What darkness?

Even the darkness is not dark to You, and the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to You. Psalm 139:12

When I read this today, I couldn't help but appreciate the irony of reading a verse about darkness and light while living in Russia--where there's mostly darkness. In all fairness, as it gets colder, there's more sunlight--an even trade I am more than willing to make. In fact, yesterday on the metro, I had to squint my eyes when we came into a station above ground because it was so funny. You won't necessarily see that in the pictures, but it was sunny. I'm just glad that the Father of light sees no difference between darkness and light, and I'm even gladder that because of Him, the darkness really doesn't matter much to me, either.

I'm posting some pictures from our excursion yesterday. After Marc's lesson (and our first morning of school for a couple of weeks), we ventured out in the -4 F weather to see what we could see. We had to go to the office to re-register Sarah Beth after her trip to Greece (failure to do so could result in us getting kicked out of the country), so we headed first to Metro Kolomenskaya and the office. It was so freezing cold. Honestly, nothing can keep you warm when it's that cold outside, at least nothing we have here in the city. Our friends out on the peninsula, where it's far, far colder than here, probably have lots of stuff to keep them warm in this kind of temperature.

After our visit to the office, we headed to historic старий арбат (starry arbat), which literally means old arbat. Arbat has historically been the artists' section of Moscow (think Greenwich Village in New York), and there is Old Arbat and New Arbat. We went down Old Arbat and took a look around. Then, treat of treats, we went into Starbucks, where we indulged in hot chocolate (American-style--Russian hot chocolate is like a hot, sugarless pudding) and peppermint mochas. Ah....the glory and joy of peppermint mocha. Anyway, then it was home and take-out pizza from Pizza Hut. Marc had to walk the pizza home, so we heated it up, watched Zack and Cody episodes we'd been saving, played a couple of rounds of Jenga, and then it was off to bed for all of us. It was a really fun afternoon, even if it was pretty cold.

Just a regular day, where we did regular, fun stuff. We were glad to be back on some kind of schedule--everyone agreed that it was great to be back to "normal"--whatever that is here. No more vacation for us. John was particularly glad to get back to math. (How can he be my kid?) Today, we have school, of course, and then Sarah Beth starts her chorus class at Hinkson Christian Academy, which should be fun for her. She'll go on Wednesdays and Fridays. It'll be good to get her out of the apartment with other people, and she'll have it to put on her transcript. Next year, she'll take Russian at Hinkson, so this will be a good dry run of that. I hope wherever you are in the world, you are enjoying being back to normal, good hot chocolate, and peppermint mochas! Blessings to you and yours!

His,
Kellye

p.s. The picture of John is apropos to nothing--he lost his other front tooth last night, and I just thought he was pretty cute. :o)