Burns Supper

This was the first year in many that we celebrated Robbie Burns' birthday, the last being a memorable one at our house here in London 4 years ago with the MacPhails helping us to make it authentic as possible - seeing as we're Ukrainian-Canadians!

This time it was held at our primary school and was a good evening considering that school functions can sometimes be a real bust. But seeing that our headteacher, Mrs. Morrissey, is from Scotland, she was going to make sure it was the best Burns Supper possible. She had the haggis shipped down from an organic butcher in Scotland and had her son pipe in the haggis.

And when Mrs. Morrissey says it's time to do the Scottish dancing, it's time to do Scottish dancing. Barely anyone dared sit out as not to incur the wrath of her gimlet eye and scorching tongue (Robbie's rubbed off on me!). So although few men attended, those who did, were very afraid not to dance. (Saved us the trouble of trying to cajole the menfolk away from the whiskey!)

It was a fun night out and we look forward to spending more Burns Supper evenings in future.

From Dusting & Cleaning to Mugs & Jugs

I've been out every evening this past week, so it's up to my powers of memory to fill up this blog with everything that happened.
First off I was out 3 nights in a row, so that when my brithday evening came along on the fourth night, I was so exhausted that Orest go off lightly and didn't have to take me out for dinner anywhere. I probably need to mention that I was exhausted by having had surgery the night before and spending most of birthday preparing for and hosting a lunch for my friends.

The surgery was a quick removal of a uterine polyp by dilation and curettage (hence the "dusting & cleaning" reference) but had to be done under general anasthetic, so I woke up feeling as if I had had a really great uninterupted sleep. I guess I didn't realize how broken up my sleep is normally, because I'm constantly at the edge of wakefulness at home with 3 children. It's as if my mind is still alert, scanning for any noises that might need examining even though my eyes are closed and I think I'm asleep. It doesn't help that often I get visitors in the night coming to my bed saying:
"Mama, I had a bad dream..." (Well, you shouldn't have watched the 'Scream until You Puke' DVD!")
"Mama, I'm cold..." ("Well that's because you're naked!")
or the best one:
"Mama, my covers are too poofy..." ("Well....What do you respond to that one with?")

It was fun seeing Cammie and Emma at my birthday lunch on Friday. I'd invited them over to sell Boleslawiec pottery to my friends - but mostly so that I could have my own collection on hand to figure out exactly what I was missing from it. (I have problems going over to buy in Poland on my own, because it's not until I get back that I realize that I've gotten the wrong size, or I already had way too many square serving platters and I needed round ones instead.) Their company is called "Mugs, Jugs and More" (completely innocently chosen, I was assured) and I've set them up a temporary website until we can get the business end sorted. So if you feel the need for Bole, check them out at: http://www.freewebs.com/mugsjugsandmore/. (I'll do a link from my blog too.)

Blow me down!

I am blogging today, when I was meant to be away for the weekend in St. Moritz meeting with Orest. What happened, you say? Well, freakish weather caused me to be stranded at London's various airports for the better part of 10 hours.
My day started at the crack of 6, taking Jessie to the park in the dark. That was a trip in itself. I've never walked her in the dark before, but I had the forethought to strap a glowstick to her collar (I know it sounds odd to have a stash of glowsticks at home, but I'm a Mum, you see, and you never know when someone might need one.) and equipped myself with a flashlight. Unfortunately, this didn't prevent Jessie from being freaked out at any approaching form and her barking caused one small dog to bolt out of terror, through the gate and practically onto the road! Many apologies and scolding later...
Made it to London City Airport by 9am (after dropping off the girls to breakfast club at school) only to find that the flight before mine to Zurich had been cancelled. They gave me a boarding pass for my flight, but then looking at the departure screens it said "Indefinite Delay". What kind of information do they think they're giving you with that statement, anyway? Bizarre!
Finally, by 11am, they'd upgraded(?) the status to "Cancelled". I actually felt relief, because I can deal with "Cancelled" a whole lot easier than "Indefinite Delay".
To make a long story short, I spent the rest of my day going by tube (1.5 hours) to London Heathrow airport where they had re-booked me on an evening flight, only to have that one cancelled by about 6pm. 2 hours in a line with hundreds of other stranded passengers, I finally came away with a voucher for future travel. (I chose this option, because the earliest flight they could get me on was Friday evening. Since I was meant to be returning on Sunday evening, I saw little point in even attempting to go.)
By 9:30 pm I was at home with the girls...I may as well have been away the whole weekend, I felt that exhausted!

Christmas Carolling in January

Yes, we are a strange race of people who insist on dragging out the Christmas celebrations until everyone is so sick of the joy of the season that Lent is looking like a fun time.

We went Christmas carolling with the Ukrainian scouts this past Sunday (because it was Ukrainian New Year's Day). We split into two groups (London's too large and the Ukie community is too spread out) and hit about six houses each. Orest and I had our girls and Julia's daughter (also a Larissa) while Julia and her husband Stepan had the boys and their Mums on another route. When we first told Adriana what we were doing on Sunday, she balked.
"I hate kolyadyvannya!" she said.
"But we can't leave you at home alone, everybody's going!" I replied, trying to find the unassailable reason for her capitulation.
"OK, but I'm staying in the car!" I was just happy that she understood that not going was not an option.

(The photo is of the 'zirka' or 'star' which is meant to represent the star of Bethlehem that led the wise men to the baby Jesus. It is carried it from house to house so that the hosts recognize that we're carollers, not some random people coming in to wail at them.)

At the first house, we did our bit, sang three carols, gave the blessing, with Adriana hiding on the floor behind me. It wasn't until the hosts started pulling out the traditional goodies associated with this ritual (alcohol for the adults and lots and lots and lots of treats for the kids) that she came up sniffing the air like a hibernating animal at the first breath of spring. There were cookies, there was cake, chocolates stuffed in their pockets, juices, crisps...It was like Halloween all over! It was at this point I grabbed the opportunity to inform Adriana that she wouldn't be allowed to have the goodies if she refused to sing next time. What a stroke of genuis!
What could have been a disastrous 4 hours of mewling and caterwauling, turned into a child mumbling her way through (but honestly trying to sing) our Christmas carols and actually enjoying herself, while everyone tried to supply her with enough sweets to last the next winter.

We topped the evening off with some Tex-Mex with the Szyszkas, a bit not in keeping with the theme of the day - but who cares?

Circus tricks

As mentioned previously, Orest booked tickets to see Cirque du Soleil (totally inconvenient time to go...see 2nd paragraph) and it was once again fabulous. The children were fascinated by the chinese contortionists, who seemed spineless in form and were able to create bizarre formations stacking body on top of body, balancing on a thigh or a chin or something equally as miraculous.

They also loved the clowns who didn't actually speak English, but "Cirquish", a baby-talk mixture of English, Spanish and French. They were really funny and in most cases language wasn't even needed. Like when one clown came out with a paper airplane making plane noises and then the second one coming up behind him making even louder plane noises with a paper airplane the size of a massive kite (if it weren't made of paper, he wouldn't have been able to carry it over his head like that). The first one, at that point, realizing he's been beat, throws his paper airplane down and stomps on it. Hilariously funny (more so if you were there, I'm sure).

So the scheduling sucked because we were all still getting over our jetlag, and the last thing the children needed was a late night and another reason not to get up in the morning. Also, Larysa was in the middle of more entrance exams for secondary school next year. Saturday was a callback for an exam she'd done in November that I'd never had thought she'd pass. The reason for my doubt was that when she'd finished their first set of exams, the first words out of her mouth were:
"I have to pee!"
"OK, but Larysa, how did you do on the test?"
"I did really well but I had to pee!"
This was all I could get out of her until we found a toilet for her to empty her bladder. Even after that she was unconcerned, while I was sure that all her focus had been trained on her pelvic floor muscles and that she'd tanked on the exam. Who knew that instead it made her focus even more on answering quickly and correctly?
She is one strange little girl!

Back in the saddle again

We didn't have a lot of time to get back to a normal routine after the holidays; one day we were having turkey and stuffing, the next day lunchtime we were stumbling off our trans-Atlantic flight with little sleep, Orest bound for the office and me and girls home to unpack. Upon arrival, we discovered some good news in the form of a letter from one of the schools that Larysa had sat an entrance exam for. She had passed through to the next stage, obtaining a perfect score. Wow, it made the extra Christmas gift of an MP3 player for all the hard work she'd done even more justifiable. The bad news was however, that she'd have to add the callback exam to her list of other exams in the coming week. (Thursday, Friday and now Saturday we booked with exams.)
This was all complicated by the fact that I was starting a Mandarin Chinese language course on Wednesday evening (more about that later), and that we had booked tickets to see Cirque de Soleil for Thursday (more about that too).
It is now Saturday evening, and we have safely negotiated through this challenging week of jet lag, little sleep, entrance exams and various evening engagements. We've taken the evening off and are mooching around the house for the night until we can go to bed.

Veselych Sviat!

To those of you who are scratching your heads at the title of today's blog, it means "Merry Christmas" in Ukrainian. Yes, today, January 6th was Christmas Eve, which was celebrated in the Hrabowych household with the traditional 12 course meatless supper. We've been building up to this moment since we got back from the Van Dusen cottage, with more shopping for gifts and foodstuff to fill up on.
The relentless celebrations have not been quite so relentless, since both Orest and I were taken out for a day each with various procedures. Orest finally decided to get his eyes done. And before you all start imagining that I was threatening him with divorce if he didn't take care of those crow's feet; he had the lasik procedure done which has corrected his eyesight. He's still complaining that it's only 95% corrected, but we're hoping for the rest of the 5% soon.
The following day, I went in to have 2 cavities filled and not having had any done for the last few years, it was more painful than I had remembered. The wierdest part was when Dr. Tomkins said she would put a plastic guard in my mouth for the filling of the second tooth, so to keep away my bacteria-filled saliva. Here I was imagining a hard plastic contraption of some sort, only to be presented with what amounted to a tarp covering half my mouth. It was the oddest sensation having little rubber bands around my teeth anchoring the thin plastic covering in place. At least the thing worked and I didn't get any bits falling into the back of my throat either, which was a welcome change from procedures done in the past.

Happy New Year!

Thanks to the Van Dusens for another New Years well spent and thanks to Dan and Barb for another fast-paced fun-filled evening at the Shed.
It was interesting to note that this was the first year that Adriana made it to midnight to ring in the New Year and the first time in a long time that the boys didn't do their traditional polar bear plunge that night. (They claim it was the copious amounts of champagne drunk, but I suspect they're just gettin' old - too much activities in one day.) They moved it to the next night instead, after a 3 hour (first-time for the girls) marathon of Risk. Since Orest was the only one who had played Risk before, it fell to him to explain the intricacies and of course he won in the end. Somewhat unfair, I think, but as we all stated at the beginning: "It's only a game, it doesn't matter who wins." (Poor Larysa, was inconsolable of course as her own father killed her armies in Asia and then started annihilating her in Africa as well. Doesn't matter that he'd already wiped Stefanie off the face of Europe and killed off Mary's last armies in Asia!)

I'm also happy to report that I spent another disease-free Christmas (having had the 2 week sinus cold before we left England) unless you count the massive cold sore on my lip that prevented me from getting my facial at Mary and my annual spa day at Calabogie. Oh well, there were other things we had done anyway, so I didn't miss it. Orest and Mike spent an equally fun day skiing next door with all the girls. So a great final day to our stay at Green Lake!