Сюрприз!! Surprize!!!

A couple of weeks before we arrived in Moscow, Vera had been asking Denis to come over and do the handy-man thing around her apartment. He was busy and kept putting it off until the week we were to arrive. Now, Vera couldn't have had Denis come over as he would have known something was up (big pots of soup, stuffed peppers and pies), so she told him she had a new boyfriend and that he was to visit for a couple of days and would Denis come after? He seemed ok but stunned with this news and would wait a week. Well, thanks to Vera's quick thinking, Denis wasn't alerted to our surprize...

We had arranged with Denis's friend to pick us up from the airport and drop us off at Vera's apartment which is not too easy a task as it took about 2 hours in the middle of the day to travel about 50km!!! Once we got settled, Vera decided to phone Denis and say that the boyfriend was held up and wouldn't be there that night so could he come change the light bulbs? He said he would be there in an hour so we all jumped to attention to try and get ready...

Here is the first of the surprizes...Vera's apartment, Sophia laying on the couch watching cartoons being as still as a mouse...

Brief translation of what was said: Denis and Vera enter the apartment chit-chatting until Denis' phone rings (if you listen closely you can hear the Mission Impossible song which is his ring tone). He is just speaking with a work colleague until he lifts my camera up and Vera yells, "It's mine, put it back!" Once he realizes it is Sophia, he tells his colleague "I'll have to call you back!" Then to Sophia he says "Hi" and amazingly she says it back to him (remember only about 2 hours of sleep in 20 hours). Then once he sees the rest of us he says "Oh, good job!" since we got him so good:) I don't think the birthday surprize could have gone any better!

The next day we decided to surprize Max's Dad at his office (Vasiliy and Denis work together). We wanted to get to the office before Vasiliy and again set up Sophia in his office. I think she enjoyed herself and managed to keep occupied for about 2 minutes while we were waiting, drawing on Vasiliy's papers and playing with a lighter (it looks like a baseball and I didn't realize it until I watched the video). Watch Vasiliy's face closely, it is just like Candid Camera!

He walks in and is about to say hi, then he stops and says "Oh...what...who...what is going on?" To Sophia he says "Hello, young one" Once he sees Max, "Oh, you've gone and done it now!"

Both Denis and Vasiliy were so happy to see us. Denis literally did not stop smiling the entire week that we were there, even when he was hung over after the boys night out partying. It was so worth the trip even though it was too short (8 days). Sophia was amazing and didn't play strange with anyone. She was in heaven hanging around everybody and managed to even learn some Russian.