Wednesday Garry drove Nikolai,  Alona, baby Danil,  Valentina,  Leila and Sasha down to the sea for their holiday. He hoped to leave at 7am, but ended up at the barn longer than he planned,  Yana phoned about a heifer that was calving. They drove out of the village at 8:30, and an hour later Garry phoned to say that he was stuck in a traffic jam in Zaporosia.

In fact it took three hours (normally less than one) just to drive through Zaporosia. He said everyone including the baby were great, and once they finally got over the bridge, (there are two bridges and one has repairs ongoing this summer) the rest of the trip went great. He got them checked in at the hotel he booked, they found an inexpensive cafeteria style cafe to eat at, went swimming and he got home before dark.

Today (Friday) he left at 5 am, with Julia and Dima (who returned last week) so they can have a day at the beach while he picks up the rest of the gang. The Mazhara family are today's milking crew, since they went to the sea last week.

Garry, when he's not driving to the sea, has had fun with the Harder boys, helping August with his fan experiment and watching cartoons.  We now know all about Captain Underpants.

Yesterday Garry and I needed to meet Victor in Dnepro to pick up (at one office) and register (at a different building) our new residence documents. Since we had the boys, they had to come along.  I downloaded a couple games on my newly found phone for them, and told them to charge their phone so they could play on it. Two devices for two boys.

Before leaving the village we had to pump up the front tire with the slow leak, straighten out the seatbelts so the boys didn't have to sit right next to each other (the students rarely wear them, but how the seatbelt from the center bench ended up wrapped around the third row grab handle twice, I don't know! ) Then we took the field road from the village to the gas station since Garry had not filled up since driving to Kirvilola and back on Wednesday.  We discovered that the gauge was not working properly while driving Clay and Bev to the airport (did I write about having to push the van again? ) Some nice guy in a truck stopped and pulled us into a gas station to fill up with diesel and we got it restarted. Anyway I don't think the boys would have been as good at pushing as Clay and we now know there's not really three bars left, after it worked for months.

As Garry was driving along the dirt road between the trees and the pasture field where you could see the 20 cows and herders from the second village herd (they go out the other side of town) when a red cow that had been left behind stepped out of the trees onto the road a meter in front of us and Garry braked and swerved to miss her. I don't think the boys noticed,  they were playing on the phones in the back seat. Made our hearts beat faster, like in the old Diamond Rio song, there's a cow in the road, and you swerve to the left, your heart skips a beat, and you're scared half to death... I was not quick enough to get a photo of her.

We didn't have to wait too long to pick up our new cards, but the second office, after we waited in line where Victor had been a month earlier with Daryl for half hour, we got to the front and were told it was a different room. With a new longer line. Luckily the batteries lasted until we were done.

The boys were excited about a late McDonald's lunch, and then we stopped at Morningstar church so Garry could talk about the building project for next spring with him. They want to add on a large room for the sanctuary, the room they meet in (it's a house the are slowly remodeling,  upstairs there are bathrooms and classrooms for SS). It is much too small for the congregation, as you can see in the  photo I took last winter.  It's standing room only until the children are dismissed for Sunday school after the praise singing.

The boys made friends and played hide and seek with a couple 12 year old girls who were in my SEI English classes. They mostly spoke Russian after the girls asked if the boys did. We  got home after four, and Garry was off to check fields and breed somebody's cow in another village.

He got a cob of corn from a field in that village last week, here's the naturally watered corn cob (on the left) next to the one he pulled from his irrigated field yesterday.

It looks like the custom corn silage guys won't make it here until next week,  which should be just the right time, Garry said.  I'm going to make the boys some breakfast and wash more clothes before the girls take over the washer this weekend.

Garry just phoned,  it's a beautiful day at the sea, they got there about 8:30 am. Definitely beat the traffic.