Continued... slightly delayed

I intended to write this Sunday afternoon,  but when we returned home from church,  we discovered that the internet service in the village was not working.  Later in the day, Garry was talking to one of the students and found out they had phoned to find out that it would be back on sometime Monday.

It actually did come on around the time we were at the Crawfords with the students for the biweekly dinner they are hosting for the students.  They are upgrading the internet service, but it's been a little slow since it came back on, so we are hoping it really does get better!

So last week the corn was combined and most of it was put in semi trucks and sold right out of the field. Once it was off, Garry,  or Max and the guy students were out in the fields every afternoon pulling the plastic dripline tubes up in the field. The boys finished it Monday afternoon and it can be plowed up now. The New Holland  tractor has been out everyday until after dark plowing fields. They were busy plowing gardens for the people we rent land from also. The sunflower seeds are finally moving out of the shed into trucks to fill the contracts that finally were made to sell them. The winter wheat fields look good, nice and green, I'll try to remember to get a photo soon.

Thursday afternoon we had visitors from Kirvoy Rog,  Daryl and Molly Porter,  and Adam Nikkel and someone we hadn't had visit before, Nazar, who is one of Daryl's translators for his sermons. They were a little late for lunch because they had some car trouble,  but enjoyed some chili after they arrived around one o'clock.

Then we left Leila doing her normal after lunch floor washing,  since I'd decided to come along on their walk to the barn with Garry. When we returned home, Leila had gone visiting at Julia and Dima's, as she  often is, and Valentina was milking, so the door was unlocked as it often is since the girls moved in.

Later we had the Crawfords join us for dinner, along with Kolya,  Oksana and baby Matthew Mazhara since Kolya and our guests are all friends so they could meet the baby. As we were starting to clear the table,  the lights went out.

Monday night they went out four times, Victor was staying overnight in the summer kitchen and turned them back on three times (the breaker at the front of the house was flipped). Then the electricity was off until four am when Garry woke up and turned it on. It happened twice Wednesday night, once again around 9:30 p.m. It was closer to seven on Thursday...

Anyway,  the Mazhara family headed home and Garry took the guys to watch him breed a cow, and Shannon and I continued washing up the dinner dishes,  when off the power  went again. Once again, we turned on our phone flashlights to see, luckily Scott was still in the house so he went out to turn it back on, then hid at his house with the lights off, hoping to catch someone in the act as we were beginning to suspect that it was kids doing it.

After Garry and guys returned,  we phoned him and Scott came back and we played games at the kitchen table until late, the power stayed on the rest of the night. Unfortunately as they were heading to bed, Daryl noticed some money missing from his bag he'd left in the hallway when they came in. More on this in my next post.

Friday morning our visitors stayed around after a big breakfast with hashbrowns (I had forgotten about peeling and cooking potatoes the night before). They left around noon, and Garry took the guys out to pull up dripline while I baked a pear ( mostly pear, they were free from the Crawfords yard) and apple pie in a 9 by 13 pan for Vasa's birthday.  We were having birthday pie at five pm, and Garry had promised the students a trip to Ashan (the students enjoy buying cheaper groceries than in the village and eating some goodies from McDonald's). We try to go several times a month.

Unfortunately,  Garry was so tired from working in the field (it's a dirty job, pulling long lines out of the soil, tripping over corn stalks) he elected me to drive the van into Zaporosia.  We left at six, arrived at the mall at 6:40, so I told them we'd meet at the doors at eight. The store was packed, since it was Friday night instead of the usual Thursday,  and I was lucky to get them in the van by 8:30.

 So Garry and I went to bed, and 20 minutes later,  just before ten, out went the electric.  Then someone banged on the outside of our bedroom window, pretty much verifying the neighborhood kids theory.

On Saturday afternoon,  Bear and his house moved to the front yard, just by the breaker. For some reason, the power has stayed on, although Bear was barking around 10 and midnight the first couple nights.

More on the missing money in the next post, I'm too tired to write about Saturday tonight.