August 28, 2007 - a Date that will live in Infamy

Yup, this was the day that I set up my Facebook account. Since then I was wasted countless hours searching for friends who aren't there, posting up photo albums that no one sees and writing little unsatisfying snippets of information.

And this is why my blog has remained un-updated since then!

I am now in a position where I have to go back through my diary and try to recall what happened when and how funny it was at the time. The whole reason I started blogging was so that I wouldn't have to rely on my faulty brainbox to come up with memories of times past, but to record them realtime (practically) while it was still fresh in my mind.

I hereby denounce Facebook as a dilettante's website and shall focus my free time on keeping this blog up-to-date!

It's hard not to laugh

A lovely day in the park today lead to an interesting coversation with Adriana. She was climbing a tree and her thoughts turned to the little animals which inhabited it.



"Mama...do squirrals lay eggs?"



"No they're not like chickens."



"Then how do they have babies?"



"They carry them around inside, just like humans."



"I don't see a hospital here!!"



"Sqirrels don't need hospitals, they can have them by themselves."



"You mean the babies come out of their butts?"



Because she's just 6 years old, I decided now was not the time to have a full-on decription of the birthing process, and let the butt comment go. But we will have to eventually teach Adriana that giving birth is not like having a turd, otherwise she may never go to the toilet again without worrying she'll drop a baby in the bowl.

UMPZ

The plan was simple: we drop Stefa off for the bus to camp on August 4th and then we meet up with her on August 16th in Grafton for UMPZ. (The translation of this acronym is World Ukrainian Scouts Jamboree.) You'd think that I had enough to occupy my thoughts and time, since we still had Larysa and Adriana around, and what with the travelling to Mike and Mary's cottage and preparing our cottage for the jamboree? But no, I was desperate to see her and speak to her and hug her, that when I finally saw her on the 16th, I made a right ass of myself.

I've added all the photos onto my facebook page, so you can see them there. Plus, Orest has added a few photos to http://www.plastlondon.blogspot.com/ so you can see them there too. So I won't add them here, except for the one which explains how I was feeling about Stefa at the time.

As you can see, I'm grinning like an idiot, I missed her so much. I only had a few moments to hug her as she was marching by, and then she had to stand at attention in formation for the opening ceremonies. Luckily it got dark, and I was able to sidle up behind her (she was in the back row) and greedily catch up on all her adventures without anyone seeing me.

In her 12 days away, she'd been camping south of Montreal, visiting Ottawa with over 1300 other scouts and now she was camping again for the final part of the Jamboree just 500 yards away, so there was a lot to talk about.

I know there's a time that I will have to let go of my children, but if it's as difficult as this, I might be in for some serious hand-holding in the future.

A quickie at Mike and Mary's cottage

We didn't have a lot of time this summer to visit our friends, but we just managed to eke out a shortened weekend at the Van Dusen cottage at Green Lake.

We had to drop off Stefanie to catch the bus to camp in Toronto, so we didn't get a chance to leave until after that. So upon arriving, we had to hurry and get ready for the Green Lake costume party being held at Dan and Barb's cottage. Without much planning, Larysa came in soldier's camouflage and Adriana had her bunny ears, but I wasn't sure what to do. So I scrounged around Mike's boathouse and managed to find some accoutrements to use with my white towelling robe to come as a HazMat technician. (Only those of you CSI freaks will know what that is...) But I really have to hand it to Mary, coming as the camp warden from the story Holes...she looked just like Sigourney Weaver in the movie, sans a few inches. (I'm trying to get photos from Mary or link into Dan's website, but I'll publish for now without them.)

The next day we spent just hanging around, as the Van Dusens had to attend their cottager's association meeting, but everyone gathered under the tiki lights on the porch for a great dinner.

Next day was Adriana's first go at the Tarzan swing. Although is doesn't look high up when you're looking at the rope tied to a tree sitting in a boat, but when you're looking down trying figure out how to swing out far enough not to hit the rocks, it's scary. But after a few tries riding on Orest's back, she tried it herself. She's a trooper, that one. (Sorry, forgot to take the camera out on the boat, so here's a shot of Stefa and Larysa doing last year just to get a sense of the height.)

ski trip reunion

Last night we got together at Motria and Ostap's with a group of people and discovered that the last time we had all been together in the same room was when we went skiing to Courcheval almost 10 years ago.

It was really weird that everytime someone else showed up, the conversation with me invariably took a turn towards that ski trip and how much Stefa and Larysa had grown since then.

I think it was due to the fact that Orest and Nadia from Germany were visiting and most of the people they knew in Toronto were there that night.