More Firsts

We have had a few eventful days. It all started on Friday when we were hoping to be able to come home on Saturday, March 31st. We called Delta Airlines where they informed us that the pricing for the tickets we bought were no longer available for that flight and we would have to pay an addition $1300/ticket for Joseph and I and $2400 for Daniel. Almost double of what we paid for them all. We obviously cannot do that. So with great disappointment we will wait out our time here in Petrozavodsk as planned. We were so excited to think that we could go home early. We are trying to continue to be positive. It would have been hard to accomplish everything that we needed to in Moscow in one day. This way we have room for error, traffic, or whatever else may come up. We also don’t have to find another place to stay since we already have the apartment reserved. This saves us money and stress. We had also set up a visit with one of Joseph’s friend and his family. We would have had to change that and hope that they were available on a Friday night. So all in all we feel it is probably better, just a little hard since we wanted to come home early.

Saturday was absolutely gorgeous. There was not a cloud in the sky and it was about 40 degrees. We took the trolley bus down a few stops then walked to a nice park. At first Daniel was tentative. Joseph then slowly got him to try a few things. By the end of the half-hour Daniel had met a little friend and they were running around and playing happily together. We continued with our walk through a park downtown. It would be beautiful if there wasn’t as much trash. There is pretty much trash everywhere you go here. The park was nice though and we even saw a wedding taking place. We then made our way back to main street and took the trolley bus back to the apartment.

Sunday was our big day of adventure. We decided that we all needed to get out. We all got ready and then headed off to church. When we walked in 20 minutes early we found it strange that it was so quiet. We wondered if anybody was there. We walked up the stairs and to our suprise Sacrament meeting was half over. We thought to ourselves, they must have changed the time of church since we were here a couple of weeks ago. After the meeting we found out that the time changed overnight. We had no clue. When Joseph was in Russia 10 years ago the time never changed. Anyway, since we had missed most of sacrament meeting we decided to stay a little longer. The Primary President came and invited Daniel and Katya to Primary. (There is not a nursery) We all went to primary. Daniel had a good time playing with a couple of kids. They played with toys, had a lesson, painted and then had snacks. Overall I think Daniel likes primary, at least primary in Russia. It is a little different at home. Here it was more like nursery. All of the people were so excited to see us. They were happy that everything had worked out in court. There was a crowd of about 10 people around us. They were talking to us and getting a kick out of Daniel. He loves to show people how strong he is by flexing his muscles. I enjoyed talking to the missionaries. It was nice the have someone to speak English to and be part of a conversation.

Brigham and Kyler have been having fun with cousins this weekend. Kyler didn’t want to spend time talking to daddy because she wanted to go outside with her cousins and ride bikes. We are missing them a lot, but thanks to a great calling card we are able to talk to them everyday on the phone.