Home

That's right, we've been home for a week now. Garry thinks of the village as home, but for me it's the house on the farm in Canada where most of the children are. Don't worry. it took me years of marriage and four or five kids to not cry when I heard I'll be home for Christmas on the radio because I thought of home as my parents' house.




Anyway we left the Porters apartment in Kiev at 4 am last Friday morning as you know, here's a photo I took from the guest room about 3:300 I was so excited I woke up early. It was frosty as the plane took off in the dark at 6:45 am.

Then we flew into Amsterdam (drizzly) on Ukraine International Airlines- it's strange we flew KLM but were never on one of their planes- then Delta to Minneapolis (clear) and then Winnipeg, where we could see snow in the fields as we approached the city.



We have had some trouble with jet lag, it is mostly just the time change between here and there has us waking up at 2 or 3 or 4 am because it is way past time to get up in Ukraine! It's an eight hour time change.











However we have had a great time with the family. Here are Luke- who picked us up at the airport, and has grown more at age 20 to be the only one of the boys to be as tall as Garry- 6'5"- Jonah, and Seth checking out Micah's new Futurama monopoly game. They played a couple nights, mostly after Garry and I headed to bed early like 7 or 8 o'clock! Jonah was over here the first weekend, I took him for a doctor's appointment the first Monday to get him iron levels checked again, and them drove him back over to Morden to our daughter's house to get back to school. Christmas holidays start on the 22nd, so they should be here for Garry's birthday dinner.

Sunday we when to church in Piney to hear our son Matthew preach, and went to dinner with all the boys and Matt's family and Josh's finacee in the states after, the church and his house are right at the US/Canada border. The next day we sent our passports away to get our new Ukrainian visas processed.

Garry and I saw lots of fellow farmers at the milk board meeting in Winnipeg, where Garry talked a lot about what we are doing in Ukraine to many people, we may get some more visitors next year. He even got to play basketball with the boys in their mens league in Winnipeg, they won the game, and he scored twice in overtime.



We have been getting to know our grandaughters again. Luckily Keziah, seventeen months old is not shy. She loves to play with the boys kitten, and doesn't talk much/ I did hear her say stop! while chasing it when she was here with Havilah, who's three (picture) Xaris was at kindergarten that day.

Friday night I babysat at their house while Matt and Kari went out to her Christmas party. Kari works part-time as a dietian for the health board. Xaris was showing me how well she can count, now that she goes to school; but it seems little Havi has been learning too- when Xaris said 38-39- what's next? Forty! her sister answered. Then 48,49- 51! Very close Havilah...

I thought I was over jetlag when we got up at seven the next morning, but I started this blog post Sunday morning at 3:30 am! Garry talked to Victor on Wednesday, I think, and the overdue cow Ossa had a bull calf back in Ukraine. He tried to call Maxim a couple times but sometimes it is hard to get through on the phone from here.