A day with my Godson

Today I finally went for a walk with my best friend and her baby-boy Kostik! It was so exciting, the day was beautiful and we had so much fun :)

Ksenya and Kostik

Drowning in stuffed animals :)

lunch time!

reaching for the light-switch, he loves turning it on and off, especially on!

hey there! :)

Attic shoot

Alina and I got into our grandparents' attic and found a bunch of stuff that we thought was great photo shoot material! So we put it all together and had a blast!

At the Dacha

Today was a beautiful warm day and my sister, my mom and I decided to go to visit our grandparents at their "dacha". For most of you that are confused by this weird word, "dacha" is something like a country house with a huge garden. Since winters are really cold here and you can't grow anything, a lot of people have these country houses that they live in for the summer. Our grandparents grow all kinds of vegetables, berries and other great stuff. Some of the things we always have in summer are strawberries, raspberries, cherries, apples, radishes, carrots, dill, onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes and the list goes on and on... and it's all fresh and yummy! Anyway, we took some fun pictures today while we were there and I just wanted to share!

Alina's strawberry lips

Alina took this one. There's a "paw print" of the cat (that we used to have many years ago) in the cement walkway at the dacha and today she found a strawberry that kind of matched its shape!

Red currants. Not quite ripe, but already looking good!

Potatoes are blooming! I can't wait to have some brand new boiled potatoes, my favorite kind, fresh out of the ground!

My grandpa checking out if there are any cucumbers that are almost ready to eat...

... and there sure are!

These are some soon-to-be-delicious raspberries. They are still green, but we are patient!

School Reunion - Class of 2004!

It has been five years since I graduated from my favorite School #1 "ETNA" in Karaganda city! So to celebrate some of my classmates and I organized a little reunion. We just decided to get people who are in town for the summer together and hang out, see what everyone is up to. Even though we all keep in touch over the internet, it's still nice to see each other every once in a while...

We met over by our school. Since it is summer now and it was also 6pm on a Saturday, they didn't even want to let us inside the school because a lot of classrooms are being painted, and others are just locked up for the summer. It took us a while, but we got in and had a chance to walk around the hallways that once were pretty much our home....

The only classroom that was unlocked was our PE Classroom and it was freshly painted, so we couldn't even walk in, but I took a shot from the doorway anyway!

A lot of photos, well... the ones that I'm in, in this post were not taken by me , I just put them all here as a part of the story :) Also, I will write comments for the photo below the photo from now on to avoid any confusion! So here we go... That PE room I mentioned earlier:

Oh, and we also had a chance to walk into teachers' restroom.... wish we didn't....

Together on the stairs at school once again, just like many years ago :)

After we had our little tour around school we went to a restaurant to have some beer and "shashlik" - which is the type of kabob (pork is best for it!) that is absolutely delicious! I still can't decide if I like Shashlik or Steak better...

Nastya and me having some good ol' "Karagandinskoye" beer!

My wonderful friends Lena and Nastya

Ilya - great guy! He's going to be a doctor pretty soon :) He used to be one of the most shy kids at school.

This is my best friend Ksenya and me

I got my picture taken with Slava while he was still awake. Poor guy, he fell asleep at the reunion a couple of times, must have been really tired, because it was so loud and everyone was having so much fun!

Sergey

Natalya

Our big table that consisted of four! I'm not sure what Aldiyar (the guy at the very back) is doing there :) Sleeping in his plate?

Us girls :)

After spending several hours at that restaurant it wasn't enough, so we decided to go to some karaoke bar to have more fun! We headed there around midnight... Had more beer and sang some songs!

Aldiyar and Slava

It was a great song! All five of us had to sing it even though we only had two microphones....

My amazing friend Lena

Lena and Nastya - these two had been best friends since seventh grade! I love them so much!

Our reunion night was so much fun and we all went home at around 3.30am! Hopefully we can get together some time again this summer and meet with some other classmates that couldn't make it to this reunion!