Kids say funny things

Tonight during scripture study, Nikolay asked the girls if they knew what kind of tree Heavenly Father planted in the Garden of Eden. Adriana guessed, "A Christmas tree?" After he explained that it was the tree of knowledge of good and evil, Ariel said, "I know what evil is, badder than bad."

Later Annika said, "May I please have some G-U-M?" When I asked her what G-U-M spells, she said, "Um, maybe Eeyore?" I still don't know if she knows what G-U-M spells, and just didn't understand me asking about it. Its a mystery, but she didn't say anything when I didn't give her any gum.

Dallin is starting to say a lot of new words and can repeat a lot of words. In the car we were singing Beyonce's song "If I were a Boy" and Dallin would really sing out the word "boy " it was so cute. Now Ariel comes up to him and sings, "If I were a...." and he sings back "Boy!"

This is a picture of the kids with Grandma Svetlana the night before she left. It was nice to have her and the kids will really miss her. She and Nikolay drove to Manhattan to attend the temple on the day after Christmas, and then she watched the kids so Nikolay and I could go the following Tuesday. It was the first time that I had been to that temple and it was a really great experience. On the Monday before that we went to the Philadelphia Zoo for the first time and Grandma Svetlana bought us a zoo pass, which was so nice, so now we can go all year and also go to the smaller zoo that is closer to us too. The one other highlight of our Christmas break was going ice-skating with some friends on Friday. It was a lot of fun and Ariel got the hang of it pretty quick (she's been rollerblading quite a bit before), after falling a few times Adriana caught on too. I was relieved that I am not so old that I couldn't do it, although it has probably been 15 years since the last time I did skate. I can brag that I didn't fall down once and I got enough courage to go kinda fast and even backward. I am so ready for everyone to get back into the normal routine of school and work, although all the time spent together was really fun and quite relaxing. The kids played so well together the whole time (almost 3 weeks) and it was great to spend lots of extended time with Nikolay.