Большой. (which means ‘great’. Although I have no idea how to pronounce that.)

Those 7 years of Spanish won’t help me any this time.

And I’m okay with that. These 2 weeks in the heart of Russia will be my time to disconnect and be 100% in the moment. I’ll kiss my phone and email goodbye until I return back home.

This trip has taken on a whole new meaning for me following a series of unfortunate events we endured this past week and I’m even more uncertain about how I’ll handle such a long period of time away from my loving husband and contact with family. But I’m anticipating this being the most awesome time with God and those children who I’ll come to love so much. So how can I not look forward to that?!

That’s all to say, I can really use your prayers even more now than I thought I needed them before.

And for Todd also, two weeks of bachelorhood can be tough.

And if you would still like to make a monetary donation to help us out, you make a secure one through PayPal here:

  
  
I should probably start packing soon.
  
  

yeah, Russia.

And no, Todd will not be traveling with me, but I’m certainly not going alone. I will be traveling with 6 other people from our church to Dyatkovo, Russia to help at a children’s camp. Not just any children’s camp, but a former Communist camp that is now operated by Christians. An exciting opportunity for everyone involved, and I feel blessed that God called me to be a part of this.

I know 3 words in Russian:
да (Dah) – Yes
HeT (nyet) – No
спасибо (cpa cee ba) – Thank you
Oh, and the sound they make to describe a cat. But I can’t spell that one out for you.

Should be interesting, that’s for sure.  God will be with us too, so despite my anxiety and fears of what lies ahead, I know it will all be okay.

Here’s where I ask you for your help. I’m asking for donations, if you feel compelled to give, please do so. We still need money for travel expenses and sending the Russian kids to camp.  Many of them can’t afford the daily fee, and we want to give them this wonderful opportunity.  Whatever you can give will be so very much appreciated.

But more than anything, I really want your prayers. Prayers for a safe trip, prayers that we can connect with these kids and teach them about God in ways that they can come to know him. Prayers that we can just make some kind of positive impact on their lives.

It will be awesome. Of this, I am sure.

спасибо! (Thank you!)

You can make a secure donation through PayPal here:

28 years ago today I was born, making my mom & dad super happy to have a sweet little girl to balance out the craziness that is my brother (they’ve never said those words exactly, but I’m pretty sure that’s how they felt/feel).

Where has the time gone?

Katie Elizabeth – 1 year old

I have a couple things to say about my glamour shot:

1. I was pretty cute and chubby. And slightly red-headed, thanks to my grandma Leola passing those genes on down to us.

2. Dearest mommy, maybe you could’ve taken a comb or something to the photographer? What in the world is going on there with my hair and how come nobody fixed the baby bedhead look I was rockin’?!

Gonna party like it’s my birthday…..and by that, I mean I will be working all day and then enjoying a quiet evening at home devouring a red velvet cake Todd is supposedly making me.

We love you.

And Happy Mother’s Day to all our mommy and mommy-to-be friends, you women amaze me.

Our First Seattle Sounders Game

I don’t even know much about soccer futbol, but the atmosphere was electric and we had lots of fun. I can’t wait to go to another game soon (preferably on a warmer night).

We hosted a housewarming party and introduced our new home to our friends.  There were some who we haven’t seen in awhile, many who we see quite often, and our awesome realtor—Ray.

There were date night highlights of a John Mayer concert and laughing ridiculously at Conan O’Brien on his comedy tour stop in Seattle (with a surprise performance from Pearl Jam).  It was magnificent.

When Todd was involved as a Young Life leader back in Kansas City, he became close to several of the high school students in the group.  One of them, Eric, will be interning in Seattle this summer so we had him over for dinner when he was in the area recently for some pre-internship prep.

Spring is (almost) here! The yard is colorful and foliage-filled, but the warmth has yet to arrive.

Stig & Guster are growing everyday, their kitten-ish features slowly fading into looking like adults.  Don’t be fooled by their looks though, they’re still extremely active and playful.  Even crazy, at times.  It just so happens they’re most wild & rambunctious when we’re trying to sleep.

With all that’s going on, I don’t foresee things slowing down anytime soon.  We have several events & travels coming up soon, with one BIG trip for me this summer. Can’t wait to tell you more about that later.

But for now, we hope you’re enjoying spring wherever you are.  Remember to take a moment to stop and smell the lilacs—I think those purple wonders are God’s most perfect perfume.

]]> http://toddandkatie.com/2010/05/04/spring-whirlwind/feed/ 0 http://toddandkatie.com/2010/04/28/piroshky-piroshky/ http://toddandkatie.com/2010/04/28/piroshky-piroshky/#comments Wed, 28 Apr 2010 21:00:15 +0000 Katie http://toddandkatie.com/?p=2418 You know how you live somewhere for awhile, but only discover certain places once you have visitors?  It’s like a fresh set of eyes looking at the world and observing everything that has become mundane to you.

Perhaps Ben’s favorite thing about Seattle was his discovery of Piroshky, Piroshky— a little Russian pastry shop at Pike Place Market.  I’ve been by it hundreds of times, but never made a purchase.  There are always really long lines on Saturdays so I’ve always avoided it, but if you go on a weekday there’s no wait for the tasty goodness.  And the smell….OH, the smell!  MMmmmmm.

We ate our piroshkies at the park, and then headed to Lake Union for a very important appointment.

We booked a seaplane tour for Dad & Ben around the Seattle area.  I think these two pilots really enjoyed getting a birdseye view, and somehow convinced the seaplane pilot to fly longer and do some touch-and-gos that he normally doesn’t do for ‘regular’ passengers.

After that, they ran off to the Museum of Flight and the rest of us relaxed in the sun before meeting up for a fish n’ chips dinner at Ivars.

And that was the end of one crazy mild spring break

Thanks for visiting, dear family.  It pains me that we don’t live closer (how about y’all move to Seattle? wink wink), but I’m blessed that we have wonderful opportunities like these to spend as a family.  Until next time….

We packed up our 1 bedroom apartment in downtown Seattle…..

….and said goodbye to our beloved urban neighborhood.

Amidst the whirlwind of packing, working, and entertaining visitors, we bid farewell.

“Bye bye” to the city lights, shops, restaurants, traffic, and homeless people of Seattle.  It was a blast while we were together, but we’ve moved on to the quieter, peaceful place called Kirkland.

Yep, we dove into the stressful, but exciting adventure of buying our first home.

no, he didn’t carry me over the threshold.

Gone is the cramped lifestyle of apartment living and hustle & bustle of city life.

Now (this was very important to Todd), our car has it’s own garage—not sharing one with hundreds of other cars.

And there’s a backyard (with fruit trees!) to mow and plant a garden (important to me).  It’s peaceful out here.

The timing worked out perfectly in that we got the keys while my family was visiting, so they ‘volunteered’ to help with a little cleaning.  We’re thankful for being able to share this special moment in our lives with them, plus the house was all ready to move into at the end of the week.

Fortunately, moving wasn’t very difficult for us (aside from packing what seemed like a thousand boxes) since we hired movers to do all the heavy lifting.  I highly recommend it. Basically, I stood back and drank my Vivace (okay, we do miss living next to that coffee shop) while they toiled away.

.  .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .

And the day after we moved in, we adopted these two little brothers.

This is Guster. He’s mine.

Nicknames: Little G. Gussy. He’s very energetic, playful and curious.  And gets in trouble a lot.

And this is Todd’s cat, The Stig.

First name, The. Middle name, Stig.  (if you’re not sure what that is, go here.)

Nicknames: Stig, Stiggy.  He’s the more mellow of the two (which isn’t saying much), but is quite the speed demon. Unlike his namesake, he’s quite the talker and will actually hold a conversation with you.

Their favorite things to do are sleep….

hang out at the local watering hole…..

play with random toys….

work on the computer….

and have sprint races on the wood floors. No pictures of this because it’s always a blur.

This new suburban lifestyle seems to be fitting us nicely.

A Europreview

Day 1 : London or Bust (London)

Day 2 : Sight seeing & City Hiking (London)

Day 3 : Falling Down (London)

Day 4 : Motoring Day (London)

Days 5, 6, & 7: An attempt to accelerate this process (London, Cambridge, Paris, & Zurich)

Day 8 : Love at First Sight (Zurich, Chur)

And so that leaves us in Chur (here’s a map).

We woke up in the morning and headed down to catch the train to Arosa. First, however, we wanted to make sure we had some lunch. Because we were on a budget for food — due to the exchange rate as well as having just spent a premium of $150 on a hotel in Zurich a couple of nights before — we headed down to the local grocery store — Coop. I won’t get into the details, but apparently in grocery stores, you’re supposed to weigh & tag your own produce. They won’t do this at the register. Especially don’t do this if there’s only one cashier. Who doesn’t speak English. And who has to run back to the front of the store & do this for you. Causing the single line to get longer.

But I digress.

So we headed down to the train & got on with about sixty or seventy somewhat rowdy German senior citizens. Fortunately we found of the smallest second class sections and were unbothered by them so were able to enjoy the ride through the mountains.

The train stopped at about 4 or 5 little wonderful towns on the way up to Arosa. We didn’t stop as it didn’t look like there was much to do there, but they were enchanting nonetheless. We simply stared in awe and day dreamed about them from our train window.

Note some of the senior citizens departing the train on the car behind ours.

It had been 10 years since I was here last. The last time I was here was in June of 1999 for a choir trip. Now that I think about it, we also had a large contingency of senior citizens with us on our trip — as it was the intergenerational choir trip, with both high school students & senior citizens. Here’s a pic I shamelessly stole from one of my friends on Facebook who posted this.

Our first order of business was to eat, so we walked around the little lake and sat on the bench to have our lunch – which consisted of bagettes, wonderful cheese, grapes, and a couple bottles of water.

And of course, our second order of business was to try to run faster than 30km/h for the local speed sensors. And then plan our hike.

We kept on hiking up through Innerarosa and up to a beautiful chapel overlooking Innerarosa — complete with a majestic cemetery (I don’t use those words together very often).

We stopped to take a quick bathroom break while we had the opportunity (in the cleanest public bathrooms I’d ever seen) and refilled our water bottles and had a drink out of the free water “fountain”. Not sure what’s in the water but it was better than any bottled water I’ve had.

We met some other hikers who spoke enough English to take our picture

At this point, Katie had the high point of her trip. I kid you not. All the places she’d been & things she’d seen so far was nothing compared to what she saw & heard next.

Yep. Cows. (She would say “NOT just cows — COWS WITH BELLS!!!!”). They just wandered throughout the countryside and hills, and we could hear them long after we could make out any of their features of them.

Next was onward and upwards

And up, and up, …

And at this point we had come up far enough, and had to start the descent a different way back.

This is part of a 5-star hotel which, at the cheapest time of the year, if you reserve in bulk, starts at $325 a night (source).

The train home! Thanks Arosa! See you in another 10 years!

Joy, obviously, because we get to spend time with friends and family.  Times which uplifts one’s heart immensely. And sadness, because I know that this short time together is all we get for the next ‘who knows how many’ months until we meet again.

Though none of us knows how long we have left on this earth, so we should enjoy every single day to its fullest, right? (but that’s a whole separate blogpost series right there that I won’t start into today )

We’re so thankful for Ben & Kim, who organized and invited a bunch of our friends over for lunch on our last full day in KC (okay, mostly my friends, since everyone except for Todd & Scott were from my hometown).  I’d been looking forward to this for quite some time, especially because it was the first time I’d seen my cousin, Little Miss Lily, since she was just a wee little newborn.

I’m pretty sure she had no recollection of us from back then, but we were fast friends right away and I was seriously tempted to snuggle her back with us to Seattle.

And Crystal’s little boy, Gavin, so grown up and curious (and walking!) since the last time we saw him back in June.

Look deep into their blue eyes…..don’t those two cuties just melt your heart?

Crystal, Kim, little G, me, Ali & Lindsay.  I’m blessed to have known these lovely ladies practically all my life.

While us girls chatted away, the men were left to entertain themselves and the kids.  I got a good chuckle upon seeing the living room scene.

Cousin Ryan, Lindsay & Lily. Such a good looking family.  Oh, how I wish I still lived just blocks away and could come over on a moments notice to babysit.  It’s nice to see she seems to have inherited her father’s goofiness.

Or perhaps it just runs in the entire family…..

.   .   .   .   .   .   .   .

On our way to the airport Monday morning, I was happy to squeeze in one last coffee date with my college friends Kaddie & Erin.  These two girls make me laugh like no one else can and an hour with them really isn’t sufficient enough time, but I’ll gladly take whatever I can get.  And at least now Todd & Erin are once again settled up on their cheeseburger bets.

So hard to say goodbye to everyone, but we had great fun and lasting memories during those 4 whirlwind days back home.  Until next time….

’tis not in forest nor yet in dell,

ever it holds me with magic spell,

I think of thee, Alma Mater.

K-S-U! we’ll carry the banner high,

K-S-U! long long may the colors fly,

Loyal to thee, thy children will swell the cry,

Hail, Hail, Hail…Alma Mater!

-H.W. Jones

Big game tonight. We’re cheering on our wildcats from afar.  And wearing matching shirts.