Our granddaughter Xaris turned 4 on Friday and we send big hugs and kisses and a nice picture of kittens to her from Ukraine! For everyone else...........
I haven’t posted in a couple days- I normally do my blog posts at night after everyone else heads to bed. However I have a cold- and have been heading to bed early in the hope of feeling better the last couple days. So I am still coughing and sneezing but feeling a little better today. Except my leg- I tripped on the steps yesterday afternoon- not sure how I tripped, but I fell up the steps outside the house and managed to scrape my right knee, left thigh(which is the leg with the huge bruise that hurts when I walk,) and whacked my forearm for good measure.
I had gone outside to take a photo of the windows that Garry and Victor had been installing in the summer kitchen (they replaced the big window) and the one for the milkhouse- they had ordered them three weeks ago, and they were finally in. (If you look closely in the photo with Victor's van you can see- )The neighbour lady was busy planting her winter garlic in her garden, and a couple teens showed up looking for a job and got the one of digging the pit for the brewers’ grain storage- Garry is hoping to get cement poured for it soon- right now it is on the cement behind the barn (well it was- they are out and can’t get any until next week). Garry is looking into beet pulp as a substitute, but it is more expensive.
Garry was finishing the inside of the wall the window is in with chipboard (he had delayed doing it as he would probably need to take it out to put in a milk tank.) The milk tank purchase is on hold- Garry can’t figure out a way to get the milk in and out of the one he was going to buy- with our current method of milk sales- buckets in and cans out). Now he wants to find a dumping station to get the milk in or find a flat top tank.
Thursday morning we had the first frost of the fall, although we have had a number of cold days already. It was a hard killing frost, and the car had a good thick coat over it at 7:30am when we headed toward Dnepropetroesk- Garry had the defroster on full blast and turned on the windshield washer spray a couple times so he could see to drive through the village (there are people on foot and bicycles not to mention the chickens, geese and dogs crossing the road.) While we were gone, Maxim headed off to get the three new milking cows- as seen in the photo- the middle cow is second-calf, the other two are about two years old and recently had their first calf. You can see that I got a cute photo of the bull calf in his home across the aisle with the new camera- flash photography is a great thing!
We were scheduled to go to team meeting at 11 am across the river at the Bellamys. Garry had made plans to speak to some classes at the lyceum high school – it is the free education that you pay more for- there are fees and fundraisers, but a better education- at 8:20. The boys and I got dropped off at McDonalds for breakfast (they have Egg McMuffins and free wi-fi- you can see Seth using his new computer in the photo) then walked across the street to the mall to meet Doreen, recently arrived in Ukraine, who was catching a ride with us around ten, since Garry was supposed to pick us up at quarter to twenty after. He rolled into the parking lot at 10:30ish, excited about the opportunity he had had to talk to students about what he is doing in Ukraine and why. This is the most popular question people ask- why would you leave Canada and a successful farm business and come here? Garry loves to answer this question- there are more important things in life than money and worldly success- he is here to show God’s love and help people.
There was a celebration – village day in Nikolipolia today, with singing and shisleek (BBQ) . Garry and Maxim went down and took some photos (I’m a little sore to walk that far) including one of Garry with the mayor. In case you are wondering- with the photo of the baby, it is sweater/sweatshirt weather here, but babies in Ukraine are bundled up. The boys are doing a little schoolwork today- math and biology- since we skipped classes on Thursday.
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