After returning from our travels we were invited to visit Lena and the kids at the dacha. She stays there alone a lot while Zhenya is traveling so it was really nice to be able to spend a few hours with them and relax a little. Of course, we had shashlik! Zhenya just took some herbs from his dacha garden - garlic, onions, mint and tore them up and marinated the chicken in them with a little salt. Really simple and delicious. We ate a bazillion fresh strawberries from their garden...plus took a bunch home and had them over ice cream the next day.
We put together a bed he had bought at IKEA on our travels. Zhenya is very patient...his kids Tonya and little Andre wanted to help and got in the way a lot. Of course my "get the job done" reaction is to get them out of there - but he calmly kept on working and having them help him. I suspect he knew that he wasn't building a bed but raising a daughter and son. Great example to me...I spend too much focus on building the bed and not enough on raising the child. I've committed to do better. Same principle applies to my relationship with my sweet companion...getting a meal made or cleaned up after is not as important as being kind to Sherry. Guess we never learn, do we?
There are a couple pictures of Tonya in her new nightgown Hannah included in the last package she sent. Tonya loved it and wore it all night.
One last picture of me working...as a CES Missioanry you are always working, working, working. We had a pile of documents to shred and Zhenya suggested I burn them at the dacha instead. So the picture may look like me relaxing but it is really showing me hard at work destroying vital CES documents!
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