Russians Day 2

On Tuesday we made 8 quilts in 5 hours. Marathon!






These girls are so focused. They were excited about the project and then stayed intent on it the entire day. They didn't want to take a break to go to the front of the room and grab a sandwich for lunch because they wanted to finish. Only 13-16 yrs old, and so determined.

This is my Aunt Kris. She teaches at a High School in Salt Lake and we went and made the quilts in the schools home-ec room. The girls hovered around her so they wouldn't miss a detail when she was giving directions.
Alina is so beautiful. She wore this cute dress and 3 inch heels to come quilting. Love her.
Some of Kris co-workers came and spent the day helping to make the quilts

Alina and Kelly
Sarah and Oksana
Nastia and Heather

Svetlana is the home ec teacher at the school in Russia. She was fascinated by the rotary cutters and wanted to take one back with her. She flitted around the room like she was in home ec heaven. Her quilt turned out beautifully.
Xenia, our very talented neighbor in Alpine, came up to help with the quilts. She took them home with her so that she could use her long-arm quilter to quilt all of them. So generous. She brought her neice-in-law Amy who spoke Russian with her.
Jennifer loves Ava. Ava is my Aunt Stephanie's mother, who as a child went to school where the orphanage is now. She came to help with the quilts. So did Ava's granddaughters Katie and Rachel.
We were expecting to have about 4 people to help with the quilts, and look at this roomful of generous women who spent the entire day helping.

Glad they can take those quilts back with them as a reminder of their time here. Thankful for art and self expression in any form, it uplifts the soul and gives something to be excited about, and a sense of self- accomplishment.

Ola is so artistic. She was going around the room showing people her quilt and talking about how she put the colors together and how she like the combination of dark and light colors. She drew a picture of Katie on the whiteboard:

Pretty good, huh?


After quilting we went Rock-Climbing:

Nastia was the best. She got all the way to the top, and kept doing climb after climb.
Ola was pretty good, too....

But the rest of us were so tired after one or two climbs we laid on the floor and watched Nastia, and talked to Stephanie when she called my cell. Stephanie is seriously a celebrity around here. I said hello, hi stephanie and there was a rousing chorus of "shtefaneee!" When I am driving around with these girls I listen to them chatter in russian and the one word I recognize and that gets repeated over and over is "shtefanee" which is followed only by "Jafe" (jeff) and Alaigsandra (alexandra, stephanie's daughter).
Then we went to Texas Road House for dinner. I can never predict what they'll like or not. I gave them a handful of peanuts in the shell out of the big bucket by the door and that brought a big round of excited "sank-you's" I thought they would love the chicken fingers with the dipping sauces, the bbq pork, the sweet potato with brown sugar and the mashed potatoes and gravy. They took a bite or two and then said they were "full". But when the plain roasted chicken breast got there, they devoured it. Same with the rolls.

The waiters had the girls get up and try country line dancing with them. It was Svetlanas b-day the week before, so the waiters did a round of happy birthday hee haws for her. They put her on the saddle and the entire restaurant shouted hee haw at her.
She is the most delightful person. Always pleasant, treats every new experience as an enchanting adventure she can't wait to try. That's probably why she looks like she's 25 even though she's 41. Hee-haw!