Almaty Branch

The branch primary did a Valentines Day dance.  Arina, the lady in black, made the skirts!!  We had a little program Saturday evening and this was part of it.

Almaty, Kazakhstan

Here is a random assortment of pictures.

Chris, Kaitlyn does this school look familiar???  This is 'shkola nomer 35'.

We went to an Uzbek restaurant for plauf, manti, nan and salads.  It was great!!  This is the carved wooden door - beautiful!!  Every door was like this. 

Paul with Mira and Ira - lovely girls!!

Paul with Addie and Syeva - Inna's little 6 month old baby boy.  

Addie really wanted to hold his hand. 

Cross-country skiing

This winter has been perfect for skiing and we have been taking advantage of every day.  It has been so fun!!!  Today was -15 centigrade (about 5 or so) so it was pretty cold, but the sun was shining and after the first 4 kilometers we warmed right up!!!  Paul is even doing it - he comes home from work around 3;30 or 4, and since it stays light now till almost 5:30, he had time to do a couple of 5 kilometer laps (actually he would have time to do about 4 since he does them in about 25 min!!!).  Much too fast for me to keep up with him.

What a great way to enjoy the cold winter and snow and get your exercise in!!!

ADDIE

No, you are not on Chris and Evelyn's blog - this is .....   GRANDMA'S BLOG!!!!

It was very fun to be in Almaty this weekend with Addie, I mean, Chris and Evelyn.  We had church business for a couple of days, but I stayed a day longer and just enjoyed being a grandma - these kids have a huge task - they have to entertain us all!!  And that is mostly what we did, just watched Addie.  She is a cutie!!  She crawls all around and is starting to pull herself up to all kinds of things - suitcases, beds, etc.  She loved her new stacking toys.  

I have a couple of other pictures, but the computer isn't uploading them.  I will see what I can do later.

More on Yaroslavl - you wouldn't think there could be more....

Okay, so Sunday morning I had already taken Paul to a meeting before church and the girls and I were checking out and going to go to Sacrament meeting.  We got all packed up and out of our rooms and got in the elevator.  The doors closed.  We didn't go anywhere and the doors wouldn't open.  We were stuck in an elevator!!!  The first 15 minutes no one knew we were stuck.  Every time we heard an elevator - there were 3 elevators in a row - we would pound on the door and say "help us!!!" Finally a lady said okay, the electricians are coming.  What a relief, just to know someone knew we were stuck.  

 

It was kind of a small lift and very hot.  But, contrary to what Clarissa believed there was plenty of air and we were fine. (this is clarissa... it was actually horrible i was like hyperventilating and started to get really dizzy and we were all like sweating.. it was awful!!!) My cell phone didn't work in this city and so we couldn't call or receive calls.  By now we were late for church.  After another 15 minutes of the guys working they finally got the doors open.  Clarissa walked out and as I was gathering Dora, the doors closed again and up we went!!!  When we stopped luckily the doors opened and Dora and I went out quickly, but we still had bags we had to get out.  So I stood Dora outside the elevator and standing in the door, so it wouldn't close, I reached in and grabbed the bags out.  I didn't want to take a chance that I would get stuck in and Dora would be standing out there all by herself.  In the meantime, Clarissa is downstairs and the guy is talking on his phone saying "wait, we need to get all the people out before you take it up to work on it!!!"

Finally after being stuck in the lift for a half an hour, we are all out and we hurry to church.  As we walk in there is Paul - he was coming to look for us.  It was now 20 min. late and he knew something was wrong so he motioned to one of the members who had a car and they walked out to come and find us.  This made a great talk for the mission pres.  He said something about how "you all saw how Pres. Pieper got up in the middle of the meeting to go find his wife.  We were all here and comfortable, but someone was missing and so he left.  That's just like us, we need to find those others and bring them in to the fold.''  etc, etc.  Afterwards one of the members said "Yeah, I wondered why Pres. Pieper was going to go interview that guy right in the middle of Sacrament."

Anyway, we survived and have a great story to tell.  We are just glad it was a nice elevator in a nice hotel instead of one of the many awful tiny little soviet ones we have been in that we could have gotten stuck in and would probably still be there!!!

The end. 

If you think of Russian fairy tales and villages, these houses are exactly like them.  I wonder why?....  because, of course these are the real thing!!  This one has the beautiful filigree all around the windows.

Isn't this a great color?  They love the bright blues, greens and even yellow.

Most of them are all the same design.

Trip to Yaroslavl

We went to Yarolslavl this weekend - a city famous because Chris served there on his mission - and took pictures of the houses we passed on the road.  Now, I usually don't take pictures unless people we know are in them, but it would have been hard to do that, because we were traveling at 100 kph down the road as I snapped these.   

This is Murat and his wife, holding their new little boy  - Maxim and their daughter.  He is the new branch president and Chris was instrumental in his (their?) baptism.