One day, I will figure out a better way to do pictures, but for now…you will need to click on the picture to see the entire image. :-/ My internet is pretty slow and inserting them one at a time is just not an option right now. I am using a 3G dongle right now. We will be getting permanent cable internet when the ground thaws out some more. Maybe 2 more weeks. Followed by the pics, is a little bit of a text update.

February 22 — Building a snowman and sledding… In the yard.

Under all that stuff is Micah. He likes the “thought” of going outside, but almost immediately he is ready to come back in. The boy doesn’t like to be cold.

Matthew loves to be pulled in the sled. Well, who wouldn’t? I mean you get all the fun of sledding…with no work!

This is the “banya.” Which means “bathhouse” in Russian. On the left side is the garage. The banya is where we do laundry. There is also a small steam room and a 2 meter deep tub. Tradition is to get into the steam room, then beat your back with birch branches, then plunge into ice cold water and repeat the process. Uh…yeah. We use the steam room to hang clothes in. There is a wood burning stove that provides heat in the steam room and also heats water for the banya building. We have our washer/dryer in here too. Under the garage is a cellar where we have potatoes and some carrots and a little cabbage.

School – Micah playing in the rice station.

School – Bethany and Seth are doing well with school. In Seth’s words…he wasn’t “excited” to start again, but he was “ready.”

February 28 – Our yard. After the hours and hours of back breaking snow shoveling the week before, I have to admit, I wasn’t very “thankful in all things” when I woke up to more snow. We shoveled as much out of the yard as possible so it wouldn’t be a lake until winter comes again.

Just an abstract shot of the corner of our house.

Sweet Matthew in circle time, at school.

Ethan in circle time. He LOVES circle time. Can you see that belly on him?? He’s really doing well since his surgery. He’s plumping up. Now he needs to grow taller. 🙂

Walking by the window on the 28th of February, I saw the soup pot from the first day we were here. Borscht. We had it in the mud room because it wouldn’t fit in the fridge. But…seems we forgot about it. It’s still there at the moment (March 3) because I’m just not sure what to do with it. 🙂

Here’s my fire for the day. It is a high learning curve to light successful fires in a woodburning furnace. This is in the banya. We’ve been running the heat in the house off of gas.

I realized the 28th that I hadn’t done laundry in 3 days. Oops. This doesn’t look like a lot, but the washer/dryer only holds 9 kg of clothes and it takes 4.5 hours to go a whole cycle of wash/dry (one machine does both) – 1.25 hours to wash, the rest is dry time. Needless to say we don’t dry everything. Only the things that need to be fluffy (or at least less crunchy). So this was four loads. It took all day…literally. Now don’t hear complaining in this information. We are super glad to have the machine. It just takes different planning to use it!

So the guy at Technopolis assured me that of course English was an option in the menu. Does this look like English to any of you? I didn’t think so. At least the manual has an English section and many of these words I know. And of course there are universal symbols (universal in some universe, I’m sure…but I’m learning what they all mean).

Hannah meeting me in the Banya to do school. She’s realizing that her previous school experience was a very different kind of learning. Not worse or better, just different.

Today, I needed to restack our firewood. It had gotten out of hand and the pile had become an area instead of a pile. Yuri helped out by cutting some long boards down to burning size.

Sveta stops for a photo op. She was working around her yard and was walking through ours to show me the 3 apricot trees, apple tree, cherry tree, strawberry patch and raspberry patch. Can hardly wait til summer!!!

Yep she’s alive and as beautiful as ever.

Remember how the yard looked February 28? Now it’s March 3. What a mess.

I successfully set up a Ukrainian bank account in order to wire money for the house from USA to here as it becomes available. It was quite a process, but it’s DONE. So the mechanism is in place, at least. We have settled into some sort of routine. Here’s what our week looked like…

Monday:
6:30am – Awake
7:00am – out of bed. Mary doing Bible reading/praying (the most important part of the day!) and then getting breakfast for kids going. Me shower, make our bed, straighten our room, change diapers on the little and get them dressed.
8:00am – Kids are eating breakfast. I’m doing Bible Study/Prayer privately
8:30am – Mary and I leave for language lesson, three older kids do activities with littles and make them lunch and put them down for a nap
2:15pm – Mary and I go get some groceries on the way home from lesson
3:00pm – Mary and I get home and do school with the three older kids
3:30pm – littles get up and have a snack and watch a movie or play downstairs – school continued for older kids
5:30pm – dinner (some time it has been prepared)
6:00pm – baths for littles
6:00pm – Chris working with client in Houston via Skype (1-2 hours)
7:00pm – start getting littles ready for bed
7:30pmish – littles go to bed
7:30pm – homework from language, kids finish school work
9:30-10:00pm – bed… by now the kitchen is cleaned, the downstairs is restored to order

Tuesday:
6:30am – Awake
7:00am – out of bed. Mary doing Bible reading/praying (the most important part of the day!) and then getting breakfast for kids going. Me shower, make our bed, straighten our room, change diapers on the little and get them dressed.
8:00am – Kids are eating breakfast. I’m doing Bible Study/Prayer privately
8:30am – Kitchen gets cleaned and school starts for the littles followed by school for the big kids
11:30am – Lunch
12:00pm – Mary and I leave for language lesson, big kids continue their assignments and watch littles
1:30pm – littles take a nap and big kids finish school work
5:30pm – Mary and I return from language lesson, we get dinner ready quickly, feed everyone, clean up the mess and check school work
7:30pm – littles in bed, Mary and I do homework, spend time with big kids
9:30-10:00pm – off to bed

Wednesday:
6:30am – Awake
7:00am – out of bed. Mary doing Bible reading/praying (the most important part of the day!) and then getting breakfast for kids going. Me shower, make our bed, straighten our room, change diapers on the little and get them dressed.
8:00am – Kids are eating breakfast. I’m doing Bible Study/Prayer privately
8:30am – School
11:30am – Lunch
12:00pm – school continues
1:30pm – littles take a nap and school continues
3:30pm – littles are up and we play with them, complete school work and somewhere in there we are getting dinner ready
5:30pm – dinner, then baths for littles
6:00-8:00pm – working with client over Skype
7:30pm – littles to sleep, etc…
9:30-10:00pm – bed time!

Thursday:
6:30am – Awake
7:00am – out of bed. Mary doing Bible reading/praying (the most important part of the day!) and then getting breakfast for kids going. Me shower, make our bed, straighten our room, change diapers on the little and get them dressed.
8:00am – Kids are eating breakfast. I’m doing Bible Study/Prayer privately
8:30am – Kitchen gets cleaned and school starts for the littles followed by school for the big kids
11:30am – Lunch
12:00pm – Mary and I leave for language lesson, big kids continue their assignments and watch littles
1:30pm – littles take a nap and big kids finish school work
5:30pm – Mary and I return from language lesson, we get dinner ready quickly, feed everyone, clean up the mess and check school work
7:30pm – littles in bed, Mary and I do homework, spend time with big kids
9:30-10:00pm – off to bed

Friday:
6:30am – Awake
7:00am – out of bed. Mary doing Bible reading/praying (the most important part of the day!) and then getting breakfast for kids going. Me shower, make our bed, straighten our room, change diapers on the little and get them dressed.
8:00am – Kids are eating breakfast. I’m doing Bible Study/Prayer privately
8:30am – School
11:30am – Lunch
12:00pm – school continues
1:30pm – littles take a nap and school continues
3:30pm – littles are up and we play with them, complete school work and somewhere in there we are getting dinner ready
5:30pm – dinner, then baths for littles
6:00-8:00pm – working with client over Skype
7:30pm – littles to sleep, etc…
9:30-10:00pm – bed time!

It makes me tired to type that!! Ha ha…

Some things I’ve learned:

just like watched pots never boil, watched fires never burn…ever… Close the door and let it burn…patience is the watchword.
Wet wood actually does burn… with enough diesel poured over it.
Wood that has diesel on it when it’s burning creates very thick black smoke.
Diesel burns VERY HOT and when you touch the metal handle on the fire door… well, you get the picture.
There are rules of driving in Ukraine after all. I always assumed there weren’t any. They are just different than the USA. VERY different.
When someone flashes their lights at you from behind, it is the kind and considerate way to ask you to move over so they can pass you.
After someone flashes their lights considerately, there are next steps they take to let you know they will be passing you.
You CAN buy cinnamon here.
The lady at the bakery knows her Russian numbers better than I do.
There are often reasons they do it the way they do it… sometimes, it’s just the right thing to do to do it like they suggest.
Enjoy the sun today…because you may not see it for another week.

And lots of other things… 🙂

Oh a big one… “we’ll be finished in 5 minutes” means “get ready, we have a couple of more hours of work ahead of us!”

Thanks for your prayers and for your support. If you want to help with the housing need, you can go to http://www.malonesinukraine.com/give

Blessed be the Name of the Lord.