Update Longtime Coming

Hello friends and family! Well, it has been a long time since we have updated this blog… sorry! Eva is about to celebrate her first birthday and we’re wrapping up our time here in Moscow. We’ll be transitioning back to the States mid January for our ‘home leave’ in Atlanta, Miami, Boston, and Florence before setting back into the DC area for about 7 months of Greek language training. We’re thrilled to report that our onward post will be Athens, Greece and we expect to set down in Athens sometime in September of 09.

The year with Eva has been full of sleepy joy and we have a lot to be thankful for this holiday season. Among our travels, we have enjoyed two sunny weeks in the south of France in July, we toured the Golden Ring cities just north of Moscow for Labor Day, and we have just returned from a windy but welcome trip to Tuscany for Thanksgiving. Moscow is now in the grey half light of winter although we have had only a little snow. Most of the community seems to be making the most of the dark with holiday lights and SAD lamps, but we’ll be glad to hit the Florida beaches after a few more weeks of this!

We will be in transition starting early January (see Traveling Circus schedule on right-hand sidebar) and look forward to seeing many of you in the coming months, but please stay tuned to the linked photo album on this site for views from Eva’s upcoming birthday and holiday debut at the ambassador’s residence.

Love,
Katherine and Vincent

Sleepy Baby Time

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Ode to Butter Cookie

Introducing Eva Carlisle Moore

Sorry it has been so long since we last posted to this site. We've been busy with our new little one!!! She was born on December 11, 2007 in Atlanta, GA. 7lbs, 7oz, 21 inches tall. Of course, she has grown some since then, she's now a whopping 12lbs and almost 23 inches tall.

We're back home in Moscow, now, settling into our new family life and waiting out the Russian winter.

Please be sure to check out our Random Photo Album linked from this site. There you will find pictures of Evie and pictures of our life here in Russia.

We also now know that we will be leaving Moscow early next year. We will be in Washington DC for 6-7 months for language training before heading to Athens, Greece in August 2009. We suspect that many of you who weren't interested in Moscow may be more tempted to come visit us in Greece. You are, of course, welcome, we will be there for two years. We hope we will have a chance to catch up with all of you in the near future.

It’s getting closer!

Well folks, the birch trees are turning a golden yellow and our days have brisk beginnings indicating autumn has arrived in Moscow! That means, gulp, that December 13th and the arrival of our little girl is right around the corner. We had a wonderful warm summer here in Moscow. The city was much more accessible on the weekends with the Muscovites abandoning the city for their dachas in the countryside and all the restaurants opened their summer patios for breezy dining. We took refreshing weekend trips to Suzdal, a small rural city about 200 kilometers from Moscow and St. Petersburg for the white nights (see photos below).
Vince and I celebrated our anniversary with a long babymoon weekend in Vienna, Austria over Labor Day. We rented an apartment a few metro stops from the city’s center and spent three days touring around the city, the museums, the flea market, the shops, and the woods and vineyards in the hills above the city. It was my first time back in the city in over ten years and while it was refreshing to find my German had not suffered too greatly in the interim, it was altogether too short a trip. The Austrians were celebrating their mushroom harvests with dishes featuring freshly picked chanterelles throughout the city and the delicious opening of the year’s new wine and cider, ‘most’ and ‘sturm’. We spent hours chatting with local vendors at the city flea market on Saturday and attended a Mozart mass at the Augustiner Kirche on Sunday before heading out for an afternoon hike in the vineyards. Monday we toured the design museum and caught up on all the western shopping we have been missing in Russia. With so much left to see and do in Vienna, we’re hoping it or a nearby city shows up as one of our possibilities on the bid list this winter so they can send us back to DC for Vince to learn German before heading to post.
Now in the home stretch in Moscow, we are busy preparing for my departure on October 22 and Vince’s departure about a month later. I’ll be traveling almost immediately to Boston for work meetings for several days before setting up home and office in Atlanta in preparation for the baby. It looks like work can keep me busy right up to delivery, which is a great relief. My knitting skills leave much to be desired, but with a phone and a computer I’m good to go!
We hope we’ll have a chance to see many of you while we’re home. I’ll be carrying my telephone with me back to the States, so you can all continue to use our 703-521-6996 line to contact us throughout our time in Atlanta.

Vienna

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