if I do it can be dirty again in a few days. In a effort to keep the city clean and pretty the Mayor was instructing the police to make drivers of dirty cars wash their cars before entrying the city and driving on his dirty streets. By law you should be able to read the number plate from 25m. I was only 2-3m from the car when I took this photo, can you read it, have a go, you can even zoom in, if you can get 4 or more correct and in order I might have to consider giving a prize.

During this snow shower, the snowflakes keep getting bigger and bigger till they were about the size of a fist, I tryed to catch a short video clip of it on my camera but in the few minutes it took me to figure out how to do this the snowflakes has gotten smaller again. Sorry it is not very clear.

Happy New Year-2008

Russians celebrate Christmas on the 6th & 7th of January according to the Orthodox calendar On these days there are special Orthodox services to mark the occasion, however this is not the big or main celebration of Russians for Christmas and New Years. New Years Eve is their main or big celebration, this is the time family and friends will get together, have a special meal and exchange presents. They will welcome in the New Year with champagne and then go outside and shoot off fireworks. Usually you will begin to see fire works from the time it get dark, but most come out after midnight and very often will continue till 3 or 4 in the morning. This is the night Russian party all night long with many not going to sleep till 9 or 10 the next morning. Here in Moscow many will go to different fireworks displays put on by the city, like the big one down on Red Square. This year we were with our friends for New Years Eve, had some nice food went out and shot some fire works, came home after midnight, went out with the kids and shot off some more fire works with all the other folks around our place that were out doing the same.

Daniel's youtube ambitions

Daniel keeps making these photos strips which he then wants me to make into a move strip and post on youtube! What do you think? (this is only a short sample)

Kids with a Camera

As I was up loading the photos from our camera to the computer, I saw a lot of picture on it that the kids had taken. They like to take the camera and go around the house taken snaps of just about anything, so I thought i would share a small selection of them with you.

Sonja in braids

Karina & Timothy

Gudrun and her boys

Who is spiderman?

Karina's stuffed animals arranged for her to take a photo of them!

Christmas is Over!

Christmas is come and gone and this year we have no photo to show you other then this one of our Christmas tree. We celebrate Christmas, first on the 24th this is the days we have our main Christmas dinner, usually roast duck with the usually potatoes, veggies and sauces. After dinner we open the presents under the tree (they were added after this photo was taken) then later have dessert and coffee. On the 25th we just took it easy the kids got to open some more presents, this year some of our packages from home arrived on the 25th. (it is not a holiday in Russia so the post office still works) On the 26th we had our co-workers over for a turkey dinner and later played some games together.

Christmas Party

At the ends of eah year those of us who are here in Moscow usually try to go out for a meal together, this is also the time we take our Russian workers for their office christmas party meal. This year as our kids were already on their christmas break from school, they got to come along. Can you tell what resturant we are in, we took our workers here last year and they really liked it and wanted to go back again.