To finish off the day of jangled nerves yesterday, we went to a reading recital last night to hear Alyona, Igor and fellow students show off their progress. The photo is an illustration for the story that Alyona read about her cat. Igor read a passage of scripture and a short funny story about chickens, which is the animal he has cared for for the last 5 years. He wouldn't practice it at home with any expression but in the real thing, he did an excellent job. He and Alyona have made amazing progress. It did get rather long and I had to retreat to the van with Alina and Elijah before it was over.

As if getting Maria's license wasn't hair raising enough, soon after I got home from picking up the kids at school, we heard a loud banging on the door. It was so loud and hard that I was sure it was Sergey. I told the kids upstairs to let him in. Someone went to the window and I heard the word police. I went up the stairs and to the door and heard a voice yell,"You better open up this door," as the banging got louder. I opened the door to a red faced policeman with his hand on his gun. He asked me what was going on and who had called 911. I explained that nothing was going on and that no one had called 911. I turned to ask the kids if anyone had been playing with the phone. The officer said"What are you hiding in there?" and pushed the door out of my hand and came in. He asked the children who were appearing from everywhere what was going on and if they had called 911. They all just stared at him and shook their heads, never having been this close to an angry policeman. He told me that he was going to look around and proceeded to go all over the house, which was a wreck since the boys had been babysitting all morning. They had let the babies trash the house, left food out, it was beyond description. After asking me about who all these kids were , he went back to the door and said"You need prayer, lady." Yeah and a couple of tranquilizers after that episode! He drove away with no explanation of why he was sure that I was hiding someone except that the dispatcher said that a woman had called and used my phone number.

All I could do was laugh after he left, it was such a "random" thing to happen the day after my other series of mishaps, none of which were very serious, but it would make good sitcom material. Then I got irritated, of course, because 4 teenage boys had allowed the house to get in such a state so we spent the next hour cleaning. I always worry that someone will show up and take my kids because I live in a wreck of a house. Maybe it is just me being paranoid, but I'm not going to let it get that bad again( right).