The past couple days

Brrr... It sure is getting colder outside! Yesterday, someone said that in another week, it will be getting a lot colder... we'll see! We are so thankful that all of our winter clothing that we sent by postal service (from Germany) arrived last week! Today, it sounded like they were beginning to work on the heating system in our building, so we'll probably have heat soon!

The last several days, I have been busy trying to get some foods canned and frozen for the winter. As we don't have many canning jars, I decided to go ahead and freeze as much as I could. We now have some canned whole tomatoes, pickles, carrots, red beets, pizza sauce, and pumpkin put away for the winter. I hope to preserve some more things yet, but we'll see if that actually happens or not. :)

The girls and I are continuing to enjoy our fun times together in the mornings. Today, we made "oceans". They each filled a plastic bottle with vegetable oil and water. They then added glitter and food coloring, and a small lego piece (which was their 'fish'). We would then shake the bottles and watch what took place. It was supposed to be a representation of how waves look like in the ocean, but I'm not sure it worked out quite right. Oh well, the girls had a blast playing with their "fishy" bottles all day!
Yesterday, we made 3 different colors of playdough. They then were allowed mixing the different colors together and seeing what colors resulted. They thought that was so much fun, and played with the playdough for over an hour!
Aria is doing such a great job with the colors. She still gets a little confused with grey and brown, but they'll come eventually. We are going to start identifying the numbers soon, which should be fun!

We have noticed lately that Micah is getting more and more frustrated with wearing his brace. Sometimes, when he just fusses and fusses and we don't know what's wrong, we take his brace off and he is instantly quiet! He definitely is at the age where he just wants to move and 'get going'! Yet, back in July, the doctor told us to keep the brace on definitely for at least 3 more months, so that's what we will do. But really, we are getting anxious to 'throw it away'! :)

A highlight of our day is when we go outside in the afternoon after the kiddos wake-up from their naps. The girls can play for quite some time in the 'sand' box with some yogurt containers, empty chip bags, etc. They really enjoy it! I like to use this time to practice my Russian as much as possible, by trying to talk to other children or moms who may be around. Wow, I definitely have a LONG way to go in Russian. I so do wish I could speak fluently and easily. I guess that should be an incentive to keep studying, practicing, studying, and practicing!