Busy-ish Days

Good gracious sakes...life is a cheeky beast. The past few days have been so full...I'm not sure how they got that way, but they did.

It's been chilly and rainy probably since I wrote last, and I've had countless cups of tea and coffee. I pretty much alternate, with a slight favor toward coffee...

I've been staying at the Gollans but coming up to the Crowes usually sometime before noon and going back around 9 at night. The school schedule is on hold at the moment since grandparents are here and Uncle Neil and Deb are working on the house. Bruce was in Odesa yesterday wrestling with officials for the container. Auntie Noline has been in the kitchen a lot, and I've been floating 'tween decks doing little jobs here and there: frying eggs, painting stain on the railing, serving coffee to workers, practicing Russian, helping cut carpet, making apple pie, sponging blue paint on the boys' closet floor, helping with supper, wandering around, fetching things, making tea, washing dishes, searching for lost hammers, and trying to figure out the Crowe/Rhodes sense of humor. :)

We get to the end of the day and think "What have we done today?" and the answer is, lots of things...we're just never sure what they are :) Actually, thanks to Uncle Neil, carpets are getting laid, shelves are getting built, and little touches are being added to make this house seem more homey, like toilet paper holders and bathroom mirrors.

Tuesday was quite a day. The Autumny weather suggested apple pie, and the morning was calm, so I decided to go for it. Only, there weren't any apples that I could find. But we have apple trees outside, and one of them was full of rosy round, fairytale-worthy apples. So I went out in a giant dark red rain coat, and, after shaking rain all over myself while attempting to knock down the apples, I looked around for something to knock them out with. I live on a construction sight, so it wasn't hard to find a hefty metal bar, which I was soon wielding skillfully, poking apples out of the tree and stashing them in a plastic bag. One worker emerged from the basement...and laughed at me...and then offered a lighter rod for the operation. That helped, and after chasing down a couple apples that decided to roll down the driveway, I was pretty well set.

The apple pie was an all-day affair, since we didn't have butter or pie plates to start with either, but thanks to Priscilla's pie plate loan, and butter from the Kiev shopping crew, we finally had pie by bedtime :) Yum. It made me think of my dear brother Connor...

On Tuesday we also had our first Russian lesson! That is such a big answer to prayer...I've been going nowhere fast with my language learning. Svetlana is teaching us; not Sveta my friend I originally wrote about or the Sveta who was in Kiev the day I went with Cheryl, but Svetlana, as in Altu and Sveta who we had over to dinner. I'll call her Svetlana so that there's less mix up. She's really sweet (Altu calls her "Sweetlana" and also very thorough with the lessons. She took it slowly and made sure we really knew how to pronounce the words, and didn't let us off easy. I think she's going to be a really good teacher. I'm not sure yet what the lesson schedule is, but she's going to be here again today.

Maybe I'll write more later,,,Russian lessons soon, and then I'm heading back to the Gollans at 2 to be with the kids. So, adios.