The mail

I am fascinated by the mail. Not junk mail of course, but the letters, the little packages, the magazines - the things you wait for and are excited when you get them. I really think that we lost a great deal when we stopped writing letters to each other. That is why I subscribe to my favorite magazines, so I get that surprise every month. Usually I run home and sit on the floor of our living room looking through it quickly, so delighted I am to be surprised with a little something that made its way form who-knows-where into my mailbox. We are lucky in a way to have relatives in Russia and Ukraine that send us things now and then, and we send them things too. More often we exchange gifts like that with Jenya's parents. Usually Jenya composes a package (a pretty big box rather) of things that they ordered from him or asked him to find for them, but I also like to add something little. Then of course when we get a package from them there is my share of goodness in it. Sometimes I put in something hand made like this mittens garland I knitted for last Christmas...

or this little guy I sewn using my own pattern...

or this teddy bear that I crocheted a while back, when I was just beginning to take interest in all things hand made...

Or sometimes I find things that my mom in law might like and include those in.
Well the reason I am saying all of this is because just two weeks ago we mailed our big box to Russia, and today we got ours!

As always Jenya gets to open it...

Inside we found gloves from a family friend who is a nurse, yarn that I need for my blanket (I ran out of the white colored yearn and I bought it in Russia when we were there this summer, so my baby blanket did not move past scarf-looking phase), Puerh tea in a beautiful box (did I mention that I am a sucker for pretty boxes?), some magazines for Jenya, warm hunting gear for him, and matryoshka (Russian nesting doll, it is not babushka, just so that you know babushka means grandma in Russian and has nothing to do with the nesting doll...)! So many goodies!

There is a story behind this matryoshka doll. These two are me and Jenya now...

And inside of the doll that represent me are two more... that is for the future kiddos. That made me smile really-really wide! Wish there would be more dolls, cause I want more than two, but we can always add. ;) (good thing Jenya doesn't read this, or he would probably freak out a bit, as he doesn't exactly know of my ambitious plans just yet...)

 So this big box, filled with little presents, made our day today!
I really wish I could start some kind of "pen pal" thing with somebody I don't know... wouldn't that be neat. We could exchange little hand mades or finds... Yeh, that would be great! If anybody is interested, let me know... you have to be not from Vegas though...