Bogdan's 8th birthday

On March 12 Bogdan turned eight. We all took the day off from school. In the morning he opened presents that had just arrived in a Meest box the night before. Everything was exactly what he wanted, and he was so excited!

Toothless/Toothy dragon and Mr. Snaggletooth

For special food he wanted shashlik, and Will prepared that for lunch. The weather wasn't great, so we ate inside, but it all tasted wonderful anyway. Then Bogdan and I went to his regular art classes. I read in the corridor while he worked. Then during the tea break I served the cupcakes that we had prepared. His teachers and classmates congratulated him and sang happy birthday.

After art school we came home and had dinner and more cake...

...and then more playtime with his new toys.

The sunset was especially beautiful. When we ran out to look at it, I told Bogdan that it was his birthday present from God. I loved how he looked up and said "spasibo" before he ran back to his play.

Art

I love this painting that Raia just finished.

Soon I also want to show you the portraits of me that she and Bogdan did for Women's Day.

Today

Beautiful morning nature walk.

Then school. (No photos of that.) Then Agape Photo project.

Banquets

Every other year Alys does holiday banquets for the orphanage workers. She used to do all the cooking and everything, but then last time we switched to a fancy restaurant. This time was at the restaurant again. Alys was away for the whole holiday season, but before she left she reserved the evenings. Then we hosted them without her.

They were amazing! The nannies really love the fancy atmosphere and a night off just to have fun together. We ate, sang, told about the meaning of Christmas, and on one of the two nights even had amazing professional carollers sing for us.

It's always our hope and prayer that when we can pour out love onto these women and help them to feel special, they'll pass that on to the children they care for.

Happy anniversary to us (last week)

Instead of an update, how about some bad photos from our good anniversary? Last week we celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary with a great dinner out.

My beautiful sister

I have no words myself, so I will pass on what my father posted:

Leetra Joy Robertson - Obituary

Leetra Robertson, age 36, passed from this life on January 17, 2019. Born in Winter Park on June 25, 1982, she was a lifelong Florida resident who also traveled widely. Graduating with high honors from Seminole Community College with an AS in Multimedia Technology in 2007, Leetra changed her focus to become a licensed massage therapist in 2015.

Vibrant and artistic, she impressed those around her with her noteworthy intelligence, excellent communication skills and outstanding compassion. While she enjoyed her work as a therapist, her greatest delight was her daughters. With a love of beauty that enabled many forms of imaginative expression, Leetra took joy in building happy memories for her two girls.

Leetra is survived by her maternal grandmother, Carol Burton; her parents Phil and Kathy Robertson; her daughters, Isla Palmateer and Aliana Palmateer, her sister Phyllis Hunsucker (Will), her nieces and nephews, Jaan, Raia, Asya and Bogdan Hunsucker, and the father of her children, Scott Palmateer.

Family and friends are invited to attend a memorial service at Circle Community Church on February 2, 2019 at 11 am. The church is located at 2200 Pembrook Drive, Orlando 32810. Lunch will be served following the service.

Since Leetra was passionate about both the importance of clean water and the sanctity of life, in lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to World Vision’s Clean Water Fund or Choices Women’s Clinic, 1851 West Colonial Drive, Orlando 32804.

I'll be in Florida for a few days, to attend the service and be with my relatives and friends. Please pray for all of us during this very sad time.

Asya at the theatre

This was January 6. They had a wonderful time!

(All these photos are from our friends.)

Random bits

The church Christmas play and different holidays deserve their own separate posts. Other than those events, what should I write about now?


Asya got to go to "the real theatre" with her friend during the holiday break. Photos from that coming soon.... 

Our dear friends from Canada moved away. We're grieving that, and nothing replaces them.

Our last time all together before they left

They left us their very sweet little rabbit, and we're enjoying her so much. We have tons of photos of her already; here are just a few.

We started back to school at home and at art school. Music school starts again tomorrow (although both girls had extra music practices and such during their break).

Jaan went on a long trip by himself. This is the first time we've just sent him off like this: 18 hours on a train! He's spent a few days in Kharkov with the ministry he went to summer camp with, and he'll be home from that tomorrow. Pray for his long trip back.

Merry Christmas again

If you look up pictures of Christmas Eve in Ukraine, you'll probably see lots of tables covered with food: twelve different dishes special for Christmas and the usual Ukrainian volume of food. Our Hunsucker-Ukrainian-American table made me laugh last night. Sunday night tradition in our family is popcorn for dinner, and to that we added kutia, plus the cookies we were making for neighbours were out. It was quite a strange, international mix.

Today we've cooked and baked a lot. We're having a nice dinner soon, and then we've already heard that some neighbours are waiting for us to come carolling....

He ran out into the snow, then wrapped himself in our tablecloth.

Merry Christmas from us!

З Різдвом Христовим!

Christmas Eve

Today was the big church children's Christmas program. So many children came! Jaan and Raia helped, while Asya and Bogdan participated. I was one of the photographers, so I took hundreds of photos; here are just four of them, one with each of our children in it. We all had a great time.

Music update

Raia got a second prize from the contest in Nikolaev that her video went to! They sent us this picture:

Jaan says that since she just sent a video to the contest and didn't go herself, she probably only gets a photo of her prize. I think they'll pass it on to us soon, though.

Raia has been too sick to go to music school or anything so far this week. She went to a wonderful youth conference over the weekend, came home without a voice at all, and then got this cold. Today she was supposed to go with the Agape photo project again, but she had to stay home from that, too. She really enjoyed helping with that at a different orphanage last week. Pray for her to get well soon.

Music news

I wrote about the school contest that Asya won a first prize in. The week after that she entered a bigger city-wide contest. She was nervous, and didn't do so well, but it was a good experience. Her American friend won, and her friend from church got third place, so she was very happy anyway.

Then Raia entered a contest by video. If you want to watch that, I uploaded it here. I don't know when we'll hear any results from that. And on Friday she won a school contest. Her teacher posted these pretty photos from that:

There was also this concert that she was in.

Saturday Asya performed with the winds orchestra for the first time. I took her and friend early, so I got to watch them rehearse and then stay for the concert to see them perform. It was great! I posted all four songs they played on Facebook.

And did I ever post this photo?

Jaan is a great teacher for Bogdan. He's very patient. However, he doesn't mind using a brotherly karate chop to keep his little pupil sitting up straight. Somehow the photo just looks like he's gently pushing on Bogdan's back, but it's really more active that that. Both boys are working on learning Christmas music now.

Advent of the Lion and the Lamb

Our main Advent book this year is one that I happened to see mentioned online and was able to check out from our digital library: Advent in Narnia. I preread it, because I wanted to make sure it wouldn't take the wonder out of Narnia. (I read a popular book about Narnia early this year, and I thought it was awful to over-analize like that.) This one is full of wonder, though. Of course, we have to reread The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to go with it. My all-time favourite read aloud experience was when I happened to be reading it to our children for the first time at Easter, so that the Narnian Easter corresponded with our Easter. I'm loving it just as much for Advent and Christmas. From the introduction: "My purpose in writing this book is not to help you know Narnia better but to know God better.... I hope that by spending a little time in Narnia this Advent, you will get to know Aslan--and Jesus Christ--better, and to prepare for Jesus' birth at Christmas all the more richly for it."

Then, in the mornings with our school readings, we're also listening to an audiobook of an obscure book (or at least I had never heard of it) just called Advent, or The Good Shepherd by Gunnar Gunnarsson. We're listening and reading in Russian now, but I preread in English.

~~~

Funny Advent conversations already overheard (and translated):

A child looking at the December calendar page: "Look! It has the new Christmas!" meaning December 25 (which is new as an official holiday in Ukraine, but still...).

About a song that we know in both Ukrainian and Russian: "What language are we singing in?!" "Surzhyk!"