Family Affair...

Since we learned 8 days ago that we FINALLY got a court date and are headed back to Russia soon, our house has been just crazy. Planning, packing, redoing our dossier, making appointments, making arrangements for the dog, booking hotel rooms, getting our visas (that one was almost the death of me!) more packing, repacking, making lists, brushing up on our Russian, etc. etc. etc. We get little sleep, few food breaks, and fall asleep around midnight each night, exhausted. Of course my mind races all night, and I am up 3 or 4 times, and never get more than 4 or 5 hours. My mother was here a few days, and helped out by doing little things around the house, and keeping JR occupied. The truth is though, JR has gotten little time with us - and it shows at times.

Several days ago I came up with an idea to keep him involved in the preparations & learn some extra russian while combining it all with our daily homeschooling.  We are making a word book for H3, with pictures that either Skip colors, or we paste onto the pages, or over-sized foam stickers that I use for scrapbooking. Each day JR practices writing the words on the classroom whiteboard (he loves the whiteboard/marker thing), then when he thinks he's got the word down to a science, he prints it on a piece of lined Kindergarten paper, then it gets pasted under or over the picture. The we find the phonetic spelling of the word in Russian, and print that under the words he writes. Each pictures is on a separate page and we're gonna laminate the cover to make it a little more durable. He is having a blast with this, and he feels like he is doing something really important - which he is.  We're using words in the book that HE thinks H3 will need to know - which is a bit different that what WE would have suggested - but that's part of the fun. It's all from his prospective. If we have time I'll help him write a little dedication in the book to his brother, so we can hold onto it and not forget how it came to be.

 He was asking us if H3 was going to have to do school work in Russia (like he knows he will) and when we told him we'd use that time to teach him a little English and this idea was born. I took a few pictures of the book and some of the pages. Our goal is to have about 40 pages when we leave home. He already told me he is going to put the book in HIS carry-on bag, and personally give it to H3.

I am so glad we came up with this! Now the whole family is in on the action!