On Wednesday morning I found out that the Sturtevant family was coming that night. Joanna was going to help my Mom fix the Thanksgiving meal. Josh and I had a lot of fun. We played outside and did everything!

After the Thanksgiving meal, all of us went to a waterfall.

OH, I forgot to tell you . . . that I drove the Mazda by myself

Vova

Next

We have to pack, probably do some more on school and shut our house down to leave it. It will still be open for visitors if someone comes to help Katrina and for services so that means we leave a lot of stuff out for our visitors' use.

Dave is replacing a window pane in the shed today. Hopefully we find a leak in the roof and seal it off. We're sorting clothes and I'm blogging because there may not be much more chance for awhile.



Here are some clothes, waiting for the packing process.

Birthday

Thanks to everyone who wrote and called on my birthday. Mother and Daddy stayed up until midnight to call me at 7 am in Ukraine. I picked up the phone the day before, saying an English hello because I expected to talk to Katrina and it was my brother, Tim, calling from New York! I got emails from a bunch of people that I don't hear from very often . . . guess I need to double the frequency of my birthdays!! Thank you!

Because of the time, there weren't a lot of pictures. Dave and Seth fixed a very special meal.

And I had some of my favorite treats, flowers and ice cream.

Then I began preparing for Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving

God, friends and family--- add that to good food and fellowship and you have the recipe for a wonderful Thanksgiving.

We've been able to talk to most of our children who aren't on this side of the ocean about once a week with the miracle of Skype.

We had some of our children here, lots of food, and friends.

The rolls were among the biggest hit of the meal.

Friends.

After the meal and a phone call to the US, we took off to see a waterfall. It was pretty dark by the time we got there. But the hike down to it, because the roads were too muddy to pass was good exercise and we enjoyed it.

Then we came back home to play Guesstures. Jessica Sturtevant and Allona chose teams. We had fun

Two Vovas

Little Vova, Yulia's little brother made it to children's service this Sunday.

Our Vova takes a special interest in him, helping him say his memory verses because they share the same name.

Playing Ping Pong in the Dark

I tried but I couldn't do it, get a good picture of the action. The electricity went off at about 2:30 pm. Our children and our visitors got bored playing board games and finally decided to play ping pong. They had the light of a flashlight or two and one kerosene lamp.


These are the best ones I could get.

Miscellaneous/To Do List

The water to cool the nuclear reactors at Yuzhnokranksk flows out into a lake. Because the water is warmer than the weather, there is always fog or a heavy frost around the lake in cooler weather.

Here's the fog.


Another item on our to do list before we come home, was to take Allona and Vova to see their birth mother. It was a relief that everything seemed to be going fairly well for them. Here's a picture of their mother with her children.