Fun outside! The weather's been amazing!

I love watching Brighton run. He's just so fast! He has such ENERGY for everything. He runs FAST and HARD. He jumps FAR with all his might! I love watching him. And he's always doing it with a big smile on his face. He loves to run.

Little Marius is walking everywhere. He gets more stable every day! I think it will only be a couple weeks before he's just walking everywhere and abandons crawling. He's been quite the whiner these days. I think he's working on some teeth because every time I look at him he's crying and biting on his arm. Constantly! He literally gives himself bit marks.

I love when they're all doing something together. I just love to watch them!

This is my friend, Eike. We hang with our kids for a weekly playdate. It's been great. They're from Berlin, Germany. She's been my dearest friend here! One of the few stay at home Moms and really involved in creating programs and fun activities for the kids. She found a teacher and venue for Scarlet's ballet class, all so her daughter could have a place to dance! She's an incredible woman. It's been so fun watching her kids grow, the last two years (we arrived about the same time to Bishkek). She came with a little baby, and now he's a boy running around and talking (in German) and her little girl is Scarlet's age and only spoke German when she got here and is pretty darn fluent now in english! It's amazing! I've been so impressed! Of all the people we will miss- they're almost the only ones!

And then there's Nargiza. Talk about a diamond in the rough. We LOVE Nargiza. She is our babysitter. We found her after we came back with Marius. She has SAVEDDDDDD me. I don't know what I would've done without her. The kids love her and she runs around and plays with them, paints their faces and made many crafts with them. She has a good heart and works really hard. She's always asking me questions about health and the way we do things and why. She is so anxious to learn and absorb all the information she can. She will go far. Her dream is to go to America and "see with her own eyes" is what she tells me. I really hope she goes. I think she will. It's so expensive. People don't make a good wage here, unless they're involved in corruption. Truly, Nargiza is the best and if we could we would just take her with us!

Once a week she preps all my veggies and fruit and sometimes we'd have long talks about all sorts of things. We really love her and wish the best for her! We left all our extra stuff we weren't taking with us for her (boxes and boxes!) and we wanted to get her something really special as a thank you so we got her a breadmachine (she really wanted one) and a massage at the Hyatt. She was really excited.

We've said all our goodbyes, turned in our badges and phones and in about 12 hours we'll be flying through the air! I got to go to Zumba one last time today. I was soooo happy about that. The instructor was really sweet with her goodbye. She announced I was leaving (in Russian) at the end of class, so a few ladies said goodbye. She told me it was an honor to have me come and bring my smile each week. Really sweet. I also got my last little "alone time" at Sierra coffee, but I was good and got a breakfast burrito instead of their addictive chocolate muffin. Didn't wanna overdo it today. We're nearly packed! Greg's been insanely busy at work so it's literally been ME doing all the organizing and packing. But it's all come together. FEELIN' GOOD! Excited to enjoy the good ol' USA!