Arrived back home on Monday evening (took the day flight back from Canada for the first time). It's been a laid-back week with the kids exploring their toys after 2 months away from them, and just going out when absolutely necessary.
One of the more necessary items on the agenda was preparing for Adriana's 5th birthday party on Saturday. We had planned for it to take place at home in the back garden, thinking that the weather would cooperate (as it had done last year), and that we would have no problem entertaining 30 - 5 year olds for 3 hours.
God must have been laughing at me hysterically as I chewed on my fingernails listening to the weather report all day Friday and seriously hoping that when the nice weather lady said "showers over most of England, Scotland and Wales for most of Saturday", that she didn't mean to include London as well!
"How I am supposed to keep 30 children occupied for 3 hours while not letting them outdoors at all - at the risk of tracking in mud from the rain and windswept garden???" These thoughts kept me awake most of the night.
The next morning was a frenzy of last-minute re-juggling of the Dora Adventure to be held indoors, with the guest bed being Star Mountain (subbing for the trampoline), Adriana's bunk being the Troll Bridge (subbing for the Little Tykes slide) and the upstairs hall being Crocodile Lake (subbing for the toddler pool outside).
As 1 pm approached there was one light drizzle and only 12 out of the 30 invited showed up. So for the last hour of the party, we threw open the patio doors and released the horde to play outside until their parents came to collect them via the side gate. (We still weren't going to let them track dirt back inside - we're not dummies!)
So next year rather than rely on the obviously inept weather reports or the changeable English weather, I'm having her party at an indoor play area.
No more stress for Mama!
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Saturday, August 26, 2006
Ukie Festival
Our last weekend here and we're spending it at the Ukrainian Festival in Toronto. After finishing up our stay at the cottage with George and Andrea and their boys Kristian and Michael, we drove up late last night to get a headstart for the Festival's parade at 11 the next morning. (Even had time to get Adriana's hair cut at Melonheads - great name for a kid's hairdresser - while she sat in the pony chair.) Here's a picture of her in the bonus helicopter ride after ther haircut.
The festival had the requisite rides for the younger kids, the 2 concert stages and lots of booths selling food and souveniers. Let's not forget the beer tent - which I was unable to spend too much time at since I had children with me...
We also came down to Peter and Tom's place to celebrate Adriana's birthday with some cake and presents. Peter's cake (as he had warned me) looked a bit odd because the icing refused to stick to it, so we decided it looked more like a muffin top instead. very tasty, in any case.
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Family history
I had the oppotunity to visit with my Uncle Vasyl and Aunt Bozena the other day at my step-mum Sophia's cottage and finally heard in detail some of my family's wartime history. (I probably should have either listened better to my father while he was alive - but I was young and stupid and he wasn't really interested in dredging up the past either.)
I knew that my father was captured by the Germans at the age of 20 and was shipped off to the occupied territories, but wasn't sure exactly where and was a bit unsure of the details of how he re-joined his family later. It turns out he was shipped to eastern Prussia (which I know know is northern Poland - near Gdansk) and worked in a factory of some sort. Later, the rest of his family (mum, dad, and 4 brothers and sisters) were captured by the Germans and shipped off to the German/Holland border where they were forced to re-build railway lines which had been blown up during the war. My grandmother and grandfather spent back-breaking days gathering up rocks and then re-aligning the tracks upon their supports. 2 years went by and my grandmother took a chance and begged her German commandant to write a letter to his counterpart in Eastern Prussia to bring her son there to rejoin them; promising that he was a diligent worker, like the rest of the family.
When my father was ordered to the commandant of the camp, he was worried he'd done something wrong and was deeply afraid he'd be shot. When it turned out that he was being shipped to meet the rest of his family, he was overjoyed. As my uncle puts it, it was God's will that he was shipped when he was, because apparerently he was on the last train going west before the Russians attacked and rousted the Germans. If he hadn't been on that train, he might never seen his family again and I certainly wouldn't be sitting here writing this blog! Thank God for Babsia taking the chance and getting her son back.
I knew that my father was captured by the Germans at the age of 20 and was shipped off to the occupied territories, but wasn't sure exactly where and was a bit unsure of the details of how he re-joined his family later. It turns out he was shipped to eastern Prussia (which I know know is northern Poland - near Gdansk) and worked in a factory of some sort. Later, the rest of his family (mum, dad, and 4 brothers and sisters) were captured by the Germans and shipped off to the German/Holland border where they were forced to re-build railway lines which had been blown up during the war. My grandmother and grandfather spent back-breaking days gathering up rocks and then re-aligning the tracks upon their supports. 2 years went by and my grandmother took a chance and begged her German commandant to write a letter to his counterpart in Eastern Prussia to bring her son there to rejoin them; promising that he was a diligent worker, like the rest of the family.
When my father was ordered to the commandant of the camp, he was worried he'd done something wrong and was deeply afraid he'd be shot. When it turned out that he was being shipped to meet the rest of his family, he was overjoyed. As my uncle puts it, it was God's will that he was shipped when he was, because apparerently he was on the last train going west before the Russians attacked and rousted the Germans. If he hadn't been on that train, he might never seen his family again and I certainly wouldn't be sitting here writing this blog! Thank God for Babsia taking the chance and getting her son back.
Saturday, August 19, 2006
Holes and ends
I don't know if it's the bug spray, the constant bike riding, or what, but everytime I turn around, Adriana's got another hole in the crotch of her shorts, capris, or underwear! How many times have I seen her lounging on the sofa, absent-mindedly picking at the threads around a gaping hole between her legs? Not sure what to do about it, since everytime I sew it up, it seems to unravel again. At least it's not as bad as the incident that the girls reminded me of when I went to pick up Adriana from school last spring and she met me at the door with a wave. Doesn't sound bad, does it? Well, imagine the wave consisting of Adriana's arm stuck in through the waistband of her trousers and coming out through the yawning gap in the non-existant seam in her crotch. I can remember the sheer goofiness of her pose outweighed my embarassment of her doing it in front of a crowd of mums, so I just had to laugh!
Other than holes everywhere, our summer has been progressing smoothly. Had the requisite trip to Canada's Wonderland, and have been hanging out at the cottage, cutting away decades of tree branches and trimming hedges. Orest leaves tomorrow for London, so he's making the last repairs to the cottage before he leaves. I'll be here next week when I'll have to slowly start packing things up too. God, the summer has flown by!
Other than holes everywhere, our summer has been progressing smoothly. Had the requisite trip to Canada's Wonderland, and have been hanging out at the cottage, cutting away decades of tree branches and trimming hedges. Orest leaves tomorrow for London, so he's making the last repairs to the cottage before he leaves. I'll be here next week when I'll have to slowly start packing things up too. God, the summer has flown by!
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Green Lake funnies
We just got back from our visit to the Van Dusen cottage, just want to thank Mike and Mary for hosting us yet again. The girls had a great time catching up with Ciana and Elise, and now Adriana has some summer memories of the cottage to add to her winter ones. Speaking of which, Adriana was the cause of much hilarity at one point that I almost bust a gut! Adriana was eating her lunch one day and asked Mary innocently: "Why does your cat not come to the cottage?" I guess her question was worded a bit confusingly, so Mary parrotted it back to confirm it. "Why doesn't my cat come to the cottage?" Adriana replies with "I don't know!" Classic Abbot and Costello "Who's on First" comes immediately to mind, as Mary tried to repeat the question again to make sure she understood the question. Mike and I just cracked up, me so hard, tears came to my eyes.
Another source of laughter (or frustration for Larysa) appears to have come with apparent inability to row a boat. I took Adriana out in the rowboat, at her request, only to find that whichever way I rowed, we always seemed to head into the shore. After several attempts, with Adriana howling in fear ("Mama gonna crash!!!!"), I managed to get the rowboat back to the dock. At that point, Larysa appeared and said she'd be willing to try the canoe with us, maybe we'd be able to successfully navigate around the lake in that. Within seconds, it became apparent that I had no idea what I was doing, and we ended up in the shore several more times, with Larysa's howls of "Mo
m, I thought you said you could steer?!?!" adding to that of Adriana's. It took about 10 minutes of backwards and forwarding to finally get the canoe into it's mooring place and I topped the whole misadventure off by doing the classic splits of one leg onboard and one on the dock with me in the water in the end. Oh, the shame!
Friday, August 04, 2006
Busy preparing and enroute to Green Lake
It's amazing how your body gets used to the lethargic days of just lounging around the cottage. It's not until you have to actually DO something that you realize how little you've done. Like the other day where we had to pack our stuff and get out of Toronto early enough on a Friday before the long weekend in order not to get caught in the holiday traffic. We'd decided to spend the day at our cottage before heading off to Mike and Mary's cottage. I, however, could not spend the day at the pool, but had to do a load of laundry in town (that one of my daughters had inadvertantly left at the cottage a few days before), do a load of grocery shopping to take to Mike and Mary's, and buy a swimsuit for one of my daughters (3 guesses as to who forgot both the dirty laundry and the swimsuit - rhymes with Farysa) who felt that packing rocks in her backpack was more important than making sure she had something to swim in.
We left our cottage at 5pm and stopped along the way at a diner that we've always thought we should stop into, every time we drove up to the Van Dusen's cottage. So even though Stefa was desperate to get to see Ciana & Elise as soon as possible, ("Don't they have a drive-through???") we forced her to sit through a meal at Kelly's diner on highway 37, just north of Tweed. Although this place was in the middle of nowhere, they had a good menu and quaint atmosphere. They had liscence plates on the walls from just about every province and a few states as well, so that kept the kids occupied for the entire wait for food trying to figure out which ones were missing. The one disparate piece of the rural decor was a head shot of Natasha Richardson, with her autograph saying: "Thanks for a great party, it was fun! All the best, Natasha." Who knew that in the wilds of rural Ontario lurks a party swank enough for the likes of Natasha and her fellow thespians?
We left our cottage at 5pm and stopped along the way at a diner that we've always thought we should stop into, every time we drove up to the Van Dusen's cottage. So even though Stefa was desperate to get to see Ciana & Elise as soon as possible, ("Don't they have a drive-through???") we forced her to sit through a meal at Kelly's diner on highway 37, just north of Tweed. Although this place was in the middle of nowhere, they had a good menu and quaint atmosphere. They had liscence plates on the walls from just about every province and a few states as well, so that kept the kids occupied for the entire wait for food trying to figure out which ones were missing. The one disparate piece of the rural decor was a head shot of Natasha Richardson, with her autograph saying: "Thanks for a great party, it was fun! All the best, Natasha." Who knew that in the wilds of rural Ontario lurks a party swank enough for the likes of Natasha and her fellow thespians?
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Shopping and diving
Last week we spent from Wednesday on in the city, catching up on clothes shopping, movies (Over the Hedge, Pirates of the Carribean) and city living. People often ask me why I shop for clothes here in Toronto, when London is much more fashionable. Well, I aint my Mama's baby for nothin'! Even though I resisted the tactics of the 'Queen of the Bargain Hunters' as much of possible, some things have stuck. Like not spending double the cost per item. I picked up a cute tank and shorts set for Stefa at Jacob Jr. that cost me $14. Tell me where I could get the equivalent in England for 7 pounds? Maybe the bottom of a bin in a charity shop, but who's got the time to rummage around for something decent.
Another reason we came back to the city was the influx of people coming to visit. Orest's brother Roman arrived on Wednesday afternoon, and then Orest himself arrived on Friday evening for his 3 week holiday. The males got together for a day of golf at the cottage on Sunday and we've stayed on from then. Good thing, too - there was another heat wave in the city, with tempareatures reaching 37, or 45 degrees with the humidex. We're sitting around the pool with the warm breeze coming off the lake and the water to cool us off with. We both know there's things we should and could be doing around the cottage, but the weather is just too damn nice. At least I can claim I did one job today: I helped Orest turn the grip bars around on the diving board. Apparently, every year, there's a 50/50 chance that these bars get installed correctly. So I guess this year, we're on the wrong 50% this year and we had to take them off and install them back so that they were actually of some use when going up the ladder. I'm surprised the Health and Safety Inspector didn't catch that earlier, but as it's already caused two accidents (including one to Adriana), we knew it should be fixed.
When Adriana fell off the diving board, it was a classic parental moment. First someone else's child slipped, hooked her leg onto the rail and ended up suspended upside down until we could assist her off. As we're trying to assess her injuries, I can see that Adriana is still running on the diving board and call out to her, not once, but twice: "Stop running, can't you see it's slippery and dangerous on that board??" Two seconds later, Adriana slips off herself. (Luckily she landed on her feet, but there was a bit of bump in behind her ear where she touched down on the concrete diving block.) It is just so satisfying to say: "See! Didn't Mama tell you not to run? Are you going to listen to your mother next time?" It's like providing the ultimate justification for my role as mother.
Another reason we came back to the city was the influx of people coming to visit. Orest's brother Roman arrived on Wednesday afternoon, and then Orest himself arrived on Friday evening for his 3 week holiday. The males got together for a day of golf at the cottage on Sunday and we've stayed on from then. Good thing, too - there was another heat wave in the city, with tempareatures reaching 37, or 45 degrees with the humidex. We're sitting around the pool with the warm breeze coming off the lake and the water to cool us off with. We both know there's things we should and could be doing around the cottage, but the weather is just too damn nice. At least I can claim I did one job today: I helped Orest turn the grip bars around on the diving board. Apparently, every year, there's a 50/50 chance that these bars get installed correctly. So I guess this year, we're on the wrong 50% this year and we had to take them off and install them back so that they were actually of some use when going up the ladder. I'm surprised the Health and Safety Inspector didn't catch that earlier, but as it's already caused two accidents (including one to Adriana), we knew it should be fixed.
When Adriana fell off the diving board, it was a classic parental moment. First someone else's child slipped, hooked her leg onto the rail and ended up suspended upside down until we could assist her off. As we're trying to assess her injuries, I can see that Adriana is still running on the diving board and call out to her, not once, but twice: "Stop running, can't you see it's slippery and dangerous on that board??" Two seconds later, Adriana slips off herself. (Luckily she landed on her feet, but there was a bit of bump in behind her ear where she touched down on the concrete diving block.) It is just so satisfying to say: "See! Didn't Mama tell you not to run? Are you going to listen to your mother next time?" It's like providing the ultimate justification for my role as mother.
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Summer reading
7 16-grid Su Dokus
8 books
4 back episodes of CSI
4 back episodes of Without a Trace
I just wanted to share some of the books I've read. Not all of them have been good, but these 4 I can recommend. Frank McCourt's Teacher Man (if the author sounds familiar, he also wrote Angela's Ashes) is an autobrigraphy concerning his time spent as an English teacher in the NYC school system. It's a must-read for any one in eduction, and for me it's a confirmation that you don't have to be young when you start writing - Frank was 66 when he wrote his first novel. Next, I read Wicked (on which the new musical is based). It's interesting how the author fleshed out an entire world from the shell of the Wizard of Oz. Even the witche's name; Elphaba, is a tribute to Frank L. Baum, the author of of Oz. The novel is quite a dark analysis of the nature of evil, and it's hard for me to imagine it as a Broadway musical. My next recommendation it The Birth of Venus, a story of a woman in 1400's Florence, who becomes Michaelangelo's lover. It would be lovely to see the city to see if anything remains of 15th century Florence. Lastly, I've just finished The Devil wore Prada, which was not as good as I thought it would be. I thought there would be less suffering and more revenge. The heroine seemed to be a glutton for punishemnt and humiliation and it went on for alomost 400 pages. By 200, I was ready to smack her and say: "Why are you putting up with this?? Give the woman what for and get out of there!"
I'm fresh out of reading material and was forced to read the newspaper (yuk!), I'll have to get into town toute suite!
8 books
4 back episodes of CSI
4 back episodes of Without a Trace
I just wanted to share some of the books I've read. Not all of them have been good, but these 4 I can recommend. Frank McCourt's Teacher Man (if the author sounds familiar, he also wrote Angela's Ashes) is an autobrigraphy concerning his time spent as an English teacher in the NYC school system. It's a must-read for any one in eduction, and for me it's a confirmation that you don't have to be young when you start writing - Frank was 66 when he wrote his first novel. Next, I read Wicked (on which the new musical is based). It's interesting how the author fleshed out an entire world from the shell of the Wizard of Oz. Even the witche's name; Elphaba, is a tribute to Frank L. Baum, the author of of Oz. The novel is quite a dark analysis of the nature of evil, and it's hard for me to imagine it as a Broadway musical. My next recommendation it The Birth of Venus, a story of a woman in 1400's Florence, who becomes Michaelangelo's lover. It would be lovely to see the city to see if anything remains of 15th century Florence. Lastly, I've just finished The Devil wore Prada, which was not as good as I thought it would be. I thought there would be less suffering and more revenge. The heroine seemed to be a glutton for punishemnt and humiliation and it went on for alomost 400 pages. By 200, I was ready to smack her and say: "Why are you putting up with this?? Give the woman what for and get out of there!"
I'm fresh out of reading material and was forced to read the newspaper (yuk!), I'll have to get into town toute suite!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)