Wednesday already?

Today we had pancakes for breakfast before the guys headed off for a load of hay, while his Mom helped me with the dishes and did a little handwork while the boys worked on schoolwork.
It took a little longer to get home with that first load than planned- the tractor ran out of fuel and so they had to go buy some with the car. They had a little less hay on this load than yesterday but as you can see they still had trouble dumping all the hay out of the wagon- Maxim jumped in to unplug the hay jam. They load the wagon with the loader tractor from a pile of this nice alfalfa hay behind the farmer's barn. Maxim jumps in the wagon and stomps on it to pack it in. It takes a little more than a hour to go get a load.
After they got the hay dumped off- you can also see the improved driveway in one of the photos- Garry surprized me by saying we would head off to Zaporosia with his parents to see the oak tree (the tree is several hundred years old- famous in both Cossack and Mennonite history) and the museum right away - Victor and Maxim could go for the second load. We had a very hearty lunch at the restaurant by the oak tree- it has authentic Ukrainian decor and food- we had three courses starting with borsht and took a plate of mixed vereniki- meat and potato ones- home that we couldn't finish eating.
Then Garry drove over to the island where we toured the fortress with it's re-creation of traditional houses- Garry's mom said the houses in the photo seemed like they belonged in Hansel and Gretel. Then we toured the museum for an overview of Ukrainian history- lots of artifacts in cases from clothing and tools to weapons.
When we got back the boys had eaten lunch and finished their chemistry work, but Maxim and Victor had not had lunch (at 3:30) so they enjoyed our leftovers.
For dinner tonight we enjoyed a few things from the garden- zucchini and the first of the last batch of corn on the cob- it was really tasty!
Thursday morning Garry plans to take his parents to the central market in Dnepropetroesk, hopefully the rain in the forecast will hold off until later in the day.