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.