Razom

Another week has passed and it is now Thursday the 17th. We’ve been living at the work site for a week. So far so good! Many things have happened, heh. The most recent is that today we killed the mouse that has not given us a good nights sleep the past two nights. Yesterday I was so tired from 2 sleepless nights I slept through most of Kolya’s conniving to capture the little rodent. We had captured it a few times in a bag of our things and put it out on the balcony hoping that maybe the mouse would jump… that plan didn’t work. Every night the scratching was taunting us to get up and find her. When the light came on the noise would stop until Kolya would switch the light off and snuggle back under the covers and again the taunting would begin. After 3 nights, we finally got it! We were going to go buy poison tonight (we didn’t want to before as Bruce and his family has been here the past 2 days and didn’t want one of the kids to eat it) after the mornings coffee break (which gives the guys about 10 minutes a load off their feet) I heard the mouse and called Kolya up and he saw it jump into a plastic bag. He ran it outside and called for his brother, Alosha, to start to dump in on the ground, as he stood with a shovel ready to give an eternal headache to whatever ran out. Of course I was watching the process and where would that little mouse run?? Directly at me! I saw the shovel out of the corner of my eye and screamed bloody murder thinking I was about to lose at least a toe and at the most an entire foot! I ran while Kolya gave it a good whack. We hope that no friends will visit in looking for the missing mouse and we will sleep soundly this evening! Just 40 minutes left in the workday… Yeah!! The Crowe family hasn’t returned from the trip to the island where there is ‘Camp 120’ is happening. Their plan was to head back to Kyiv today and so Kolya has been putting tile down in the kitchen area which need to set for 24 hours. How do you tell 6 kids not to walk on it? Yikes! It’s been fun to see the progressing and the empty shell taking shape into a house. The hottest the room we are staying in has gotten up to 104 degrees! I’ve been experimenting in how to keep our room cool (the sun sets LATE on this side of the house). Today has been cool with the temperature hovering at 72 in our room (what we typically wake up to after the night cools our room off! The evenings have been 91.4 at it’s hottest after my messing around with opening and closing doors and strategically placing stand-up fans. Not too bad considering it could be 104!!! July is typically the hottest month here and we are hoping not to melt!

And with that, another weekend has passed. It’s now the 21st of July. All is well. We brought more ‘stuff’ that we aren’t using with us in a duffel and two backpacks. Picked up some food that’s cheaper in Kyiv than Rzhishchev! Kolya is at Epi-Center with Bruce, helping pick up needed things to finish his house. He’s got 3 weeks of work left, finishing strong… working 10ish hour days. It’s exciting as more and more tile goes down on the floor… maybe this week the kitchen/dining room will be finished! I’ll be meeting them for the trip home later today. I’m trying to arrange our things at my parents with what can go up high, for the time being, sorting what will go to Kolya’s mom in the village (finally found a place for all the t-shirts I’ve gotten over the years but no longer wear!) It’s been a fairly relaxing weekend. Arriving at 4ish on Saturday, we joined Mumsie and Pops with the Lauderdale family for a picnic in the park. We stayed for the first piece and started to make our way home to watch the Dynamo soccer game that was happening in the same park! Some times the cheering drowning out the music ☺ We couldn’t pass up the chance so we went for the second half of the game! Kolya had never been to that stadium so it was exciting on many levels and the fact that Dynamo won! Sunday found us again at Church of the Holy Trinity. We spent the afternoon with Lena and Vova (Belka and Gvozd) who were married 2 months after us ☺ It was fun having some ‘couple’ time and relaxing in the park with a beer. Lena and Kolya have known each other a long time and Vova and I have known each other for at least the 7 years I’ve lived here. It’s a fun added dynamic to stories shared and learning more about our spouses! That evening Matt McMurrin came by and we were able to spend time with him as well as Toma and Stepasha! I’m excited to reconnect with people in Kyiv and hear what’s been happening in their lives and for Kolya to meet and spend time with friends of mine that are now ours. Well, need to get back to boxes before I get ‘the call’ to make the 45ish minute trek by metro to meet my hubby for a ride back ‘home’.

Five o’clock and life is good. Everything is clean, haha… one, maybe two trips to carry things up to our next ‘home’ for a month! Just some laundry to fold, warm shower to take and pack up our coffee maker and grab our food from the fridge, and we can be off! I think it’ll be an early night… Kolya is working in some part of the house with no mobile connection. Oh well. Maybe it’ll be ramen noodles for dinner ☺
Six thirty and everything is packed, well… except the computer! Had a brainstorm and called Gaven to see if he could help us get the rest of our stuff to Bruce’s and his answer was YES! Saves us quite a few trips back and forth ☺ The stovetop and oven I hear are also working, that means… no ramen noodles for dinner! This afternoon I went ahead and baked a coffee cake, just in case, for breakfast the next two days. It may get interesting trying to cook lunch in the middle of where the guys are working :-/ We’ll figure it out! I’m seeing lots of cleaning in my future.
I’m excited to see how God is going to plan our next 6 months. I already know mid-August, I’ll nanny for an adopting couple at least one day. Interestingly enough, I actually stayed with this family on the first youth choir tour to the states in 2003! Their names sound familiar but 2 tours, meeting Kolya’s family, I can’t put a face to the name! After that, we ‘plan’ to head west to visit with Kolya’s mom, help her harvest her potatoes as well as some other things to prepare for winter. It looks like Independence Day, Ukraine style may be spent in the village. We’ll also be able to get Kolya’s international passport started as well as stick a new picture on his Ukrainian passport now that he’s 25. And maybe celebrate Kolya’s mom’s birthday September 1.
Hopefully later this week, we’ll be getting in touch with places that have said they were interested in Kolya working for them and the rest of the fall will shape up nicely. It may be nice to travel Ukraine a bit while there aren’t any kiddos around!
Talking with Mumsie over the past week, said I have to post more about my every day life. Heh. Whoever thought being a ‘housewife’ was going to be boring, think again! Between all the houseguests, water not working properly, packing, etc… it’s been one heck of a week! We had a houseguest come 2 days early (last Thursday) and leave two days early (Monday not today!), which may have been a blessing in disguise! Max is a friend of Kolya’s and someone I’d also met who is a believer and took a month off work to attend a camp next week (120 hours on an island) and help prepare (i.e. dig toilets, trash pits and pick up trash before the campers arrive) well, he also helped us out big time in moving furniture back in place with Kolya, being the second set of hands to fix the water pump and just provide laughter and an extra body to loosen the tension while packing, hehe. That next day, Friday, Sasha (who has been living with us a total of 3 months in our first 5 ½ months of married life) was having his girlfriend down to show her Kyiv, as she had never been. Of course the water pump died (and the weed whacker went to weed whacker heaven 2 weeks ago… with only just a little bit left for Kolya to cut!) and we were moving and needed to be able to wash sheets, towels, etc… before Jono got back and 4 other would be living with him! Not to mention dishes to be washed… Yes, we could walk down the street to the well and heat it up, but it’d be SO much faster the other way! On top of that, the people who Kolya is working for had gone to Epi-Center (Ukraine’s Home Depot/Lowe’s) to pick up the stuff on the list Kolya had made… translate to many phone calls while fixing the pump and moving furniture! (and putting in 48 hours that week at work). All was fixed. All is still working… except the weed eater. The problem also was, we were leaving on Saturday to be Sasha and Ina’s tour guides to Kyiv, spending the night (so we good see Elyce, Sasha and Amy) and worship at Church of the Holy Trinity and partake of Communion. Getting a ride back with Rich and Barb Leary to get the first load of our stuff (thanks!!!) and Max was here to be able to help… I had misjudged the size of the van, so we scrambled to pack some more stuff. The only downside is those are things we still have to go through sooner rather then later at my parents! Urgh! There are still some things here (well that we moved to Bruce’s) that I may still pitch!
I’m sitting here in the kitchen and man, this place looks empty! Well, the living room is full of stuff that Jon and Ruth have brought but man, we must have a ton of stuff!!!!
Just got ‘the’ call…. So off to pack this sweet macbook away and get ready to clean some more!

Well, that two weeks at the beginning of the first ‘post’ had turned into TOMORROW! Jono’s flight arrives around 3, so I’m told and they are going to do a big shopping trip before heading back this way to Rzhishchev. Kolya and I will long be asleep (I hope!) before they return, in our ‘new’ place for the next month or so. We are moving into the house Kolya is helping build/remodel! By Wednesday evening, our hope is the carpet will have been put down and we’ll ‘move in’. We’ve already have our stuff over there! It’s kind of difficult to know what you’ll need for a month! We hope the kitchen may even be working by the end of the week! Maybe a working washer and dryer as well. It will be nosier for sure! But it will be nice to have a place to ourselves in the evenings after work hours. The only bummer is, not Tour de France! How can it be?!?! Last summer while traveling all over the place I was still able to watch just about every minute… This year??? I’ve seen a total of maybe 15 minutes and it’s the 4th day! With many of the big names not racing, I was looking forward to ‘meeting’ the newbies and look for new favorites for myself to cheer on. Oh well. The things you give up to be ‘one’. ☺
Mumsie let me borrow the first season of Prison Break! I’m really wanting to start it…. But I’m going to try and wait until Thursday to start, when I’m at the site.
It’s hard to believe that this Saturday we will be celebrating 6 months of marriage! It’s been a crazy 6 months with a permanent houseguest (for 3 of those months) and other trials to face together as we began a new life together. All I can say is that God is faithful! He gave us the strength needed to finish each day with minimal frustration! I really enjoyed Pastor Ivan’s sermon on Sunday about not worrying. When we’ve had the privilege to worship in Kyiv, his sermons have always hit home on what we had been discussing together before hand. It was nice to also take part in the Lord’s Supper. I love the reminder each month of what Christ did for me, keeping it in the forefront of my mind.
I guess I should go hang the sheets to dry, the washer just beeped at me. It’s been nice to empty out each room that we had used and see it all clean with just the bare minimum! Well, it seems like it after we’ve emptied out our stuff! Furniture is empty, all our kitchen stuff packed away, almost (still have the frying pan/pot/coffee grinder/coffee pot and our spice rack thing) and Jono’s mugs, glasses, etc put back in place! I realize how we really were able to make his place, ours for a few short months. Thanks Jono, for letting us live here!!! If anything is missing, it’s probably being used for camp. ☺
Thank you also, Jamie & Mumsie and Rich & Barb for driving down here and picking up a load of our stuff! It is MUCH appreciated! I don’t think we’ll have to leave anything behind for a time!!! Just a dresser and exercise bike that wouldn’t have fit in your respective vehicles. Okay… I’m really off to hang to laundry ☺ Hope the sun stays out for the rest of the day!!!!

I’ll post a little each day this weekend with posts I’ve written over the past month or two

Whew! With two weeks to go until a move, still looking for an apartment! We are busying ourselves with things we can’t do while watching Euro 2008 semi-finals tomorrow and Thursday. I weeded the garden for I hope the last time! With the big rains last week, they doubled or even tripled in size! We are still waiting to cut the grass because we haven’t gotten our hands on the weed-eater :-/ The joys of not having a car to just run over and get it ☺ We’ve finally removed the winter windows! We kept them in because it was keeping the house cool with the second set of windows but, summer officially came to the Western world on the 20th although Ukraine was on the 1st. I have noticed it is a little warmer in the evenings without them in. Oh well.

After returning to my parents all the books I borrowed and finally read, I’m rereading “When Sinners Say ‘I Do’” by Dave Harvey. Yikes! It’s funny the first time I read it was right before the wedding. Now, almost 6 months married, I can glean even more and put into practice. Making me look at my own heart for misunderstandings, tiredness, short answers, etc… Yes, I could blame conversing in Russian and not English and so my brain gets fried more easily when tired for example BUT is that just an excuse for what was in my heart to begin with and I just am not wanting to deal with it. Things to think about ☺ I think it may turn into a book to read every 6 months.

And then there was one week to go!!
The boxes continue to grow as packing continues… It’s been good to get rid of some stuff that is no longer needed and wonder why on earth did I keep this?! I think I’ve already achieved the quota for 360 de-clutter items this year ☺ This week we’ll try and get everything finished, furniture put back as Jono had and even move our bed, desk and table to Bruce’s house! In many ways it’s scary to not know exactly what the future has in store for us but is also exciting to see how in God’s timing we’ll find out trusting Him that everything is under-control! It also forces us to be on our knees together a LOT. As of this morning I’ve got 8 boxes ready to go. More sorting to be done but thankfully, mostly Kolya’s ☺ I’ve pretty much got all the books packed up, games/puzzles and some kitchen stuff! It’s challenging trying to guess how many books I might read, what kitchen things are still needed and what can I box up! Jamie and Dasha’s birthday present will come in handy! It’s a little picnic set complete with plates/cutlery/mugs and other neat stuff! It’ll make it easier to pack up our dishes and sent them off to Kyiv keeping it all in one box! ☺ In the next few months we may be visiting several cities (even working in some of them!) and finally get Kolya’s passport for when Mumsie and Pops say, Let’s go meet the relatives!! Maybe even getting a vacation thrown in ☺

We had a fun weekend going to the First International Eco-Cultural Festival held here in Rzhishchev! We actually didn’t plan on going and then went both days! It was interesting to see how big and for the most part, well planned, it was! After registering, we strolled along the vender booths from all over Ukraine. I got a Ukrainian skirt and Kolya a Ukrainian belt and a book all about salo with a poster. Our plan is to frame and hang it in our future kitchen. They had live music as well as ‘masters’ doing intricate paper cutting, making things out of clay, a blacksmith and a house being built in the old style! It was also alcohol and drug free. Even discouraging smoking! As there was no checking of people’s bags at the door it did turn into a BYOB but was kept under-control with the police in force walking the property! The atmosphere the first night was contagious! Everyone so proud to be Ukrainian and dancing to the folk music, dressed in tradition clothing. On Sunday morning we were telling everyone at church in Kagralyk they had to go if they had free time. The only people to take us up on the offer were Danny and Liese Foote. (Maybe because we had more time to convince them over lunch and cutting my hair….) The four of us made our way out there and spent a fairly quiet afternoon. Danny treated Kolya to wall climbing (pictures to come) and we made it under a tent just as the sky opened up! We decided to leave when the new act came on stage leaving a lot to be desired. Thanks guys for driving! We finished the day with watching the finals of Euro 2008 with Spain winning 1-0 over Germany. Since I know two Germans, I decided to cheer for them as neither team is who I would have wanted to win ☹ oh well… maybe in 4 years when Ukraine will be co-hosting the tournament with Poland my teams will do better.
I guess I should get back to packing…. Although the rain fall right after lunch may cause me to curl up and read… maybe even a cat nap!