Looks like some more impact on air travel from the volcano situation this week.

Also, for the Americans, I'm a bit cautious of inter-continental travel during the 4th of July holiday period. My wife needs to get back to the states but I'm pushing her off into mid/late-July and even beginning to be curious about alternative methods.

Sigh, the world we live in.

We are just in the process of booking tickets for my MIL to fly from Russia to the USA for a month and her departure from Russia will be on the weekend of the 4th of July. We seem to be having no problems at all and are not finding prices that are higher than other times. We are booking Aeroflop so the USA carriers might be different.

Aeroflop has bumped up its prices and I hate paying double of what I used pay before for our trip to Ufa next month!

Now Aeroflop has taken over Rosiya and also S7 and has a complete monopoly internally!

I hope this Volcano business will not create us problems, because it keeps going and still have problems with flights in Europe.

Yes, the ticket my MIL got was much more expensive than in the past. She is coming here on July 2nd and going back August 4th. Probably the thing my wife misses most is her mother so she is thrilled that her mom will soon be here. We are also going to show her how to use Skype and give her a webcam so they will be able to video chat as much as they want. My wife probably calls less than she would like because of the cost so I think that will be great for both of them.

Turboguy,

check http://www.uniontelecard.com/ I use the company for 4 years and talk to my mother almost every day. Before me Robert used it to call me. When I call on the mobile phones of my relatives and friends the calls are free for them. I'm very satisfied with the services and payment.

Thanks Olga, that is a pretty cool site and some good prices on calling cards. We do get a pretty good deal right now. We have been using Vonage and if we were not calling a cell phone it would be free but it is 8 cents a minute which still is higher than what the cards would be but not too bad. My wife is very frugal and if it was one cent a minute she would still not call as much as she would like.

Iren is not more frugal than mine. Is she?

Finally, the other day in London, I made her to have a coffee and a sandwitch, after 4 hours in the VAC centre!

You said you are buying a Camera and will train her mother to use it, will be a gods send present to your wife. I would suggest also that you arrange for a broadband connection so she can talk for free as lond as she likes with her mama. Hanna does that often and me daily.

What I am worried about is that soon, 11 June, we are going to Russia and this volcano ash may disrupt our flights!

Yes, Wiz, we are thinking that upgrading her to a broadband connection is no more money than we now pay for the phone calls we won't have to make any more so yes, that is what our plans are. I think the web cam will be a nice bonus as well. Iren tried out the Skype on her brother who already has broadband and they talked forever. I think she will enjoy the new set up.

Iren is about as conservative as you can get. I have whole house air and it has not been on once since Iren arrived. I used to keep the thermostat on 72 in the winter. The first winter she was here it was on 68 and this past winter 63. When we get up in the morning we turn it up to 67 while we get our showers. I could go on with more but you get the idea.

I had some comments when we went to Barbados and Grenada for the summer while we were waiting for our visa that it was not good to spend time in a vacation setting that it should be more like just living togeter. It was just like living togeter. We ate out once in Barbados and about twice in Grenada and she cooked the rest of the time. We went swimming about 2 times a week and otherwise just spent time togeter.

Good luck with the flight. I am sure many worry about the volcano disrupting their plans.

My wife loves Skype and it certainly make babushka feel good about things.

While Irya has been awaiting her interview over there we have kept the Skype connection up for a couple of hours each day to catch up on things and just generally chat.

Couldn't live without Skype!

Skype in my view takes a lot of resources from the computer where MSN is much lightes on resources and using both of them, frequently, I prefer MSN.