Stefanie's 13th Birthday party

I'm very happy that's over and done with! Stefanie, in her typical style, made me do the invites over 2 months ago and had been nagging me non-stop since then that I had to finish the plans for the event. Sounds like a military campaign, doesn't it? Well, almost...Stefanie is a big fan of American reality shows like Amazing Race and Fear Factor, and she wanted to her birthday party to imitate those shows (as you can see from her invitation).
We started off with the Fear Factor portion of the party: I switched labels from a tin of dog food and beef stew (amazing how alike both products looked!) and told the girls that the first one to finish off their bowl of "dog food" would win their team 5 extra minutes for the race portion of the party. One girl claimed she was a vegetarian, so it was left to the fearless (or those with a penchant for Pedigree) to step up and take one for the team. It was only after they had all finished that I told them that I had switched the labels. One team insisted that dog food would have tasted better.
Next, we had them try and find a piece of bubble gum from a plate full of whipped cream. The first one to not only find the gun but make a respectable bubble from it would also win their team an extra 5 minutes for the race. Not especially hard, but it was fun to watch them get covered in cream!
Now, the race...I had gone around some of my local shops earlier in the day and asked for their help with this one. First I made them go to the Library and find a specific book with their next clue in it (Nancy Drew, of course - America's Favourite Girl Detective), then off to my hair salon, where they were required to present a shorn lock of hair (theirs or someone else's) to the receptionist to get their next clue. They were then given a pound coin each to purchase as many items as possible at the corner shop to get their next clue. They then had to get up to the local park as quickly as possible to where Orest would be waiting with Jessie (our dog) and the next clue was strapped to her collar. Their task was to catch her and get the clue. I know it sounds easy, but if you know our dog, she's not the type to get close enough for you to grab anything off her (balls, sticks or otherwise). Plus I advised Orest that he was to make it as difficult as possible by calling her to him every time she got close to one of the racers. I wasn't there to see it, but I was told the sight was similar to that of a greasy pig-catching contest.


Anyway, the last clue told them to leg it home as quickly as possible. It was amazing how quickly they finished, because I had scheduled enough time to get from one to clue to the next, thinking the race itself would take 1 and a half hours, only to have the first team cross the Finish line within 35 minutes. Luckily these were 13-year olds able to entertain themselves for the rest of the time with trampolining, Playstation, DVDs and pizza.

Apsley House and Wellington Arch

Went with the Canadian ladies to visit Wellington's house at Hyde Park corner: Apsley House. (Named after its original owner.) I tried to get as little traffic as possible in the photo, but you have to image a four-lane highway right in front of what's known as "Number 1, London", so it was difficult. (We weren't allowed to take any photos inside, either.)

The tour was handled by a fellow Canadian, Belinda Beaton, who has been studying Wellington and written her dissertation on him, so she had a wealth of information about his life, his military tactics and the politics of the day. It was really easy to picture the post-Waterloo celebrations at Apsley House with Wellington as its host and hundreds of the military elite sitting down to dinner in the newly built west wing banquet hall. (The re-creation painting of it certainly didn't hurt, either.) Wellington amassed hundreds of gifts of paintings, dinner services and other artifacts to see, and what amazes you is that all of it was gifted to him. Wellington could have obtained it by looting and pillaging during all the wars he fought, but you could really see what a principled man he was.

We then went across the street to walk up to the top of Wellington's Arch. The photo here does not give it justice, but the horses on top are amazingly detailed and life-like. The views over Green Park and the back of Buckingham Palace were lovely too. I think the views would have been more interesting had the Arch been in the same place as when it started, facing Hyde Park and Apsley House, but back then it was being used as the smallest police station in London and as a thoroughfare north and southbound. They ended up moving it to its present position on a traffic island off south east of the House when they decided to widen the main east-west route in and out of London. (I don't think you could fit some of the 4x4's through the middle of it anymore anyway.)

My worst little nightmare

What a day I had with Adriana yesterday.

She normally cannot be relied upon to remember much of anything, and I do try to keep in mind that she is only 5 and a half, but man, sometimes she tries the patience of a saint. For some reason , she woke up early (6:15 am) and proceeded to wake everyone else up by her trying to get the stairgate open, knocking it backwards and forwards. A little while later, she threw a hissy fit because I needed to log on to check the weather report online and I kicked her off the computer.
Finally got her to school and went about my business until I tried to get on the computer myself only to find the mouse had disappeared. (Been hidden, more like it...) I didn't want to accuse her of something she hadn't done; but it did look fishy...
When I went to collect her from school, she came out wearing someone else's sweatshirt (fairly obvious since it hit her knees) and had lost some money I had given her to buy a red nose with (in support of Comedy Relief). I would have been ok with all this and taken my usual "if I weren't laughing, I'd be crying" approach, but Adriana decided to blow all of us off and run to the playground to play. This sort of made me lose it, and we spent the next 10 minutes searching for her sweatshirt and money by me dragging her around behind me. Then I got more cross with her when she admitted to hiding the mouse on me in the morning because she was mad at me.
Things went from bad to worse later when I tried to take her to her ice-skating lesson. For some reason, she decided she hates ice-skating, she hates me and wants to go home. I was trying to wrack my brains for a reason that sounded reasonable to her coach, as to why she refused to move on the ice and just stood there, but I had nothing.
Was she trying to assert her will after I had run roughshod over hers at school?

Was she upset that I hadn't given her anything to eat before going on the ice?

She did say she was too cold to skate in her spring jacket...was she coming down with something?

About halfway home, I was trying to hash this out with her:

"Adriana, why don't you like skating anymore?...Adriana?...hello?"

I looked in my rear view mirror; she'd fallen fast asleep! Poor thing was exhausted and I just didn't recognize the signs.

20 years of facsinating adventures

So what do you get the man you've been with for over 20 years?

Yes, Orest and I just celebrated 20 years of wedded bliss(and not-so bliss), and how better to do so, than by taking him on a surprise weekend trip to Florence? I'd booked this long ago, but I needed Orest to take the Friday off in order to maximize the amount we could take in. So here's a recap of of that conversation:
"I'm busy at work, I can't take too many days off, blah, blah, blah". he says.

"So what you're telling me is that you've got time to go skiing whenever you want, but you don't have the time to celebrate the fact that we've been married for 20 years?!?"

Silence....

"Ok...Well, if you put it that way...I'll put it in my calendar."

Ya think?! Men, sometimes they just not on the same wavelength!

Anyway, the trip went really well (considering we flew RyanAir for the first time). Our hotel was fabulous, very modern; one of Salvatore Ferragamo's hotels. (He's the famous shoe & bag designer, originally from Florence and has about 4 properties there, plus a shoe museum.) Our room overlooked the Ponte Vecchio, so we couldn't be any closer to the centre of old Florence.

We spent the first afternoon just doing a city tour, walking and taking in the feel of Florentine architecture, much of which dated back to medieval times. (I'd read the Birth of Venus by Sandra Dunant over the summer and was intrigued to see how much of what I'd read was there before my very eyes.) The next day, we went in to two of the most important churches: the Duomo and Santa Croce and then spent the rest of the day at the Uffizi gallery, to see Boticelli's famous Birth of Venus. And the final day we went to see Michaelangelo's David at the Academmia and drove up to San Miniato al Monte for a final vista of the lovely bridges over the Arno river.

It was probably the best way to spend 2 days in a city, because when we left, we felt we truly had seen everything there was to see in Florence (historically, architecturally and artistically). I'm sure if we had been on our own, we would have just wandered around aimlessly and never gained the in depth knowledge that both Orest and I received on not just Florence, but the de Medicis and the political history surrounding this beautiful city.

Druggies and Druggists

Did two tours this week...First one was at Dennis Sever's House in Spitalfields on Monday evening. I was ready to be shown an interesting take on living in the past as the house is billed as a step back into time. But get this description from their website:
"Whether you see it or you don't - the house's ten rooms harbour ten 'spells' that engage the visitor's imagination in moods that dominated the periods between 1724 and 1914. Your senses are your guide."
Things get weirder still as you walked around the house in the semi-darkness and relative silence, with no tour guides or brochures to explain what you were seeing. Instead all we got was cryptic notes laid around, like:
"...the Kitchen - which addresses your simplest state of consciousness: your Soul. Here - in every object - form and function are at one, so that with nothing to explain, you may simply "be". N.B. - like a contented infant."
Huh? It wasn't til I caught a whiff of 'spliff' that I realized the people running this place have smoked a few too many joints in their lives and have transcended reality to somewhere in pot heaven.

Next tour was still on the theme of drugs, but slightly more legal. It was the Apothecaries Hall, where the society of Apothecaries began their trade centuries ago near Blackfriars. It was a treasure trove of mortar and pestles and some other interesting tools of the trade (including a scraper they used to bleed people).

I didn't take photos at either place, but I did get this one sent to me of an apothecary table and items.

Potties are not impotent

At least that's what I thought Adriana said in her fake little English accent....

Actually it was quite funny; we were in our usual rush trying to get from Ukie school in Holland Park to a birthday party for one of Stefanie's friends in Winchmore Hill; going along teh North Circular, and when Adriana saw that we were passing our normal exit at Henly's Corner to go home, she started whining that she was tired and wanted to go home.

I tried to explain to her that we had to drop Stefanie off first at this party, so that she wouldn't be late and that's when she came up with the gem above: "But parties are not important! Playing at home is more important!", dropping her r's all the way through.

I laughed out loud and explained: "We'll see just how important parties are when it's your birthday and Mama decides to cancel it, shall we?"

I don't think she realized the connection, because her next question was:
"Mama, could I have my birthday at Clown Town?"

I could have continued on with the "important" comment again, but I didn't want to risk a fresh attack of tears...she's only 5 and her sense of humour's definitely not fully developed to handle this kind of ribbing.

Quiz Night at school

I usually don't enjoy quiz nights here in England, because I know nothing of football, cricket or rugby (nor do I have a burning desire to) and there is a large gap in my general knowledge of English history and geography. (Although that is improving with everyone of my children's homework assignments that I have to help with.)
But I felt obliged to attend last night, as we are committed to the school's activities and this was a fundraising event.

Answer I was proud of:
Giving a good guess on something I knew barely anything about: the film called The Great Escape. It's one of those films that your spouse will insist is a classic, but I view as just another war movie, so I wasn't really paying attention to the film's ending which described how many soldiers actually escaped in the end. Something was telling me three for a reason and I was right! (Unfortunately, I deferred to the men at the table and they got it wrong.)

Answer I knew I should have insisted on:
The question was Sago vs. Sarko, what is it? The French Presidential elections, of course. But Orest insisted I put "prime ministerial" instead and we lost the point. Aaarrggghh!

Answers where I was no help at all:
British sports, of course. And two of the music questions really stumped me, but to be fair I'm not a fan of boy groups (Take That) and I don't know all the words to Eleanor Rigby. (Question was "Who picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been?")

Answers on the tip of my tongue:
Who takes the silk? Of course I should have known that since I was at Lincoln's Inn a week ago where they told us that this phrase describes a lawyer being called to the bar. (Luckily someone else at our table knew that one and we got the point.) And the other one was the only tube stop with 6 consonants in a row...which I managed to get after racking my brains: Knightsbridge!

Overall we came 7th out of 12 tables, so not complete morons, but could use a brain brush-up.

Cool shot of Orest heli-skiing

Did I mention that after dropping the kids home from their weeklong ski trip on Saturday, that he turned around and left the following night for another ski trip?

This time it was heli-skiing with business colleagues for 2 days, and as you can see from the photo, it was magnificent. (He's the one at the right bottom of the photo - kicking up powder.)

(Personally, I think he gets too much skiing and then complains that it's still not enough.)

The best laid schemes

The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men,
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!
--Robbie Burns
(Translation: The best laid schemes of Mice and Men, oft go awry,And leave us nothing but grief and pain, For promised joy!)

Unbelievable! Here I was, alone at home for a week with no kids or husband and how many blog entries did I manage? A measly two entries! Pathetic.
Now how did I manage to get a week to myself sans my usual motherly/wifely responsibilities, you ask? And no, we're not on our way to divorce, with seperate vacations and all that. It's just that having left everything til the last minute, I managed to find someone for Orest to ski with, but it was my friend Lisa's huband on his own with 3 kids. (Lisa doesn't ski, so this has been a long-standing tradition in their house for Dad to go with the girls on his own.)
So I thought, "What am I doing being the only woman on a self-service holiday with 6 kids and 2 men...am I crazy?" So I inisisted that Orest would be better off without me and that I'd be happy to stay home on my own.
I was worried about the standard of care that the girls would receive under the Laissez-faire attitude of their Dad when it comes to things like: nutrition, clothing and general care, but in the end I traded those worries for a week of relaxation and a compromise of bringing them home alive, if not well.
So, how did Orest do? He had a lot to contend with, such as the flight landing after the rental car agency had shut and waiting for a shuttle bus at midnight which never arrived; Adriana couldn't control her bladder on the slopes one day; and Adriana wanting to eat nothing but fries for the entire week ("Cuz everthing else is yucky!" so she said.). So he was rather pleased with his performance and I was just extatic that they were home with nothing more than a sore or two on their faces (Adriana scab under the eye from a pole injury; Larysa scabbed over lip from chapping and Stefanie with a major zit scab on her chin - although it could have been mistaken for a pole injury as well).

Grammy watching

They showed the Grammies here last night (we always get everything a day late here - including the Daily Show), here are some quick comments:

The Police-----Wow! What a blast from the past. I remember being at the CNE in '82 during the Police picnic and trying to slip my way past security, because I didn't have a ticket. It was a no-go, so I had to stand beyond the bandshell, about a mile away, and I listened to them play the same song they played last night: "Roxanne". You certainly knew then that they would have the staying power in music that some of the other bands of the era didn't. (Just look at the line-up of openers at the picnic: The Spoons, A Flock Of Seagulls, Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, The English Beat, The Talking Heads... Other than David Byrne, has any one heard from these people in the last 10 years?

Doesn't Sting look fabulous? I have it on good authority that he's had no work done, but yet he's got the face and body of a fit 35-year old. I should look so good when I hit 55!

And although I'm not a fan of country music, congrats to the Dixie Chicks for standing their ground when they got slammed for dissing George Bush. Coming away with 4 Grammies, it was a clear message that people should be allowed to have their opinions whether they're musicians or not.

Lincoln's Inn

I recently joined the Canadian Women's Club here in London just to see what they had on offer and signed up for my first event to go and see Lincoln's Inn. It's called an inn, but actually I would consider it to be more of a private club for lawyers.
Our guide was very informative, but despite his detailed explanation on the differences between them, I still don't understand why the English have the delineation between barristers and solicitors.
In any case, the grounds were impressive, with some parts of it dating back to it's inception in 1422. With a Great Hall, Library, Chapel and offices and flats, it was like a mini-campus for law students and their alumni. I could go through the tour with you, but like everything here in London, I'd be hard-pressed to describe Lincoln's Inn with any other adjectives than: "grand", "beautiful", "historic" or "steeped in tradition".

So instead, I will regale you with the little trivial bits that I picked up instead. It seems that Cherie and Tony first met here at the Inn, while they were waiting for a scholarship interview, and thus the bench that you can see in outside the door of the room we are in (behind the gentleman in the trenchcoat) is called the "Blair bench". (You may have to enlarge the photo to see it.)

On our way to the Chapel, we were told that this little building is the smallest 'listed' building in England. First used by the Coachmen to direct horse traffic, it fell into disuse with the introduction of the new main gates and automobile use. They then tried to pawn it off on the grounds gardener, who insisted that she didn't want to work in a "fishbowl". When she came back from maternity leave, it suggested for use as a creche. (I think that was a joke - ha, ha.)

This photo is the "undercroft" of the chapel, where several members of the Inn have been buried into the floor. It was also used by the poor, who would leave their children behind to be looked after by the Inn, and eventually trained in clerkship or service. These children were all given the surname "Lincoln", which makes me wonder about Abraham Lincoln's antecedents?

One last one is an example of 'graffiti in art'. The coat of arms in the photo belongs to William Pitt the Younger, prime minister of England in the 18th century. The artist who made the this stained glass version of his coat of arms, did not like his propensity for capital punishment and scrawled "Gallows Billy" into one of the yellow dots of the shield. Whether it was too difficult or expensive to remove, for some reason the Chapel left it as is.

There are other stories to do with the chapel, and John Donne, its most famous preacher, who wrote about the famous Cadiz bell atop the chapel: "...and therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." (From which Hemingway wrote his famous novel: 'For Whom the Bell Tolls'.

We were also told that this is a great area for filming, because of the Inn's enclosed historic site is perfect for creating movie sets without disrupting local traffic. I will have to see "Miss Potter" with Renee Zellwegger, to check out if I recognise the buildings in scenes where she visits her publisher.

London comes to a frosty standstill...almost.

Wow, what a sight this morning! Stefanie woke us at 5:45 am to see how much snow had fallen (She was really keen not to go to school) and so far it was 2 inches of the lovely stuff. (This is the back garden view from our kitchen.)

By 7:50 am, Stefanie was in a tizzy of confusion over whether to go to school or not (the website saying the school would be open regardless/her friends ringing to say they were staying home), so I told Stefanie that as a Canadian, she was morally obligated to show these English that a little bit of snow wouldn't stop her from leading her life as normal.

She was not pleased, to say the least. (That may have explained the last-ditch phone call from the bus stop saying "my shoes are soaked, I fell over so I'm cold, there's no one on the roads and the bus is no where in sight!")

Larysa and Adriana lucked out however, their school closed for the day. (I think this decision was based on the last snowfall when the teachers who did show up were stranded with children whose parents were stuck somewhere en route and had to remain until 9pm until they were collected.)

I did end up brushing off the car and warming it up to drive Orest to the tube station (even though he did have his galoshes on - they hadn't seen the light of day since we moved here, so they were a bit stiff) and took advantage of the clear main roads and my 4-wheel drive Jeep to run up to Stefanie's school just to make sure she had made it and that they hadn't shut it down.

Poor thing, she'll miss all the fun, Larysa and Adriana with our neighbours have built a fort in front of Anna's house across the street and are eating snacks in as we speak. And I think it's meant to melt by this afternoon, too!

The Captain and Mr. Noodle

We went to see Anthony & Cleopatra by the Royal Shakespeare Theatre on Saturday night with a crowd from the HWC. We first went for dinner with the 10 of us and it was fun because we've all known each other for at least a year, and as everyone knows; in expat terms you multiply it by a factor of 10. So it was like being with friends from college or something.

I'd forgotten the intensiveness of the play itself and after 3 hours, came out of there exhausted from having to concentrate not only on the Shakespearean language, but on the plot itself. As you might be able to tell from the photo, that's Patrick Stewart in the role of Anthony, and he was provided a surprisingly good performance. I say 'surprisingly' because I've known Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Starship Enterprise and I thought it would be difficult for me to adjust to him in another character. The "Make it so, Number 1"' and "Engage!" from Star Trek has a certain association of personality that I thought would be difficult to forget when seeing him on stage in a toga and hair(!).

I've been caught out like this before when we went to see Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in the spring. Kathleen Turner was fabulous in the lead role (the one played in the movie by Elizabeth Taylor), but the guy playing her husband George, is better known to most parents of small children as Mr. Noodle of Elmo's World fame. I really struggled to contain my smiles as Mr. Noodle was getting serious on stage and almost laughed out loud when he swore.

I think it's difficult to disassociate certain actors from memorable roles, but I asked myself why was it so hard for Mr. Noodle, but not Kathleen Turner. After all, she's had some pretty unforgettable performances in the Romancing the Stone series, and Body Heat. But I think it's to do with recurring roles in a television show that cements the character's idiosyncrasies for me that makes it almost impossible to see them as anything other.

Sorry, Mr. Noodle....

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.