It's been a long time we haven't posted anything here in the blog. We are ok - it was just hard to find the time and set the priority to write something here. It is the middle of December now and we are almost ready for our long Christmas break. This yes the holidays aligned very nicely and we get about 2 weeks without work. After Sri Lanka trip (we came back at the end of May) we had a few more travels. We have visited Estonia, Russia and New York. 

Estonia

We went to Estonia for Alena's work and stayed there for 1 week. Rented Airbnb right in the center and visited the old town every day. Alisa and Anton enjoyed going to the airport to spend time there because there was a nice lego corner to play at (with many kids there) and good coffee in the airport cafes. Plus you could get there by tram in 10 minutes! How cool is that? Another highlight of Estonia is soviet cuisine which we are nostalgic about. Probably for 3 days, we ate Russian classic salads and other similar food. 

Russia

Whole July we spent in Russia in Alena's home town - Kachkanar. It was a bit cold there but relatively cheap. Anton gained like 5kg eating piroshki and other tasty Russian things. Russia was more about family time. 

New York

To NY we went for Alena's work and spent 2 weeks there in the beginning of August. It was our first trip to US and dare I say it our last trip to NY. What impressed us (in a positive way) was the number of playgrounds we could spend time with Alisa. We lived in the Financial District right by the World Trade Center and it was noisy and busy are (and super-expensive). But even there we found many awesome playgrounds where kids could play for days. We went a lot to China town for food and fruits. Visited Brookly and centra Manhattan, otherwise, we didn't do any more touristy things. 

Alisa

Alisa is growing up quickly she lives in her own room now and sleeps alone in her bed. It was quite an achievement because due to all the traveling she got used to sleeping with us. The move to her own room went quite quickly and painlessly. She loved how Alena arranged the room so going to sleep there was not a problem. Initially, she would wake up around 3-4am and come to our room but it happened only 4-5 times and now she sleeps alone the whole night. 

She is very happy to go back to the kindergarten and spend the days there, we are a bit sad that we don't get so much time with Alisa during the days. We get home around 18:30 on weekdays and have only time to eat, wash up and a little of play time together. One the weekends we try to go places like Universeum or some local inside-playgrounds. Since the weather sucks here it is not very pleasant to be outside, so we try to find options for good time at the inside locations.