Have you seen this?

Yikes!

This blog is seriously just too much! It would be even more funny, if it wasn't so sad that so much of it is true!

Alosha's Tree: Part 2

Regular readers of my fabulous blog may remember a post (see July 4th) about my dear friend Alosha's gigantic fake tree project. A Ukrainian television station was filming the project while I was visiting Kiev this summer. Well, it's done!
Here's the before photo, just as a reminder:


And here's the after, complete with a beautiful flat screen TV:

And the entire apartment, just so you can get a feel for the whole place. There's even the added affect of tiny little lights in the branches and trunk of the tree. (The guy worked at Disneyland, so I guess that should pretty much be expected.)

Alosha, moi giraffchik.
He's pretty much pretty talented.


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Vista's AVID class of 2009

'09! This is their year. These kids look so nice and innocent, don't they?

The end of summer...

Summer is really, sadly over. The last month has been busy! Here are the highlights:

I got back from Ukraine just in time for Nicole's bridal shower.

The next day, I went to a week long AVID conference in San Diego.

I visited my family in Logan for a few days before school started. Joie's growing quickly, Jacquie's running all over at all times, and Matt's pretty good about letter her crawl all over him.

My friend Tanya and I hung out with some of our favorite AVID kids, just before they left for college. Curtis went to Grambling, Reggie to UNR, and Boo returned to Lincoln University in Missouri.


Matt and I took a quick weekend trip to the best concert ever in San Francisco. Pretty much all of my favorite bands in one place at one time.









There are always a few weird people at concerts, but this was a bit extreme, even for San Fran. Check out this guy in the Santa suit.

Overall, good summer. As my friend from the Tepee would say, "Good times. Good times."

Odessa

Bogdan and I continued our Ukrainian world tour and made a quick trip to Odessa. Some of the highlights:

Mickey D's

For some reason, McDonald's tastes better outside the U.S. I've never quite been able to figure out why, but EVERYONE agrees. When McDonald's first opened in Russia, thousands of people stood in line just to get a hamburger. And if you're looking for a clean (free) restroom in Ukraine, McDonald's is still your best shot.

Not only is the food itself better, but there is often live entertainment. Please see examples:
There's a regular old Playland, but people can also rent motorized toys or ponies for their kids to ride.

Kamenets-Podilsk and Chernivtsi

Bogdan, Galya, and I enjoyed a quick, action packed trip to Western Ukraine.


Besides the obvious, one of the highlights was dinner at this amazing, delicious, surprisingly cheap restaurant called "UTAH". We're sure a little uncertain about how the restaurant got its name, but apparently they have some type of relationship with the medical school at the University of Utah. You can imagine how excited the servers were to meet someone actually from Utah. (Okay, so they pretty much didn't care at all, but you can maybe imagine how excited I was at the time.)