Before "wurst" day of their life

Sunday afternoon our family went down to the farm yard to say goodbye to the pigs that have been free ranged and slop fed all summer. Next day was their appointment at the local meat processing shop.

Sunday's Pose

The gang all Sunday-ee and stood still long enough to take a pic. (Left: Drew, Demitri, Brent, Jared)

Oct 27 Club Ending

At bed time on the 26th I quickly snapped the 5 Club being it the last night before the club dissolved; the twins 6th birthday was 27th so Demitri is last remaining 5yr old.

Siesta Bribery

Typical outcome; when I promised the boys whomever sleeps during siesta receives a special treat, the only one who doesn't qualify is generally the same one...

Math 101

Simple grade school math though not understood by Uncle Sam.

Oct 19 - Confession & Missing Detail

OK I admit we had to pull it from the foundation pad up to the main travel road but after that it went on its own. These young guys buying and moving the trailer home were fearless or foolish or both. They left here only to blow some of the rotten tires and break the hitch on the way to its new resting spot 10 miles north of Haven Community. As for the RAM truck, it didn't suffer any damage and is ready for the next outrageously heavy job.

Oct 19 - Guts, Glory, RAM Trucks

For all you Chevy fans, I wanna see you do this with a 2002 dually Chevy Silverado 3500; guaranteed it would require multiple hernia surgeries, a triple bypass and hip replacements. This 2002 Dodge 3500 dually powered by the venerable 5.9L Cummins didn't even flinch as it pulled this 80ft trailer home off the property. I'm not a RAM trucks fan but this deal had me popping eyeballs.

Oct 19: My original Oakwood Home

The vacated (Oct 19th) spot here in this pic used to be a trailer home that was originally my family's first official home in former Oakwood Community. At the time the trailer home was brand new and I remember on New Years Day of 1993 we moved into this home and what excitement that was. We had been living with another family in a century old farm house for several months already and boy was it a joy to receive our own home finally. The trailer by now has had various occupants over the years and was not as new as  remembered it. She's been sold now and moved away.

Moms lil Helper:

Jared loves helping with chores around the house; especially helping with dishes so he can "kotz" around with water.

Oct 17 - Jack Frost

Oct 17 we look out our front window to see the aftermath of Jack Frosts work overnight; he hit hard judging by the heavy layer of frost on the lawn. Let Autumn begin. The trees are turning beautiful colors now.

Oct 13 - Sure of it...

Of course it was a Boeing 747... It said so. The sheer magnificence of it was marred by the extra narrow aeats. Shame on Lufthansa.

Oct 13 - 1 of 822 times

This pic is depicting the first of 822 times of Brent opening and closing the seat back tray on the 9.5hr flight from Kiev to Chicago. PS it was also my first flight on a Boeing 747 that happened to have 16" wide seats... Yes, I'm convinced this is animal abuse.

Oct 13 - Papa & the Five Club

Some days your so thankful for the Five Club, other days end with you wondering if there's some discrepancy somewhere.

Oct 13 - Shelf Shrooms

These shelf shrooms growing on the side of an oak in the woods here are strong enough for Drew...

Oct 13 - Puffy

Family walk in the woods in southern Minnesota today yielded these big puff mushrooms. The boys had fun with them. Some actually made it home complete. Drew has big plans for family supper tomorrow...

Oct 13 - Living in prickly quarters

Check out these critters that crawl in Jen and my bedroom here in guesthouse. I'm no fan of prickly critters invading my window in my bedroom but these guys are. Up to three dozen at a time crawl in from the exterior vinyl siding and into our room thru a hole in the cheap window sill. Got the last hole in window sill caulked up today. Hoping for a wasp free Sunday siesta. Got up around 6:30 the other morning to hear the entire upper window sill buzzing vibrating with activity inside of it. I'm laying in bed hearing this... Tell you I'm feeling vulnerable.

Oct 13 - North End Picnic

The young crew (David & Kathryns 3 boys and our four boys) out on an evening at the north end fishing spot having a picnic.

Oct 13 - Blue & Red matching wheels

Grandpa got them matching yet different colored wheels so they know which is theirs.

Oct 13 - Day Job

Full time job; starts at 7:30am & ends at 8:30pm. Some days seems like a step forward but then you have days that seems like we took two steps back. At times progress is difficult to measure with our four boys. I'm guessing this is common amongst all families. On the lousiest day when you've had enough of them they may turn to as your tucking them in for the night and go "loo blu papa" and melt your heart with a kiss on the cheek and a firm hug. Quite the kids.

Oct 12 - Checking in

Hi folks, sorry for the extended no blogging period. Will throw up a bunch of new stuff this weekend. Been a unscripted life of nonstop kids care since coming home with the twins. As soon as you assume things have a bit of a routine, bam... something adds a new twist to matters. Kind of find that if you resign yourself to the current madness it makes it a bit more enjoyable.

Coming home!

It's great to be back, see our other boys. Ya, I think they needed us already.
Our flight was quite good, those boys are real troopers, even after 24 hrs. Our over seas flight was an hour longer than it should have been and then made us miss our MN flight. We got on another 4 hrs later. It must have been all those prayers sent our way, it wasn't bad at all, it just...was that way. People just kept smiling at us, with two identical (or close) boys in tow. The boys also talked, or tried to, with many people while standing in line. Jared, showing his little mp3 player, saying its his telephone. Then held it right up to their ear and let them listen to "glory, glory halleluya..." "That IS nice music, I like it," said a guy from New York. One older gentleman on a trolley to another terminal in O'Hare, started talking with us, we told him about the boys and that they speak Russian, and what do you know, he spoke Russian! The boys were so excited.
At security they watched in fascination the wand they use to body search you and asked the tough looking lady if they could try it. Surprised, she even smiled and let them. Brent, ever ready to hug, hugged her and politely said, "spasiba," (thankyou). She was totally pleasant-looking then.
On the flight to MN, where we were almost sleep walking already, they were both chatting up a storm with the people next to them and had them entertained the entire 50 min flight. The woman next to Brent, said, "I could take this one, he's a doll!"
In MN, we had to go look for our luggage because it arrived ahead of us on our missed flight. Finally someone told us where it probably was. Brent was pretty tired from walking so we stayed while Jonte and a totally energetic Jared bounced along with him, a very long way. They came back with our luggage, Jonte pulling the two larger suitcases and Jared pulling the two smaller, the bags almost as big as he was, with such a satisfied look on his face. He's the littler one, but boy is he big on the inside. Jonte's dad was there to pick us up and we weren't gone for 10 min and both boys were fast asleep and slept until 8:30, when an excited Drew 'accidently' woke them up.

- Jennifer

Oct 2 - States Side Landing

With the boys in tow during our travels home, your in survival mode. The blog becomes a distance memory during such trips. We got up at 2am (after I went to bed at 12:17am) got ready for taxi to pick us up at 3am. We were at the Kiev airport 2hrs before the flight. 6:07am saw us take to the skies for Frankfurt where we had 2hrs between arrival and getting on board for flight to Chicago. All was dandy until hallways to Chicago the pilot mentioned that Chicago has traffic jam with planes so we slowed us down to 470mph then as we got closer we noticed our flight took over an hour longer because he was killing time instead of circling airport which I'm cool with but I'm still not cool with a flight being 1hr 15mins longer then it should have been. 9.5hr flight is a long flight. In Chicago we did the boys immigration papers and got thru security etc all while they had already cut our time for making next flight from 2hrs down to less then one hour by prolonging the flight. We got to our gate for flight to Minneapolis only to have them tell us we missed it. The next flight which is two hours later also was full. But every two hours there's another such flight so finally on the third such flight 4hrs later we made it onboard. Got to Minneapolis at 8:45pm where my dad picked us up. I can not tell you how tired we were but it felt super super nice to get in their new Caravan and drive out of the airport. The highways all new and smooth. Traffic just cruising along at 70+ mph... Man oh man. Didn't know they had roads like that. The boys didn't sit in van more then 15mins and were both asleep. They did tremendously well for 5yr olds on this long trip. Anyways today we are recovering. Jet lag and all...