Monday 27 October 2008

Fall fun!

We had a great time playing in the leaves until we saw people throwing trash in them. Too bad, we will have to get a rake and rake up our own pile of leaves for the kids to jump into.

Friday 17 October 2008

Enough to be dangerous

        I know just enough about computers to be dangerous. I saw a link on some of the blogs I visit, called  "thecutestblog" as you can see, I decided to try to change my background and am not being very successful. Andrew is going to have to come home and save the day. In the meantime, bear with me. = ) 

Thursday 16 October 2008

Baby shower

We threw a baby shower for Ann. A young lady in our church that just had a baby. This is actually her third, but it was her first boy. So we decided to show everybody a little American tradition. Everybody had a great time. We played two games. It was a challenge to think of games that they could play, anything with rhymes was out. I don't know enough Ukrainian rhymes and they don't know Americans rhymes of course. A lot of people that came don't know the Bible well enough to do anything on a biblical theme. And we couldn't get materials for lots of other games. For instance cotton balls, cotton comes in a wad here. I thought about using popcorn, but we would have needed a table which was covered with food. So we were limited but, I managed to come up with two games. The first one (I am sure many of you have played) where everyone pins a mini diaper on their shirt and at the end of the evening, we all open our diapers and someone gets a little "surprise". And the second, was where, you put your hand in a bag, and everyone has to try to guess what was in it without looking. You are supposed to have more objects then I had, but it was difficult to come up with things that they would be familiar with. For instance they don't use safety pins for cloth diapers, they kind of have a certain way of folding it, so safety pins aren't necessary. Or fingernail clippers, some cultures don't clip babies fingernails for superstitious reasons. So it was a challenge but it was very fun.

I wish I could take credit for this cake. But Valerie did it. She did a very nice job.

Ann's mother, and the honored guest, Anton. Ann has had some issues with her mother, because of their differences in belief. So we were excited when she decided to come, especially Ann. I just forgot to get a picture of Ann herself (oops)

Being goofy, wearing Benjamin's hats. Valerie didn't want to be in this picture, but she was a good sport. She happened to be sitting next to the other two girls and got roped in.

This is Lena. I am teaching her English and she is teaching me Russian. Which is going very well. She seems to actually speak English better then I speak Russian, but she is shy about speaking. So we can communicate very well. She is very fun.
Our winners of the second game "Whats in the bag" We had 4 people that were able to get all the items in the bag. We only had nine things, because it was so hard to come up with stuff. Everybody had fun anyway, and they were all happy with there prizes. So all in all it went well, and was very fun to put on, with the extra challenges.

Saturday 4 October 2008

oops

Andrew took the cat in to get him neutered this  morning. I was so glad to finally get him neutered he has been spraying in the bathroom and, making it very stinky and he seemed to be getting very aggresive. I was hoping a little operation would change some of that.  He can get down from the balcony (we aren't sure how, we still haven't seen him do it) and I was afraid he was going to become an alley cat, and wander the streets and just come home to eat.  Andrew took him to the vet this morning. As he left he told him(the cat) this was his last day to be a man.

Well they gave him the shot to put him out, and went to begin the operation, and discovered 'he' was a 'she'. The vet sure got a laugh out of that one, he didn't announce it quietly either. When Andrew called to tell me, I could hear the chorus of laughter in the background. It was my mistake and Andrew had to stand there and look like a doofus.  They had already given her the shot, which Andrew was going to have to pay for anyway. So they decided to do the other kind of operation. Which unfortunately was a little more expensive. 

The kids want so bad to make him I mean her feel better. Adele' tried to give her (or maybe it) her doll then she wanted to try to feed it/her and give her  a blankey.  They just can't seem to comprehend the poor thing just wants to be left alone.