Zhorik's 80th Birthday Party

In April, my grandfather, Zhorik, turned 80 years old. We had a huge party for him on a boat with the whole family and all his friends. It was a wonderful time!

Our exhausted family picture at the end of the party after Chase danced up a storm the whole night. From left top: my father, mother, me (holding Chase), grandmother, aunt's mother, cousin, brother, aunt; and on bottom: grandfather, uncle, and Nate. 

As the whole family was in Kiev for this party, we took this opportunity to do some formal family photos, all in Ukrainian traditional dress. They came out awesome and it's a great to have something with all of us together. 

 Just our little family. 

The whole big family!

Chase Turns 4!

Chase is finally into birthdays, so he had a great time celebrating his fourth birthday. Chase is growing into a curious and silly child that loves games (board games, cards, puzzles, even iPad games) and anything he can put together (legos, magnets, beads, etc.). His favorite color is now blue. He has also really gotten into imaginative play and makes up extravagant stories for his stuffed animals. 

With some legos he was putting together. 

On his trotinette near the lake.

Because of the way Easter fell this year (way early), he was able to have a birthday party mere days after his actual birthday. We had a smaller party just at home this year, which suited him and everyone fine.  

Blowing out the candles the morning of his birthday. 

At his birthday party with his friends. 

Easter in Stockholm

For Easter this year, we decided to take a trip to Stockholm. Nate's grandfather is Swedish so it's a place we've been wanting to visit for a while. We have had some friends who have moved their recently so it seemed like good timing. Other than the cold, it was overall a wonderful weekend. Not pictured below is the large amount of Swedish food we tried and ate. Chase was particularly into these cinnamon bun-like pastries.

Our views around Stockholm included ice sheets and some beautiful sunsets:

We visited many museums including the Vasa, Nobel, Skansen, and ABBA museums. They were really cool and had quite a bit for Chase to do and explore. 

This castle flies the Swedish flag as long as the capital has not fallen to intruders. Of course, Nate and Chase schemed a way to take down the flag...

One of the cool experiences we had was riding the ferries as they broke the ice sheets. Chase, of course, super enjoyed that, too! While on the ferries, not only were we able to ride from island to island, we got some beautiful views of the city from the water.

As our first foray into Scandinavia, Stockholm did not disappoint. We hope to do more trips up north sometime soon!

Visit Back to Cambridge

In March, I took a work trip to Cambridge. I had not been back since we had left almost 4 years ago! It was crazy to see how much has been built up everywhere and how much the businesses around our apartment and around MIT have changed. But then the King Lab, which has not had anybody working for more than a year, was unchanged. Even some of our posters were still left up from 8 years ago! Thankfully, I was able to see everyone from the King Lab and also Olga (who came from RI), Nadia, Hallie, Christina, Monica, and others who I bumped into on the street. Overall, it was a very nostalgic but also really nice to see everyone. Maybe I'll be back again in the next year or so.

Our apartment building was just as I remember it. 

Literally across the street from our building...most of Cambridge was similarly under construction.

The gel running room in the King Lab looks the same as when I left 4 years ago.

A press release of us from 2010 still hanging up even though our lab is long gone.

Visit from Great Grandparents

In February, my grandparents, uncle, aunt, and aunt's mother all visited us in Switzerland. They spent a week skiing, visiting us the weekend before. We all reconvened in Geneva the weekend after. It was really nice to see them and show them around our corner of the world.

Taking a walk in the park. 

Sort of posing together. 

Visiting Lausanne on a particularly dreary day. 

In Ouchy, great grandson with great grandfather hand-in-hand. 

2017 in Review

[Previous years in review: 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013]

This has been another crazy year. The fall, especially, was busy, stressful, and just a bit overwhelming. With Nate writing his thesis the next few months, things will be a bit less intense. Nate lost his paternal grandmother in late November, which was quite sad for all of us.

In terms of traveling, we did make it out to a few places: 

- We went on a cruise to Mexico to start out the year. 

- I made it to San Diego twice (spring, fall) for some weddings and visiting friends/parents. 

- We went to Ukraine twice (spring, summer) with all three of us both times! And the second time was for two weeks, so we had a good long time to hang out with my grandparents. 

- We traveled to Barcelona and to Milan and Venice. 

- We did a few things around Switzerland: Lucern, 4th of July, and kid-friendly stuff. 

- We are ending our year as we started it - in the US. 

This time for our trip to the US, we ended up flying into and out of Chicago and driving a bit. This way, we spent a week and a half in Nebraska, followed by almost a week outside of Chicago where my brother now lives and my parents flew in for. We also got some time to visit three different sets of friends/families in Iowa and one in Chicago. It was nice to have this time with friends and family, and enjoy the conveniences of the US. We were especially excited to hang out with Chase's new cousin and our goddaughter, Tindra. Chase also spent time with all of his grandparents (and living great grandparents). On our way to the US, we missed a connection and ended up having something like 30 hours to explore Warsaw. We made the most of it, even in the bitter cold, exploring the city's old town and seeing the Christmas markets. For Chase's country/state count, we are at +3 for Mexico, Italy, and Poland, and +2 states for IA and IL, so he's currently at 3 continents (NA, Europe, Africa), 10 countries (USA, Switzerland, France, Spain, Morocco, Ukraine, Great Britain, Mexico, Italy, and Poland), and 9 states (MA, CT, RI, NY, NE, CA, NV, IA, and IL). We definitely plan to travel a bit more next year. 

In terms of crafts, I did two knitting projects (headband and dress), and put together a calendar. As always, I am planning many crafts for 2018 -- I just hope I find the time to get them done. I only did one post on Chase but he's growing up so fast! He will start school next year which is just crazy to think about. 

As in previous years, I will leave you with an Instagram collage. Follow me on Instagram, or on Twitter if you don't have an Instagram.

Picture-A-Day Calendar

For gifts this year, we decided to do a calendar of 2018 using our own pictures. I had heard about a company called Social Print Studio which prints calendars with 365 pictures on not-too-thin paper. I have to say that they were really good and their customer service is amazing. I decided I would make one of those "on this day"-calendars the same way Facebook shows you pictures of things that happened on that day some number of years ago. I thought it would be super quick but it ended up taking me lots of time to find all the pictures, edit them to the right size, and label them correctly. In the end, I used pictures from a few days before/after to make it so no two consecutive pictures/days had the same year. I cannot put all the pictures here because the post would be way too large, but I did end up doing statistics with the pictures I ended up choosing: