Saturday - Fun in the Sun!

This is a calendar that we made for Ryland to try and help him understand when we will finally be able to take him home.  He still has no concept of anything past tomorrow...but we're trying!!  We thought if he could put a new sticker on it every day he would be excited about the countdown.  (PS - no laughing at the calendar!!  Life at home without a printer is interesting, so you have to make do!!  Dust & I both started to make a calendar on our computers before we remembered we couldn't print them!!)

Ry taking a quick break from the concert he was giving us to learn about the calendar and put stickers on yesterday & today.

He loved snacktime today with a tangerine & quickly gobbled it up!

Today's color of the day...YELLOW!  (Taxi yellow to be precise)  He wanted to wear a yellow shirt, play with the yellow balloon & we happened to bring yellow shades for today!

(Ry used his stomach as canvas for some lovely art today.  When we got there, he lifted up his shirt to show us his creation...and I totally forgot to get a picture of it!)

Family Picture!

As soon as we showed him a new water gun, he wanted to fill it up and go outside to look for bugs.  He doesn't like bugs, but loves to soak them with water...from a distance, of course!  He got in real close for this grasshoppper & we were surprised!  (I remember many a hot summer days watching my brother "hunt" for grasshoppers, too!  This one's for you, Ty!!)

He squirted Papa with the water gun once and LOVED, LOVED, LOVED being chased by us for the rest of the visit!  He laughed so hard while he was running.

After our visit with Ry, our translator invited us to join a group of her friends at the beach (river).  There was a large group and we had a great time cooling off in the river and playing games with her friends! It continually amazes us how friendly all of the people are here.  Today, everyone instantly accepted us into the group and shared food with us.  I can't say enough about all the people we've met here - we just love them!

Also - we played one game with them where everyone had to take a turn walking about 10 yards with some kind of different/interesting movement.  Dustin decided to bring a little bit of Texas to the beach and imitated riding a mechanical bull the whole way, including spanking himself halfway through!  Needless to say, he was a crowd-pleaser!!! 

Before coming to Pavlodar, we would have never thought that it could get so hot here! Today was 97 and the river was quite refreshing! (We have some lovely sunburns on our backs/shoulders now!)  Seemed like everyone in Pavlodar was trying to cool down at the beach!  We had a lot of fun and CANNOT WAIT to bring Ry here - he will absolutely have a blast!!!

Time for dinner, lotioning our sunburns & spending the rest of the evening sitting directly in front on fans!

Love,

Dust & Cort