Alex Turns EIGHT!

Turning eight is a big deal in our family. Alex was preparing for it for at least six months…At first, every night at bedtime he was trying to decide what country he would like to visit on his birthday. Should we go to Croatia? Maybe the Maldives? Or Tenerife? After checking July airplane ticket prices I told him we are staying put since everyone in Europe travels during late part of July in August. Instead he got special visitors to come stay with us to celebrate his birthday and his baptism.

We did his birthday celebration a little backwards this year.  On July 26th, the day before his birthday, we had a birthday party at the bowling center on base (it seems no matter how small a military base is, it’s got to have a bowling center). We had a mix of British and American friends.

Lyena and my mom were already here so they got to join in the fun. I think my sister is showing her unbroken nails…or maybe the fact that she doesn’t have a wedding ring on her left hand-hehehe-who knows?

Mister “almost eight years old”.

After some serious bowling for an hour (we had three lanes), we headed to the park on base. The boys devoured their pizza, but I made sure to have lots of fruits and veggies for them as well.

We did not need much of extra entertainment since the playground was right next to the pavilion.  And we had to do the piñata! Robert made this all by himself, using Pinterest. If you can’t tell, it’s in the shape of the earth. Alex was very impressed, although the first thing he said after examining the sphere was that Iceland was in the wrong spot. Of course.

We had to improvise with our blindfold material.  No one was hurt.

Finally, the cake. Made by Robert. Do you know what flag that is? Not Turkey. And I am pretty sure it’s supposed to have a red border, not pink, but those who make cakes often know how difficult it is to make frosting red.

Alex loved it!!

On Saturday, Alex’s actual birthday, Alex and Robert got up at 6 am and made a two hour trip North to Alton Towers Amusement Park. That’s what you get for being born at the end of July—not Tenerife but Alton Towers. They had a blast and were able to go on a ton of rides together. (I still need to get pictures of Robert’s cell phone to blog about that).

On Sunday, July 28th, we watched Alex opened his gifts before church. This year books were his main gift. I bought a few books about geography and natural disasters (of course), and he loved every single one of them .

Any guesses what his final gift was? Surprise, surprise! A seismograph! Alex has been asking me for months for one of these. So finally…although we live in England (yeah, I know)…I decided to get it for him so he could measure if we get any earthquakes over here. He was very excited!

Alex has a dream. He wants to be a seismologist who lives in Hawaii. He does love all sorts of natural disasters and geography facts. He retains numbers, names and dates amazingly well. And he loves to get attention by talking to adults as if he is a narrator in a documentary, it’s quite funny.  Although today he announced to me that maybe he wants to be a singer instead of a seismologist. He said he doesn’t want to be a singing seismologist though, he has to be a proper singer that sings on stage. Great…

Here are our handsome boys.

Oh, and here they are several hours later. All ready for the baptism.

We held Alex’s baptism at the Huntingdon chapel at 5:30. James, Michelle and the kids were able to drive down as well.

We had many friends who came to support Alex. It was wonderful to see! James and our friend Mallory gave talks. Katya and Robert sang a special song for Alex “Child’s Prayer” (so beautiful!).  So glad that my mom and Lyena were able to see the baptism as well.

We had lots of yummy food afterwards:).

And here is our happy family! So grateful for all of you in my life. But on this day, I was especially grateful for Alex and happy for his choice to get baptized. We love you Alex!!

Happy Birthday Alex!! Alton Towers here we come!

Alex, this post is for you, my handsome, pizza-loving, practically grown up, thankfully tall enough to ride the rides, 8 year-old boy.

If there were a way to back-post this a few months, I would try.  Alex’s birthday was July 27th.  Today is December 9th.  Readers, do not judge me.

Alex’s birthday fell on a Saturday this year.  His birthday was also during British summer break, which is code for “when all the Brits with kids go on vacation at the same time!”  Alex really wanted to go to Alton Towers (a really cool amusement park) for his birthday, ON his birthday.  So I figured why not.  Let’s brave the crowds and who knows, we might get lucky and actually get to ride a roller coaster or two (I read online reviews and a lot of them talked about the insanely long queues to get on rides). 

So we went.  In faith.  Faith that the park wouldn’t be too crowded.  Faith that I wouldn’t get lost on the way (thank you GPS).  Faith that Alex would be tall enough to actually ride the cool rides, and we wouldn’t get stuck at the wimpy looking kiddie section the whole time.

I am here to tell you that faith has its rewards.  Alton Towers was all that we hoped for and more.  Alex was tall enough (sometimes just a few centimeters over) for ALL the rides!!  And even better:  he wasn’t scared to go on any of them!!  (I wish I could say the same for me like when we went on Oblivion, hailed as the first vertical drop roller coaster.  Yeah, it was scary.

We showed up at the park just after 9am, which is when the park opens for early admission ticket holders.  Guess what, they let us in early.  Park was nearly deserted for almost an hour as we got our fill of some of the best roller coasters WITH NO LINES!!

We rode Nemesis three times in a row just to warm up.  That set us up to cross the park and take on Thi3teen and Rita.  And all that was before 10:00.  The whole day was still ahead of us. 

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention we had a 2 for 1 entry coupon (thank you Rice Krispies box) which I must say made the whole experience even sweeter.

Back to you Alex.  Yes, Alex was having an absolute blast.  I had no idea he had such a passion for roller coasters. 

After playing hard all morning, we finally took a break for some all you can eat pizza buffet!!  I don’t know how (or why) we thought it was a good idea to stuff ourselves with pizza and soda at an amusement park, but I’m glad we did, and thankfully there were no catastrophes on any roller coasters as a result of our gluttonous splurge.

     

We weren’t all about roller coasters though.  We took some breaks occasionally, like when we found this pirate ship ride.  At first it looked pretty tame; after all, you just rode a pirate ship around a pond, zigzagging through little pirate statues.  That is, until you consider the water cannons.  Water cannons on the ships, cannons on the shore and the docks.  Riders on other ships could shoot you with water.  And onlookers along the boardwalk could too.  There was one kid in his swim trunks who just stood there cranking the cannon nonstop as we passed by.  He didn’t care about getting wet from our cannons.  So with no where to hide, we were drenched before halfway through the ride.  So we went on the ride two more times.

Getting drenched always deserves ice cream. 

Um, this is not a roller coaster.  This is fish tank full of . . . Pacific cleaner shrimp (aka Jacque from Finding Nemo).  Hold your hand perfectly still underwater and they come up and clean your cuticles.  Creepy and cool at the same time.

Back to the rides.  For pretty much the rest of the day we never dried off.  We rode the bathtub water flume.

Then the river raft.  Always gotta do the river raft. 

After lunch the crowds started getting bigger and the lines longer, so we weren’t surprised to wait over 20 minutes for rides.  We didn’t mind.  Honestly, we’d gotten our fill all morning, so any rides in the afternoon were just bonuses for our already fantastic day.

There was one ride that I did not go on with Alex:  Enterprise.  It spins around and around  . . . and around and then upside down and around some more.  I can do the scariest roller coasters, but I don’t stand a chance against spinning circles.  I happily stood to the side and watched Alex, who of course loved it!

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Our wonderful day together was coming to a close, but not before we tackled one last roller coaster.  We saved it till the very end because it had the longest line.  We didn’t want to waste our time in lines if we could avoid it, and they say that if you are in line already when the park closes, you can still ride the coaster.  So that was our strategy.  The Smiler, which was just built, has 14 loops and is as awesome as you’d expect.  (here’s the video link)

I mean, just look at the thing – it’s massive (that’s just part of it you see there). 

We only had to wait 80 minutes to get on this ride, and the whole time we were in line we were standing beneath the roller coaster with it whooshing just overhead.  After watching it for 80 minutes we were stoked when it was our time to get on.

Wow! What a finale to a perfect day.  Happy Birthday Alex!  I love you.  Thanks for being my son. 

And thanks for being over 140 cm tall.  I know where I want to go for your birthday next year.

Dad

Cambridge And Angel Spice

September is almost over, and we are still having fabulous autumn weather around here. I am trying to get as much as possible of my summer blogging done, so I can get on with my actual current life events.

So back on July 24th…seems so long ago, while my mom and my sister were here, we took a daytrip to Cambridge. For many in Ukraine, the word “Cambridge” just sounds so cool and old and sophisticated. All our visitors here get to go to this charming town since we live so close.

When we first arrived to Cambridge, we found a spot along river Cam to have a picnic.

The ducks came of course.

We had lots of bread with us, but one of the kids still managed to feed them some cucumbers.

A side note—here is Katya modeling her hand-made bag:). It’s made out of her old pillow case—great summer “purse”.

We watched these young swans, at least I hope they are swans, and noticed some of them had their legs folded weirdly on their bag. We were convinced something was wrong with them. Until tonight.

I finally asked this question about a weird leg on google, and here is what one website said “

Is it normal for a swan to fold one of its legs up onto its back?

Yes. It's like us crossing our legs, plus the large surface area of the foot is used for body temperature control like an elephant's ear, absorbing heat from the sun when necessary. (from http://www.theswansanctuary.org.uk/faq.php).

Of course, one of the highlights of a day in Cambridge is punting on the river Cam.

And seeing cool buildings.

Bridge of Sighs.

One must visit the center of Cambridge. It’s only a short walk away from the river and is very beautiful. Basically, while you are on a boat you can see the back of many colleges, but if walking towards the center, you can see more of their frontal views.

For dinner, we decided to give “Angel Spice” in Stilton a second try.

Back in February, this was the place where we attempted to eat after our Nottingham daytrip. And this is where Border Patrol people decided to interrupt our evening by shutting down the whole restaurant in order to check all employees’ immigration documents.

We were happy to see that the restaurant was still there and not closed down. This was my mom’s first time trying Indian and Lyena’s second time (firs time was in Tokyo). It was yummy!

I am sure this is not the last time you are having Indian food, right, mama and Lyena? (wink, wink).

Lyana.

The End Of Another Chapter

Well, it was bound to happen-we have gone a whole month without posting a blog! We had so much going on at the same time that there was barely time to breath, unpack, pack again, cook and organize parties. But I am confident I’ll get to all of that.

This is a post about July 23rd—the last day of school. I am happy that I remembered to take pictures on the morning of that day. So here is our beautiful TEN year old Katya (yes, she had a birthday while we were not blogging). Last day wearing her Bury School uniform.

And this is our happy girl at the beginning of the school year, in front of our temporary house on base. She has definitely grown.

I couldn’t keep Mark out of the pictures. And who knows why we have weird tape stuck to our Greenwood House sign.

Here is our EIGHT year old Alex—not a trace of sadness on his face as he goes to school for the last time. Resiliency-that explains it.

Here is happy Alex on the first day of school back in September. So excited because he has no idea even what to expect out of this new British school! That jumper (sweatshirt) barely fits him now.

Mark on the first day of Playgroup (preschool).

And on the last day of the school year.

Technically, his last day of Playgroup—a field trip to the Fire Station here in Ramsey. Is he sad?? No! Who could not stop crying after dropping him off? ME!

Let me tell you, that week was pretty emotional for me. I hate to do all the “lasts”.  I think combination of the fact that we are moving out of our village and that the kids are changing schools and that Mark is starting school full-time this September completely tore my heart to pieces. I was just so sad…especially about that last part. I will miss Mark tremendously, but because there is nothing available for him in preschool terms once he turns five in December, I am kind of have to put him into the British school (they start at four years old) or homeschool him. I will see how he handles school (or should I see how I handle it). If it doesn’t work, we can always start American Kindergarten on base next September when he is five and a half.

We have had a great school year here in Bury village, despite all the inconveniences and adjustments we had to work through. I believe it’s all for the best and there are many reasons why we needed to live in this place, even if it was just for a year.

I’ve got lots of catching up to do with posting our stories. At the moment though, I must run to the dentist after I drop off all my kids at friends’ house. 

Cheers,

Lyana.