1000 Hours Outside

I recently read an article stressing the importance of young children spending copious amounts of time outdoors -- specifically, at least 1000 hours per year! To say I was delighted would be putting it mildly.

When considering this career change to full-time mom, I completely overlooked the wonderful perk that is playing outside all day, but it just might be my favorite part. In fact, I have often felt guilty walking away from a half-cleaned kitchen and living room full of landmines (legos and train tracks) in the interest of capturing the last hours of sunshine before bed. Guilt no more! I'm doing it for the children, after all. In light of this lovely recommendation, I'm adding it to my list of goals for our time over here. I don't actually have the interest or energy to meticulously track every minute spent outside, but I think I can keep a tally of averages straight in my head. Essentially, we need to average 4 hours a day outside, which should allow plenty of buffer for sickness and the winter months. Matt probably gets tired of hearing it, but I am SO glad we have such a lovely green space right behind our apartment. Sticks, rocks, mud and lots of friends coming and going make it the perfect place to spend our days. I've recently

recognized how much continual traffic noise and pollution stress me out, so I'm SO grateful for the relative peace and quiet we can find in our little square.

We just finalized our plans for this summer by buying plane tickets to Almaty. We have to leave the country every six months, so we'll be spending nearly 3 weeks in Kazakhstan in order to fulfill that requirement and also be there for our annual gathering. We had originally intended to visit home every summer, but the time change is absolutely brutal with kids so young -- we just couldn't bear the thought of voluntarily putting ourselves through that level of suffering again so soon. We have really grown to love it here, and if it wasn't for family, we might be tempted to stay longer, but at this point we are thinking we will power through two years without coming home and then move home in time for Finn to get re-Americanized and start kindergarten as a young 5-year-old. It's still just a rough plan, but I like having a plan nonetheless. Its hard to believe, but its actually difficult to think about leaving someday; its really starting to feel like home!

In the midst of all the sickness the last few weeks (we are all back to full health again, by the way), I kept forgetting to include a funny little story from when mom and dad were here. While we had our hands full with sick kids, mom and dad offered to run out and pick up some groceries for us. "Whole chicken" was one of the items on the list, so being confident shoppers they didn't bother using their Google Translate App when selecting a chicken. When they got home with it they told me they weren't sure how good it would bebecause it was "kind of flat. Like it got smooshed." It turns out they bought a lovely duck! Sadly, I didn't have the energy to try anything new, so I pretended it was a chicken and cooked it the way I normally would have. It turned out delicious anyway!