Matthew Paul Kolodyazhny

Little Matthew arrived April 29, 2011. I had this feeling that he was going to be early...but I had no idea that he would make his appearance so early (his due date was May 31). Because he was early he was in the hospital almost a month. It was an intense experience with Lillia at home and Rachelle needing to go to the hospital 2 times a day and eventually 3-4 times a day. We are grateful that we lived through that (barely!) and now have a huge amount of empathy for anyone who has to have their baby in the hospital for an extended stay.

Matthew was born at 5 lbs. 3 oz. and he was 18 inches long. He was just under 10 lbs. at his 8 week check up. He is healthy and growing well. We love having a little boy in our family. And yes, it did take us forever to get these pictures up, but hopefully you all enjoy them. We are going to include a few pictures of Lillia and the family as well.

First bath at home.

Family picnic up in Payson Canyon

The Kiev Ukraine Temple is dedicated!

I am so excited to say that the temple here in Kiev is dedicated. It feels like this day has been a very long time in coming. This picture above is from the open house. The temple is so beautiful! I don't particularly love chandeliers, but when I saw the chandelier in the celestial room of this temple, I was stunned with how beautiful it was. The only way I know of describing it is that it shines all the colors of the rainbow and the light is constantly moving, which makes it look almost like running water. So beautiful. On the way to Kiev, you can see the temple from the train for a brief moment. I have enjoyed looking at it the last while as we go into Kiev, it always looks so beautiful and peaceful. But this morning, as we rode by on the train, I felt something more than just beautiful and peaceful, I didn't really pay attention until Dmitry said to me, "it's been dedicated already" (we were attending the second session). I realized that it had a much more powerful feeling to it now that it has been dedicated. I really enjoyed the dedication and all the talks given, it was just my luck that we went on the Russian session - purely coincidental, but it made it much more enjoyable for me because I was able to understand most everything said.

After the dedication we saw a sister Tanya who served in the Yekaterinburg mission during the time I served there. The last time I saw her was about 3 years ago. It was wonderful to see her and we actually went to her home briefly and met her children, which I really enjoyed. We also saw my former mission president and his wife, Marc and Cherri Hall. The last time I saw them was in our Belaya Tserkov branch right before they left Ukraine to go to Kazakhstan for the remainder of there mission where they were collecting the history of the members here in Ukraine and later in Kazakhstan. They are now back here in Ukraine to serve a mission here at the Kiev Temple. It was wonderful to see them again. What a wonderful chance for them, I am sure they will meet many of the friends they have made over the years serving in Russia, Ukraine and Kazikstan as the members come to do their temple work.

The cultural night was enjoyable and fun. It was fun to see President Monson joke with the saints. It was really fun to see him relaxed and enjoying his time here with the people. The funny thing is that I had to come all the way to Ukraine to see a prophet. This is the first time I have seen a prophet in real life, not displayed from the TV screen. It was really wonderful. My favorite dance of the night was from the youth of Armenia. It was a wonderful weekend for us here in Ukraine! :)

Lviv, Ukraine

So Dmitry and I went to Lviv! I have always wanted to visit the western part of Ukraine and now I know why. It is beautiful! I love, love, love Lviv! It has a charm to it that I love. Dmitry and I were only there for 2 days but we had a lot of fun since this was our first trip away from our little bundle of energy. I needed the break! I must admit, Dmitry would mention how much he missed Lillia and I would think, hmmm, I don't miss her that much yet. :) Guess it was about time I had a bit of a break! And it was a great break. One thing I really love to see is old building that have a lot of details . And almost all the buildings there were that way. So we had a fun time.Dima in front of our hotelDmitry and I in one of the oldest churches in Lviv...built for one very rich family. It contained 4 pews and there was an underground tunnel from their home to this little chapel. They would would have the priest come and give them their own private service. Interesting!

Dmitry in front of the opera house.

The key to our hotel room. Enormous!

One of the small streets in the shopping district.

Dmitry one of of our little explorations of an old - out of the way street.

me

Dmitry standing in front of the monument that is dedicated to the first man who printed books in Lviv. In the background you can see all sort of vendors that bring old used books and they lay them out on boxes or tables and sell them there.

Dmitry

The hot chocolate in Lviv is quite different. I wanted some hot chocolate and when I got my cup I realized it wasn't what I wanted. However, for a chocolate lover it would be heaven. Hot chocolate is basically a melted chocolate bar in a cup, Dima thought it was great! I asked for milk, added it, and still gave most of mine to Dmitry to finish. It was just too strong for me! Lviv is known for its small coffee shops around the town. They specialize is specialty coffees. It is said here that if you drink your coffee within 30 minutes you burn the soul of your companion (that you would be sharing coffee with). Apparently you are supposed to linger and savor.
We had a wonderful trip and a great time!

Lillia is growing up!

Well, I just looked at some pictures of Lillia when we were traveling here to Ukraine and realized that she has grown so much in the last 2 months. Here are just a few pictures of the last little while. This is her playing in water on a hot day.

This is Lillia with our friends little girl, Sophia. We went into Kiev for the American Chamber of Commerce's Fourth of July celebration. We had a good time. The girls ran around and danced to the music and really enjoyed themselves.

I just love this picture of Sophia. She is such a happy girl.
Lillia having fun with balloons.
Lillia after eating a bunch of mulberries. She is in love with mulberries! We are lucky that the mulberry tree produces for almost 2 full months. It is almost finished now, there are just a few left. Every day for the last while she will take me out to the tree, point up and let me know that she wants me to pick her some. The fun part is getting the stains out of her clothes!

Lazy Blogger

So the truth is, I could find a bunch of excuses as to why I am not consistant with my blog. But the truth must be that I am just lazy! I guess there are just a lot of other things that I would rather be doing. And yet, I love reading everyone else's blogs...so I guess that means I reall need to just do better at this. ;)

This is a picture of Lillia right before we left for Ukraine. I wanted a picture of her in front of her Grandma's tulips.

Lillia's Birthday Party

Well, I am finally getting these posted. Lillia's party was a month ago...ahem. Anyways, here are some videos and a few pictures. It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot (given this was my first, I guess that was to be expected). We had my parents, some of my brothers and sisters, and some of our wonderful friends come. Having them all come made it a really great day for us. I actually made that cake up above...it was a disaster before it actually worked out. I was trying to figure out how to make the remaining part of the frosting chocolate and opened a can of cocoa and it poofed all over the side of the cake. I just about had a heart attack and Dmitry suggested making the whole cake chocolate. But in the end I found that I could cover the half of the cake with frosting carefully, and that no, cocoa doesn't make chocolate frosting...I had to use cooking chocolate. I used a sandwich bag with the end cut off to pipe through and write the letters and than used a cheap piping tip to do the dots around the cake. It was a new experience. The cake was a caramel apple cake, cupcakes were devels food cake with raspberry frosting (ok, those I tasted after the party and just about died...yummy! They just might be my birthday cake too!). We had miniture pizzas that we made, my brothers practically inhaled those...we could hardly keep enough coming. My Mom was wonderful and brought some yummy chicken sandwiches and than we finished it off with some veggie and fruit trays. The party was basically just eating and talking.

Lillia enjoying her cake.

Unwrapping the gifts.

Our friends were incredibly generous with Lillia, she received some very nice gifts. So very nice of them. For those of you who caught the Christmas wrapping paper, yes that was me. I had set aside some of the gifts we wrapped for Christmas when we realized that she didn't need them all for Christmas. We decided it would be best to just bring them out for her birthday. I totally intended on getting them rewrapped, but in all the preperations of the party I totally forgot until the moment of unwrapping gifts. Yikes...oh, well. Maybe I won't do too many silly things the next time around. :)

Lillia Reading

This video we are uploading for Lillia's Grandma over in Ukraine to see how much she has grown. We like this video because she doesn't know we are recording her.