Masha, Masha, Masha*

Masha's arrival at the Grand Junction Airport

Courtney and Caroline "fixing" Masha's hair.

What a good sport!

Masha arrived on June 16 in the US. She spent two days in North Carolina with my cousin Ashley and her family.  She traveled to us on June 18. She was supposed to have one connection in Houston (thanks to our friends the Hindmarshes for being the back ups there if needed), but as air travel goes, her flight out of Charlotte was delayed and she ended up with a connection in Houston and Denver.  She did great making the connections by herself and arrived smiling and ready to join the chaos.  She had a great few days with the family and headed off to girls' camp with our church on Tuesday morning. She had a blast!  Her favorite parts were rock climbing and social hour.  She also loved learning and singing songs with the girls.  She sang one of the songs with them in church today.  So we don't have any pictures from camp yet, but they will be coming.  The kids love to have her here and it's so good to see our Mashenka again! 

*Title is courtesy of a Brady Bunch episode with a little license taken on the name of Marsha...

So while Masha was at camp the rest of us did swimming lessons and played with our friends.  We also swam at the city pool. The kids are all doing great in the water.  Joseph dives off the high dive, Alex can now swim free style for a short distance, Courtney goes under water and "swims" about two feet(minus floaties) as well as fearlessly jumping off the low dive (with floaties), Grace has started putting her head under water, and Caroline is a unstoppable running and jumping into the pool off the side.  Someday I'll get pictures of the pool. It's too hard to take the camera along with everything else we have.

Our great friends the Wilcoxes moved on Friday to the Salt Lake area. We will miss them tremendously. Our Alex will now become Alex, not Alex M, since he'll be the only Alex in his class as school.  It's so cute. He signs cards for the family Alex M.  We got in lots of play dates with Alex Wilcox the past week and Matt and I even got to go to dinner with Angie and Aaron one night.  What a treat!

Alex Wilcox, Joseph and Alex M.

Alex Wilcox, Haven Wilcox and Alex pose as they get ready to drive to Salt Lake.

Last week we attended an event to promote safe biking that was put on by UDOT. Joseph rode in a kid ride from one park in Moab to another and all of the kids got brand new bike helmets.  They also enjoyed the free watermelon and ice cream.  You should have seen Caroline after eating a chocolate ice cream bar in the heat.   The pictures don't even do it justice how messy and sticky she was.  Luckily, we hit the pool right after the event.

Joseph ready to ride with Grace and Courtney looking on.