Cultural Observations

How Americans are different from the rest of the world:

1. They call football "soccer".

2. They think that walking is an exercise.

3. They say they don't believe in superstitions, but they'll tell you not to drink milk when you get a cold (they back it up with some "scientific" data).

4. They spend more money on their dogs than some people do on their kids.

5. They like to earn money, but they'd rather make it.

6. If you want to see your American friends you gotta call a week in advance.

To be continued...
And to all my Americans friends: I love you guys, you are great! Just a little different:)

Skiing with Mark

Everyone loves the Mountain in Bend, Oregon. In fact, people are ski-freaks. My husband is one of them so it was not surprising that he and his friend Mark went skiing to celebrate Mark's birthday. The party was only for the elected, so I was not invited of course. Just joking! We love Mark and wish him a very Happy Birthday!!! And here are some pics from the remarkable day.

P.S.: Both came back home safe and with no injuries. This is very comfroting for me and Melody (Mark's wife). Since we live on the way to the mountain I can't tell you how many times I had to pull over to let an ambulance pass to help another victim of skimania.

This is Mark. Here is Erik with a helmet on.

Single Anya

Chernigov and clouds

A Question

How did Christ pay full price for our sins when he did not go to hell forever, and sinners that do not repent have to spend eternity there?

Love and marriage... Horse and carriage...

"A magnificent marriage begins not with knowing one another but knowing God." Gary and Betsy Ricucci.

"Marriage is the operation by which a woman's vanity and a man's egoism are extracted without anesthetic"
Helen Rowland

"It is very hard to be entirely faithful, even to things, ideas, above all, persons one loves. There is no such thing as perfect faithfulness any more than there is perfect love or perfect beauty. But it is fun trying."
Katherine Ann Porter

"One was never married, and that's his hell; another is, and that's his plaque"
Robert Burton-English clergyman

"Because marriage, more than any other relationship, reflects God's involvement with us and bears more potential to draw our hearts to heaven, it can more readily give us a taste of hell."
Dan Allender and Tremper Longman III

"When a girl marries, she exchanges the attentions of all the other men of her acquaintance for the inattention of just one."
Helen Rowland

"Christianity has long called us to this truth: Marriage must be about more than itself because love that does not serve life will die."
Evelyn and James Whitehead

Good Quotes

"If you treat a man as he is, he will stay as he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become the bigger and better man."
J. Wolfgang von Goethe


"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
Oswald Wilde