First Day of School

Many of my friends (who have older children than I) posted entries to their blogs with this title, so I thought I ought to post one myself, although it's a bit late. Earlier, I wrote of my 19-yr old "student" Sivoy who I'm attempting to help graduate. I think that this picture tells it all:)


I believe Sivoy's greatest obstacle to graduating is his lack of motivation to work, to put it bluntly!...but he showed up for our first day of class. We were attempting to meet from 2pm-4pm. He worked with me for thirty minutes before declaring that he was finished for the day. I coaxed him into working another half hour before he said, "I think I'm going to just go back to school." I reminded him that wasn't an option (and I also thought to myself how sad it was that he was able to work less in school than he was currently working with me!) We pushed through another half hour before I took the above photo and pulled a chair over to the futon to continue our lessons. He made a comment about my persistance and laughed miserably. I told him we could spend the last half hour reading. Logan and Owen moaned, "Nooo...Uncle Sivoy no read." What was this about? Where's my support? We were all laughing, I set the kitchen timer for 20 minutes and we read. That was Day 1. It's been not quite that successful ever since. The Russians are here to help celebrate the opening of the new school and Sivoy has been quite distracted with entertaining them. He told me not to give up on him. I told him that he was the one desiring to graduate, not me and I'd be around to help if he ever wanted to show up:)

These are some other photos of the boys on the futon. They take great pleasure in climbing on people and then doing gymnastic moves all over them:)
Owen (mid backwards somersault) with Jacob.


Logan with Jacob.