In-laws

So, it's admittedly been too long. But, we say that just about every post, so I won't belabor the point.

We have been enjoying ourselves lately, though. B's parents are in town for a two week visit, which we have thoroughly enjoyed. I think they've enjoyed it as well, but I suppose if they were honest they'd say they are mostly enjoying the time with their grandsons. ;) Anyway, of course most of the pictures are of the adventures we've enjoyed together. We've had some further adventures even since these pictures, but I'll save some for next week.

A boy has to learn to shave sometime, I suppose. "Poppa" decided to take it upon himself to teach him.

Loot! Sweet, glorious, loot, all the way from the US of A. Parmesan cheese, Ranch dressing, muffin mix, and assorted other goodies awaited us as we attacked their suitcases when we finally tracked them down.

Actually, remind me sometime to tell you the story of getting their suitcases out of customs. It was, well, bureaucratic even by Russian standards. The short version is that it took almost 5 hours and a return trip to the airport just to get their baggage, all due to the airline losing their bags. Yikes.

B's Mom had heard a lot about the famous Moscow Ballet, so I went out and bought some tickets for Swan Lake for them. The girls got all dressed up to go out and watch it.

They even got there early (it was in the famous Bolshoi Theater) and took some pictures of themselves pretending to be tsarinas from a couple of centuries ago.

I don't go in much for the ballet (I have a strict quota on how much time I'm willing to spend watching men in tights) ;), but they definitely enjoyed it.

We also managed a trip down to Red Square and the surrounding attractions, and here B's Mom is doing the traditional "throw a coin over your shoulder at the center of Moscow." The circle she's standing on is the spot from which all the roads in Russia are measured (i.e., if someone tells you they live on "kilometer 185," it's from this point).

I have been to Red Square a bunch of times now, and Lenin's Mausoleum has always been closed for one reason or another. However, this time we finally got to go in! A totally surreal experience - you walk down the stairs, and it's pretty dark, and the guards are shushing everyone to maintain "the atmosphere." Then, you come to Lenin, who looks much more wax than actual person, laying there staring at the roof, walk past him (you're not allowed to stand and look), and move back outside.

Of course, then we meandered over to St. Basil's for the traditional photo op, and got this nice one of the Williams'. It was a spectacular day for it, it must be said.

Since it was such a nice day, we decided to make a photo session of it. Here is the lovely B, the attractiveness of the picture only diminished by the guy standing on the right in her arms.

Christ our Savior Cathedral. It's really pretty when the sun is shining, no?

I forget the name of this one, but it's right on Red Square, and designed to look like a wedding cake.

I think I forgot to say that Matthew started walking a couple of weeks ago, right around his first birthday. Here's a video as proof of that fact, as he walks to his babushka and then back to Mommy.

I'll leave you with our new family portrait. It was actually taken right underneath St. Basil's, even though you can't see it in the picture. It's so hard to get all of us looking in the right direction that you have to take what you can get!