What's a girl to do when boredom sets in?

Blog of course!! :-)

So I started going through photos from both trips to Russia, which I meant to share and realized I never did. It was a nice little trip down memory lane.

Trip 1, Apartment 1 - The Double Decker (through Peace Apartments)

First thing we noticed when we walked in was the massive insect infestation! These ladybug stickers were EVERYWHERE! It seemed like there were thousands of these things in the strangest places.

Susan also stayed in this apartment and mentioned the ladybugs on her blog awhile back. She'll probably agree with me that this was by far the most eclectic apartment in all of Moscow. Very, shall we say interesting, decor!

These stairs led to a small loft containing only a mattress:

Once you reached the top of the stairs, you just kinda crawled onto the mattress. There was nowhere to walk in the loft. I actually loved the mattress, but the spiral stairs left A LOT to be desired!

View from the top of the stairs. Scary stuff!!

View from the loft into the living room, adorned with a very lovely zebra/cheetah throw!

Trip 1, Apartment 2 - The Loft Studio a.k.a. the Austin Powers Apt

(also through Peace)

This calendar was in the kitchen (that you may remember had no stinking OVEN!!) If you click on the photo to enlarge it, you'll see that the months & days are in Russian but there is some English on there as well. Anyhoo...I'm not an ad exec., but I'm really thinking this line of PR wouldn't work for a pizza shop in America!

If the mouse is an example of their toppings, I think I'll just take plain cheese! I mean, he's cute and all but I'd prefer not to have Stuart Little on my pizza...

A few photos from Ilya's orphanage

This is a large crib/play pin thing that they put all the kids from a group in to play. During trip 1, most of our interactions with Ilya were in this play pin.

We weren't allowed to sit him on the floor to play, and he wasn't quite walking yet, so we played with him as best we could. Before putting him in the play pin, a worker would come in & scrub it down with a coarse brush and some type of cleaning solution. We'd then have to wait for it to dry. The toys in the photo are a few that we brought with us. The orphanage did not have toys in the room because it was being renovated.

Toy organizer - in the same room as the play pin above:

Exercise area - but Ilya wasn't allowed to go in it since it was "dirty". This was in the same room as the play pin & toy organizer.

Photos from Ilya's Nursery

Closet where clothes, blankets, sheets, etc., were kept. There were 8 kids in Ilya's group, and this closet stored everything those children shared:

The cribs weren't normally grouped like this, but the room was under renovation so they were just randomly placed this particular day:

Ilya's Crib:

I was pleasantly surprised to see how nice & modern the cribs & other furniture were. I have seen photos of cribs in other orphanages that are just plain scary & sad...left over metal contraptions from the early 1900's or something. As "nice" as the orphanage's nursery was, I am so, so grateful Ilya has his own room, pillow, blanket, sheets, closet, clothes, shoes, toys and FAMILY!

I miss my boys...it's going to be a long couple of days.

There are more photos to share, but I'll wait for the next post. Enjoy the rest of your evening!

Kar