The blessing of little friends

We are so thankful for the friendships Ieva has been blessed with this fall! Had she been born during our early years at LCC, she would have many less friends as there simply weren't many kids in our community between 2002-2004. This year in particular, there is an unusually high number of expatriate families with young kids and we're really enjoying getting to know them.

Here are some of Ieva's friends:Ieva, Nike & Erik
During the month of August she spent every weekday with Erik & Nike Karosis. Their parents, Saul & Susanna, are both LCC alumni and Saul now pastors a local church in Klaipeda that many of our friends attend. An interesting thing about their family is that Saul is Lithuanian and Sanna is Swedish, and both parents are fluent in both languages. So they primarily speak Swedish to the kids at home, but the kids have learned Lithuanian from being at church & school and out in the community. Erik has also picked up English from his friendship with a number of American kids - only 6 & already trilingual! Amazing!

Ieva & baby Charlotte (2 months old at the time)
One of Ieva's newest friends this year is baby Charlotte. Some of you may remember that last fall Ieva also had a new friend named baby Charlotte as well! This is, indeed, a different Charlotte, but so far Ieva's two for two: 2 baby Charlottes in 2 years. This is Charlotte Schumacher, the 3-month old daughter of our new friends & colleagues Jared & Carrie Schumacher, and Ieva absolutely adores her!

Ieva & Sophie
Another new friendship for Ieva this fall is with Sophie Campbell. Sophi's dad, John, teaches in the theology department at LCC. And not only do the Campbells live across the street from us, but Sophie is in the same school as Ieva - in the classroom right next door! The girls often play together at recess and sometimes we'll walk to or from school together, which they both enjoy!

Josiah, Ieva & Levi

Yet another new family to the LCC community is Chris & Lydia Bosch with 8-year old Josiah & 6-year old Levi. We've really enjoyed getting to know Chris & Lydia, and Ieva adores these boys! Even more fun for us parents to see, the boys absolutely adore her! Especially Josiah! The last time we were at their house for dinner, Ieva burst into song (as usual) but this time, adapted "tomorrow" from Annie to sound like this: "Josiah! Josiah! I love ya! Josiah! You're only a day away..." Too cute!!

Ieva, Erik & David at her birthday party
There's obviously a lot to be said for long-time friends, and Ieva does have a few of those here, too. Since our long-time colleagues Gregg & Sharon Brubaker adopted Lithuanian brothers last December, Erik and David have become good friends with Ieva. And this fall David is even in Ieva's class at school, so they get to spend even more time together.

Ieva helping Charlotte celebrate her 2nd birthday last week

And Ieva's closest friend here in Klaipeda is the original baby Charlotte...who is no longer a baby! In fact, this fall Ieva started referring to her as Big Charlotte, just to differentiate between her & new baby Charlotte. We just celebrated Charlotte's 2nd birthday last week, and are also thrilled that her parents, our dear friends Andrew & Alene, have returned home now with not only Charlotte, but with 6-week old baby Paige in tow.

Ieva & Charlotte admiring baby Paige

There are other kids in our community that Ieva occasionally plays with, and she considers many of our friends her friends as well. And of course, she is blessed with a small troupe of friends back in the USA, too. All in all, we couldn't be more thankful & blessed for the friendships God has given our little girl here in Lithuania!!

Living Outside of Her Generation

As I'm sure many of you did, I grew up hearing stories from those in my parents and grandparents' generation about how much harder life was for them as kids. "When I was a kid..." and then things would get rolling from there "...I had to walk 2 miles to school in 3 feet of snow...uphill...both ways...barefoot..." and the tales would get taller as they'd go.

I've thought of this generational descriptor many times in the past month as we've been walking our daughter to preschool...a 1/2 mile each way...over a 25-foot high pedestrian bridge...in the rain...barefoot. (just kidding! I had to slip that one in...)

But in all seriousness, our newly 3-year old daughter walks .5 miles to school & .5 miles home from school every day. And it usually takes us anywhere from 20-30 minutes depending on her mood & how much she wants to dawdle (or how much we refuse to carry her). How many 3-year olds do you know that walk that far to school? We have realized that not even many of her classmates do this, as the vast majority either live in the neighborhood of the school or their parents have cars.

We're curious how it's going to work once the weather gets really cold & wet this winter. There is a bus we could take, but it goes out of the way & will take nearly as long to walk to the bus & from the bus stop to school as it would to just walk the whole way.

So when Ieva is a grandma, she'll be able to tell her grandkids the stories about "when I was a kid living in Eastern Europe..." and she won't even have to embellish...at least not too much!