Winter's End!

The last months of winter are usually long, slow, and never ending, did I mention long?! Well, I can’t say that was the case this year. In fact I am pretty sure this was the fastest winter of my life, excluding the winters Ellie and Rylie were born. At this moment I don’t remember January happening and I am stunned that it is already the first of March. Even here in Slavutich we are expecting spring to show up in a couple of weeks. Amazing, considering there has been a steady 1-2 feet of snow on the ground since Thanksgiving. The winter has been quite beautiful always seeing the white ground, but I have especially enjoyed the last few weeks because the sun has been out (which means -25C temperatures), but the beautiful sparkly snow with blue, blue skies! Just beautiful! It’s worth the extra cold.

February started with the four of us going to Chernigov to watch the Nutcracker ballet. I know it seems odd to see this after Christmas, but with many failed efforts meant we were not going to pass up the opportunity and disappoint two little girls. Although Tony and I did not feel the magic, the performance was very beautiful. Ellie was reliving her moment as an angel when the 2nd act begun, I could feel her butterflies and see the pure joy in her face when she heard “her” music. The scene unfortunately was not what she had expected, but mommy will never forget the moment I saw I felt through her! The whole adventure was worth those few seconds!

Ellie and I had the privilege of attending a performance of the Georgian Ballet a couple of days later. I can’t even describe how amazing the Georgian ballet was, the energy, the strength, the talent, and the costumes were all out of this world! I simply told Tony that he missed something so good I couldn’t describe it. Check out the short YouTube clip just to get a small idea of what Ellie and I got to experience; we hope they return next year for a performance!!!(Georgian Ballet) Tony and Rylie went to Chernigov earlier in the day to have some Daddy Rylie time. They had a blast, hanging out with another American friend, riding the train, eating at McDonald’s, and finding the big toy store in Chernigov! For Rylie this was probably the start of her six year old birthday (keep in mind her actual birthday was still about 10 days away). Tony and Rylie had to brave the biggest winter storm of the year on their walk home from the train station. The wind was howling, snow was blowing sideways and I’m sure it was near -15 C not counting wind chill (Tony said his wet pant legs around his boots froze solid in a matter of minutes). Thanks for the awesome winter gear from Grandma James we all stayed warm!

Valentine’s Day was a fun day….the girls decided to write love notes in the snow to Dad, Mom, Babooshka and each other. It became so much fun that Babooshka got in on it and wrote a huge Russian “I love you” in the snow out our back window.

Then Rylie’s birthday came and with the extra short month, the next thing we knew it was already March and the official start of the Ukrainian Spring March 1st (it also was -15C….in Ukraine the seasons are based on the calendar not celestial, in other words, Spring is March 1st to May 31st, Summer is June 1st to August 31st and so on). So much for slowing things down by coming to Ukraine, I’m pretty sure it sped things up twice as fast (although I’m sure our parents would not agree with that assessment).