Tot School--OUTSIDE!!!!!!!

Isaiah is 42 months old (well, almost)

Well, we've been quite busy the last 3 weeks or so, and not much official Tot School has been happening. But technically we are on the letter O, so I think that a bunch of our activities can definitely qualify for Life School because we have been OUTSIDE as much as possible the last 3 weeks, which makes one little man in our house just dizzy with happiness and glee!

First we had family come to see us! Isaiah was outrageously happy to play with 4 of his cousins for 10 days! Unfortunately that also means that he was incredibly sad when they left, but thankfully we'll see them again soon!

One of our favorite treats while his cousins were here was getting ice cream almost every day while we learned lots of history about St. Petersburg! And have I mentioned that Russia has some of the best ice cream?!

And speaking of ice cream, here's a shameless plea for you to go to 5M4SN and vote for us to get a year's supply of Blue Bunny ice cream! Of course, if you like one of the other pictures better, then you should vote for it, but we would appreciate your vote as well! They announce the winner Tuesday, so if you're going to vote, do so quickly!

Isaiah got to learn about grilling and sitting on uneven ground, which I'm proud to say he did very well!, when we grilled out in one of our local parks with our good friends.

Then life got even better for our outside lovin' man when we got to spend a day outside the city with our good friends Юля and Костя (Julia and Constantine). We had so much fun!

Isaiah and I dipped our feet in the озера (that would be lake, but I needed some more O words!). And, incidentally, I've recently been getting all mixed up when coming up with words for Tot School. I'll think of a word that starts with our letter, and then realize it's not an English word but rather Russian. I hope that's a good sign for my schooling.

Then Юля took him for his first swimming lesson! He wasn't too sure at first, but then he didn't want to get out!

We watched Papa fish on the dock.

And we sat around and ate and ate and ate the yummy шашлык (shashlik) that our friends made--oh so good!

Such a great day spent with friends!

And now, you should know that we're taking an official break from Tot School. The previous break was not really planned, it just sort of happened. We'll pick up again when we're more settled in our home in MS for our 3-month stint in the States! We'll probably pick up with O again, so we can have some more fun activities, perhaps while singing this song that Papa wrote for Isaiah:

But you can keep following the other Tot Schools at 1+1+1=1 and get tons of great ideas from the other moms out there!

We would appreciate your prayers for our travel starting on tomorrow (the 3rd) until we land in NC the morning of the 4th and throw ourselves into the open arms of my parents!