Friday, August 5th

Friday, August 5th. Can't believe that we are on the fourth full day of living in Yerevan. Things are still an adjustment, but we are managing and learning quickly what we do like and don't. We know we don't like the kids' sleeping schedule. Another 4 am wide awake Preston which then wakes up his brother, who then wakes up their parents. We definitely were all tired this morning and I'm sure the boys were too. Audrianna managed to sleep in a little, but with the echoing in the house with all the hard wood floors and the brick wall we have inside the stairways, it's hard to. I think Robbie and I are starting to get used to seeing the sun rise every morning though. The day seems so long too. The kids wake up starving in the morning. Preston will wake up saying "go downstairs' and is insistent until one of us gets up. The kids get their 5 helpings of breakfast (it seriously feels like they do and then we try to occupy them with playing Play doh, toy cars, games or whatever we can). After the kids ran around like crazy in the house, we got the kids ready to go outside and Robbie took them all out for a walk while I stayed and tried to get a few more things cleaned up, unpacked and got started on this new laundry system. The washing machine is about 1/4 of the size of ours at home and there is no dryer. It's called a drying rack. I managed to get a few loads done and then told everyone that they MUST re-wear their pants at least twice before it goes to dirty clothes. :) The kids ended up going over to the Simms's house to play. They have a little kiddie pool and toys for the kids. After they played over there for a couple hours, Julien came over to play at our house. Dayton didn't take a nap. Preston fell asleep easily around 1pm. Audrianna fell asleep on the couch watching a Netflix show. Robbie left with Jeremy to go to the Supermarket for groceries. He found peanut butter!!!! This was a huge success for the kids. This was also a different market which we are finding they all have different products. You don't know what they will have until you go and find it. Our nanny was coming over around 4:30 so we needed to get the kids up before hand. Audrianna and Preston were pretty tired and were not easy to wake. Audrianna would lay down for a second and be out again. She was a tired girl! We finally met the nanny despite the tired and cranky children. I guess she saw the 'best' of them before she begins her work with them. She seemed nice and speaks really good English. I also asked that she speak Russian with Preston. She will be coming over on Tuesday morning for a few hours to get acquainted with the kids and then will be watching them Wednesday-Friday this coming week. I have to travel to Montenegro for a new teacher training. She was highly recommended by a former teacher at QSI-Y and spouse of an US Embassy employee. I think she will do a great job. It will yet again, be another adjustment. I'm definitely not looking forward to leaving the kids for a few days, but am excited to see another country. I just hope they sleep! After the nanny left, we knew we needed to keep the kids up for a few more hours in hopes that they would sleep through the night. We went for a walk, found ice cream at the market, then came home and made fajitas from our 'fajita kit' that we found at Carrefour. They turned out decent. You could tell the tortillas were not fresh, but we'll get them again I'm sure. One thing that is remarkably different for me and the food here than in Spain is that I'm the one (and Robbie) cooking. So we don't really know how to cook the 'Armenian' food other than the BBQ style meat. We are cooking 'American' style food without a lot of the ingredients we need to make it with. In Spain, my host Mom did all the cooking and she was an amazing cook. She had such good spices/flavor to the food- my mouth is watering. It was delicious food. :) We will figure out this food thing sooner or later though! The kids and both Robbie and I were fading fast, so we ended up going to bed early about 7pm. Dayton had put himself to bed. He did get in trouble for hitting his brother and then fell asleep in his bed by 6:30pm. We didn't know if the kids would sleep long or not, but we needed to go to bed too! The adjustments are coming and we getting acquainted with the area better. A few more days and hopefully the sleep schedules will be normal again. Love and miss you all!