Merry Christmas

 We had a wonderful time with our family for Christmas and my birthday. I got some photos on my birthday from Christmas in the village, so I'm sharing some here. Looks like they got some snow. 

From what I hear, they are getting eight hours of electrical power a day now because of Russia's bombing attacks on power plants and infrastructure. This looks like a village Christmas kids thing.

I cannot explain the indoor snow, must be Christmas magic, but I see familiar faces. 

We are back at the lake now, there's family visits during the school break and ice fishing. My ablation has been scheduled for January 12th, after which my heart should work just fine. 

Notes from Ukraine

 Seems like life in the village just keeps on, in spite of the terrible photos you see from the cities of bombings. I've been waiting to get a photo of Nikolai, since he arrived for his first home leave from the army a few hours after Garry left the village, but I haven't seen any. 

Garry got this photo of Andrey when he came back to the village for his a few days before Garry left. Angelina was happy to see her papa. 

Garry gets regular updates from Max about the feed ration and how much milk they are making. This week the are up two cows to 96 cows milking and continue to make more milk. On November 19th , Max reported 1420, on December first it was 1523. I believe that's liters. Garry says they are up about 35% since he changed the feed ration when he was there. 

They were able to get 700 tones of the beet pulp to bag, there's no more available, I guess they are done turning sugar beets into sugar. Hopefully it gets them through the winter.