Christmas and birthday week

 At our house, we celebrate all week, starting with our daughter's birthday on the 20th, Garry on the 22nd and mine on the day after Christmas. so normally its a week full of family celebrations. However with covid restrictions we have celebrated mostly via the internet. We have passed gifts around and the crocheted gifts I was making all year were hits, the boys really liked their dinosaurs.

I had fun theming Garry's birthday party as 64, like the Beatles ' song... will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64... I told him we'd see. This morning I phoned my dad and he sang happy birthday to me. Garry got our younger boys to help him buy me a chromebook (since you have to order and pickup non-essential shopping, he couldn't just go to the store) which I thought would be good for writing blogposts. I'm trying it out now. 

Victor says things are going good in the village. The students are planning a big celebration for New Years Eve, but had one in class with Larissa on Christmas Eve. Traditionally New Years was the holiday celebrated in Soviet times, so it still is the important one for the students. Most of the group is in this photo from the 24th.

One more day

 Almost out of isolation. The kids drop off groceries and goodies, but Garry is more than ready to go to the barn, even if we can't get out much with most things closed here in Manitoba. A little snow is falling this morning and we are looking forward to livestreaming church in a few minutes. 

Isolation

 It's day five the arrive Canada app tells me. On Sunday Victor drove us to Kyiv, making great time, only five and a half hours. 

We saw a bit of snow halfway to Kyiv, but it didn't last long. We also saw a car pulling a trailer with three or four pigs in, and few other interesting sights. It seemed like Victor's vehicle had problems with a coolant hose leak, he went to check it out at a garage after we checked in. We bought dinner in boxes from the grocery store counter, heated them up in the microwave and ate at the hotel, because the restaurants were all closed for the weekend Covid lock down. Victor took us to the airport at four am, before heading home to Dnepro. 

We flew out of Kyiv at six am on Monday morning, and were happy not to have to pay extra for our checked bags as we'd thought we would.   We had a three hour flight to Amsterdam, and four hours after landing there, we boarded the flight to Calgary.  We survived wearing masks for nearly 24 hours, and on the flight to Calgary we had four seats each. Unfortunately it was a plane where the armrests only raise up a couple inches, so no stretching out to sleep.  That flight was more than nine and a half hours, and then we had to unload slowly for Covid distancing. Just as we were almost off the plane Garry realized he didn't have his wallet and returned to his seat to check for it. He came back smiling waving it.

We didn't have tickets for our final flight into Winnipeg, but after going through customs, we were excited to get ticketed for the flight that was leaving soon. Our third lucky break for the trip! It was a smaller plane, which was why the cancelled flight on our itinerary, the flight number had changed, but we landed at 6:45 in Winnipeg. The luggage did not make the flight, but they brought it out on Tuesday afternoon. We were asleep long before we would have landed after midnight on the next flight. The kids had dropped the car and keys for us at the airport earlier in the day, and had the hexaplex apartment stocked and ready for us.

Garry is finding isolation boring, even though I have made him lots of tasty meals, and have cut back on crocheting to play Sequence with him so if you see him online give him a video chat, or email me for the new house number, as the boys moved to phone here for our quarantine.