International Women's Day Picnic

Nelly asked Garry two weeks ago what we would be doing with the students to celebrate the March 8th holiday and with the forecast looking warm, we decided on a picnic.

Scott and Teresa not in photo 

 I had a busy morning boiling eggs and making sandwiches,  coffee, tea and cutting apples (Shannon made muffins and Nelly cookies and apples slices also).

Garry had a busier morning because the connection pieces finally arrived for the water pipes, and they needed to get the ones in the ground in the new alfalfa field. They had started planting the alfalfa,  peas and oats mix Thursday and were happy to get the pipes in before they finished seeding.  It went so well that Garry decided to put the rest of the line in the ground (not just where they were planting)  so he came home a little after the planned time of one.

The two girls who had milked the cows an hour early came in at 1:10 and popped into and out of the shower in record time.  We got all the students into the van with Garry or the back seat of the Crawford's car or our white car that I drove.  Sasha B rushed over to get the shotgun seat with me. We convoyed down the highway to Zaporosia and found parking spots on the island near the museum of history. We were there for the free stuff though and hiked the path down to the rocks by the river.

 Scott lent a steadying arm to Dima when we got to the extreme downhill portion of the trail. Dima has  Muscular Dystrophy and uneven ground makes walking a challenge.

Garry loaded all the picnic bags into Alona and Nikolai's stroller and people took turns carrying  baby Danil.

I finally made it down where they had stopped and Garry prayed, we took a group photo (which is when we realized that new old Sasha was not with us, we had not realized he was not in one of the cars, or we would have looked for him before we left the village. ) We had two former students with us,  Andrei and Karina, who were out to visit for the holiday weekend.

Garry started passing out the open faced egg salad sandwiches.  I had put three slices of dill pickles on each one so I could stack them in boxes. Then there were drinks, apple quarters, muffins, and cookies.

Most of the students wandered down by the river for a while, playing frisbee, exploring and taking selfies.

Danil has no teeth, but likes cookies

Julia took a selfie with me 

Then they returned to where I was still sitting on the rocks crocheting (although I had to chase down our garbage bag when there was a big gust of wind and pick up some cups that fell out). Nelly got out the cookies she had made to share with the students.

Then we hiked around below the reproduction sich (fort) and back to the cars, retrieving the frisbee occasionally from an errant toss, snacking on Nelly's apple slices and some leftover store bought cookies.

Then Garry asked who wanted to go grocery shopping and almost everyone said yes so he and the Crawfords went one way while I drove the three guys who said no home to the village.

After the excursion the girls got their 8th of March podarink (gift) boxes of candy from us, I found a little bunch of chocolate hearts for Karina so she had a gift too. I had given Nelly and Yana their boxes of candy earlier in the day.